Nashville
Short description
Robert Altman's ensemble drama follows two dozen characters whose lives intersect in Nashville, the center of the country music industry. Performers at different stages of their careers, a British journalist covering the scene, and aides to an independent presidential candidate all move through the city, their stories converging around a political rally and the concert planned to support it. The film weaves the music business together with a portrait of American public life in the mid-1970s.
Altman directed and produced the film from an original screenplay by Joan Tewkesbury. It was his seventh feature in chronological order, arriving between California Split and 3 Women. The large credited cast of forty-one includes David Arkin, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley and Timothy Brown. Shot for about two million dollars, it returned roughly ten million worldwide.
On IMDb it holds a 7.6 rating from around 31,000 votes, while on TMDB it has a 7.3 from 478 votes. A critics' rating of 9 out of 10 from 136 reviews places it well above both audience scores. At 160 minutes, the film presents its interlocking stories and musical numbers at length, mixing comedy and drama in a portrait of the country music capital.
What's left behind the scenes
- All the actors and actresses were instructed to write the songs they would perform in the film themselves.
- All the songs heard in the film were recorded live, not pre-recorded in a studio.
- Initially, director and producer Robert Altman (1925-2006) wanted Susan Anspach (1942-2018) to play the role of Barbara Jean, but her financial demands were considered excessive. The entire film crew was already in Nashville, and the role of Jean still hadn't been filled, so at the last moment Altman offered it to Ronee Blakley, who was working as a backing vocalist in Nashville at the time and who had written several songs for the film. As a result, Blakley was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
- The film owes its existence to a proposal made to Robert Altman, which he rejected. He was initially offered a script on a completely different subject, set in Nashville. He turned down the project, but the setting interested him. He sent screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury to Nashville to see what it was like and take notes, and she returned with a whole journal of entries that formed the basis of the script. After that, the actors themselves made changes to some scenes or suggested new ones, as happened when working on all of Altman's films.
- Upon seeing herself in the scene depicting a traffic jam, Barbara Harris (1935-2018) reportedly jumped up, dashed out of the screening room, went home, and asked Robert Altman to come to her immediately for an important conversation. Harris disliked her performance in the scene so much that she asked Altman to reshoot it and even offered to pay for the reshoot out of her own pocket. Altman refused.
- All the musicians shown in the film were actually working in Nashville at the time of filming.
- Robert Altman instructed actress Gwen Welles (1951-1993) to take singing lessons before filming.
- The role of Rhetta was written for Louise Fletcher (1934-2022), who had deaf parents and, consequently, knew sign language. However, the role was ultimately played by Lily Tomlin. Tomlin later claimed that it all worked out because she herself had been offered the role of a nurse in Miloš Forman’s (1932-2018) drama 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' (1975), which she turned down, and Fletcher ended up playing the role – essentially, they had simply swapped roles.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
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