premiered in NYC 40 years ago yesterday
https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-altman-and-nashville
― the increasing costive borborygmi (Dr Morbius), Friday, 12 June 2015 16:55 (eight years ago) link
Finally watched this and found the ending oddly moving - all the kids who don't register what's happened and are getting into the song, all the rest coming through in the parents' expressions, and everyone weirdly sticking around, not screaming or trampling each other or anything, and Gibson simultaneously falling into shocked denial and showman's autopilot... I dunno, it got to me, more than most of the mini-plots or even their greater-than-the-sum juxtaposition. (Thank God for the format - a whole film or even a junior-size B-story about the folk trio love triangle would have been unbearable.)
― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Friday, 17 February 2017 15:34 (seven years ago) link
It was a 'love' hexagon at the very least.
― Donkeysauce McFannypack (Old Lunch), Friday, 17 February 2017 15:37 (seven years ago) link
I find the ending extremely moving, in some ways I could explain and others I couldn't. Henry Gibson's "This isn't Dallas, it's Nashville" is weirdly heroic from such a buffoon.
― clemenza, Friday, 17 February 2017 16:01 (seven years ago) link
Yeah somewhere a verse or so into the final song I started tearing up and could not then articulate why. Maybe some ghost of the ineffable qualities that struck such chords in the mid-70s, an "American Tune" sort of statement that doesn't say all that much literally but still gets at something that was off or wrong or sad about the way everything had turned out for a lot of people. Interesting also that except maybe Goldblum, who's a grinning, Zonker-esque clown cipher, all of the countercultural, big-city Hollywood outsiders are cynics, hacks, superficial morons or unfeeling shitheads. Not that the locals are all pure decent folk but certainly Tomlin, Wynn, Blakely and DoQui come off better than Duvall, Murphy, Chaplin and Carradine. Just thinking out loud, versus the notion that Altman is looking down at the South.
― tales of a scorched-earth nothing (Doctor Casino), Friday, 17 February 2017 16:16 (seven years ago) link
Part of it for me too is just grand a gesture it is, how audacious, and in the context of what was not exactly a commercial film, but one that did aim for a broad audience. (I get a little bit of that too from "God Bless America" in The Deer Hunter.) You can certainly argue, as many people do, that both films wildly overreach, which is where they get slammed for being pretentious (and, more so with Altman, smug). I don't agree (at all), but I can understand where that comes from. I find myself moved by the ambition of those endings. Does that still happen in (essentially) mainstream American films? Probably now and again, I'd have to try to think of some recent examples.
― clemenza, Friday, 17 February 2017 16:41 (seven years ago) link
"how grand a gesture"
I could see Trump inspiring, if that's the right word, that kind of film.
― clemenza, Friday, 17 February 2017 16:44 (seven years ago) link
James Gray comes to mind.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 17 February 2017 16:48 (seven years ago) link
Found a good-shaped copy of Ronee Blakley's 1972 album for 75 cents a couple of weeks ago.
https://img.discogs.com/eG32IKnlKPviIuhxWNwmqzQjE38=/fit-in/256x256/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2826604-1332401168.jpeg.jpg
It leads off with "Dues," three years before the film. Playing the album now--rest sounds pretty good, sort of country-gospelish.
― clemenza, Saturday, 19 May 2018 19:56 (six years ago) link
RIP Barbara Harris
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/barbara-harris-dies-second-city-actress-freaky-friday-nashville/
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 21 August 2018 20:11 (five years ago) link
Heard "I'm Easy" on the radio today. The song is inseparable from the film for me, that scene being so important and so perfectly directed, so I've never really had any reason to think about it as a thing unto itself. I wouldn't argue that you're knocking on Dan Hill's door here, though.
― clemenza, Tuesday, 28 January 2020 07:33 (four years ago) link
Altman said part of the reason ABC Films picked up the film was because they thought Carradine's songs would be hits and so they really wanted the soundtrack album. "I'm Easy" went to #17 Pop and topped the A/C charts (not to mention winning the Oscar), and Carradine cut two solo albums for Asylum.
― a bevy of supermodels, musicians and Lena Dunham (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, 28 January 2020 16:29 (four years ago) link
SPOTTED: Henry Gibson reciting some of "Keep-A-Goin" on Dick Van Dyke in 1966
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tilp00uNlPg
The relevant bit around 08:45
― "what are you DOING to fleetwood mac??" (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, 20 January 2021 03:57 (three years ago) link
I think I vaguely remember that--I loved DVD as a kid--but I'm not sure if I'm confusing it with Gibson doing the same on Laugh-In.
― clemenza, Wednesday, 20 January 2021 04:26 (three years ago) link