Director Robert Altman’s Nashville premiered in Nashville on August 8, 1975. The film was already doing well in New York and elsewhere, but even before then, before it even hit theaters, legendary New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael dubbed it “the funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen.”
Nashville would go on to gross about $10 million in the U.S. and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. Keith Carradine’s ballad “I’m Easy” took home the Oscar for best original song.
Even so, many in Nashville at the time felt like Altman was poking fun at Music City and the music was inauthentic — or even worse, not produced with real Nashville musicians. The film is considered one of the greatest ever made.
On this episode, we’re talking about how the movie portrayed 1970s Nashville and its legacy with some of the people who worked on the set.
To start of off the show, we’re joined by WPLN host Mariana Bacallao to discuss resources available to Nashville renters.
Guests:
- Mariana Bacallao, WPLN’s All Things Considered host
- Noel Murray, film critic and freelance journalist
- Bill Myers, artist who painted the Nashville cast
- Joan Tewkesbury, Nashville screenwriter
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