BEFORE: From Stanley Kubrick back to Robert Altman, with Shelley Duvall carrying over again from the archive footage in "Room 237". And this is another film that's found on that list of "1,001 Films to See Before You Die" - so scratch another one off that list for me.
By coincidence I happen to be planning a vacation to Nashville, but first we're going to fly to Dallas, then drive to Little Rock, Memphis and Nashville on a tour of some of this country's best BBQ restaurants and other eating establishments. In Dallas we're going to our first rodeo (it's funny how you never hear anyone say that proudly...) and we'll visit the Texas State Fair and Southfork Ranch - I'd love to see Dealey Plaza, the grassy knoll and the famous book depository if there's time. In Memphis I figure we've got to go and see Graceland, it being the 40th anniversary of the King's passing and all, but I'd love to see Sun Studios too, and Beale Street, of course. But we're still quite short on ideas for what to do in Nashville for two days, since we can't stand country music and have no desire to visit the Grand Ole Opry. Maybe this film will give me some ideas.
AFTER: Well, now I know one thing I've simply got to do in Nashville. Outside of town there's this full-scale replica of the Parthenon - I'd been toying with the idea of visiting it, but since this film held its climactic scene on its grounds, now I really want to go to there, and when I do, I'll remember the closing concert/political rally seen in the final act of Altman's film. But perhaps I should be concerned, because based on this film alone, the only thing to do in Nashville is to go listen to country music, either in a club or at the Grand Ole Opry. I've already floated out some ideas for shows to see in town - Penn and Teller happen to be playing Nashville that weekend - but my wife shot those ideas down, so it looks like we'll be taking that side trip to the Jack Daniels Distillery, and then maybe going on a Halloween-themed pub crawl. Add a few BBQ restaurants, and I'll be fine with that.
The first problem with this film is that it's too long, with a running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes. Even with the aid of Mountain Dew, I fell asleep after about 2 hours and 15 minutes, which of course was right before the most exciting part. When I woke up at 4 am I had to go back and find where I left off, finish the last of the Dew and then continue. Since we had to give medicine (eye drops and ear drops) to our cat at 5 am, this meant I was wide awake for that, so maybe it all worked out for the best. But still, damn, Robert Altman, couldn't you have told this story in 2 hours and 10 minutes?
Of course, what we're dealing with here is Altman's style of telling a complex story with 24 characters, who weave in and out of each other's lives, in varying degrees of importance. Keith Carradine's character is part of a musical trio, but he's made the decision to become a solo act, and he also has the "Warren Beatty" role, meaning he beds nearly every female character in the film, including the reporter from the BBC, who seems to not know the meaning of journalistic integrity. She herself later ends up reporting from a junkyard and a school bus parking lot, which seemed a little odd - she's there to report on the music scene, so where does the junkyard fit in? Did sleeping with Carradine's character mess with her head, or did she take some drugs or drink some weird alcohol that made her act in random ways?
Most of the other characters are similarly in the music business, either established acts that play the different venues in town regularly, or people who have gravitated to Nashville in the hopes of breaking into the music business. We see one woman who keeps running away from her husband, going from club to club looking for singing work, but often finding her husband in that same bar, so either he's drinking to get over her, or he's guessing where she's going to go and he's always one step ahead of her, I'm not sure. Shelley Duvall's character is also in town to become a singer (or is it just to sleep with musicians?), though she's pretending to be there in order to visit her sick aunt. Her uncle keeps waiting for her to show up at the hospital, and by chance this is the same hospital, on the same floor where famous singer Barbara Jean is recuperating, after collapsing at the airport after her return flight to Nashville.
Barbara Jean had previously been rescued from a fire, and the woman who pulled her from the fire was the mother of PFC Kelly, the army man that we see milling around in the hospital, he's a big fan who sneaks in to her room to watch her sleep, because that's not too creepy. Kelly's the connection between the uncle character and the country music singer in the hospital, but he also plays a vital role in the film's climax.
The characters who aren't part of the music scene are in politics, either local organizers or consultants for a presidential campaign. (One local organizer is married to the lead singer for a gospel choir, and we've circled back to musicians again...) This film came out in 1975, and one of the songs mentions the upcoming U.S. Bicentennial, so we can conclude that Hal Phillip Walker is a dark horse candidate for the 1976 Presidential election. There's a lot of footage of a van driving around with loudspeakers on top, with the candidate's blaring rhetoric about how everyone in Washington DC is corrupt, and an outsider is needed to win the election, go to Washington and get rid of all the corrupt politicians - essentially, he wants to "drain the swamp". Wow, Altman was about 40 years ahead of the news here.
I did say that I wanted to watch more political films this year, I didn't realize that this was going to be one of them. What else did Altman get right, politically? There's violence seen at a campaign rally, I think we saw a lot of that in real life last year. Another political event features a singer who is then convinced to become a stripper, midway through her act. Honestly, who knows what kind of shenanigans went on at Trump fundraisers? I didn't hear about any specific instances like this, but we did have all that leaked audio with Trump talking to Billy Bush about fondling women without consent, and the stories of him sneaking into dressing rooms at the Miss USA pageants - I'm going to say that Altman hit this one pretty close to the mark.
I couldn't help but notice the connections to another film, "The Blues Brothers", which has been running on late-night cable nearly every night (or maybe it just seems like it.) Both films have Henry Gibson in them, both films feature multi-car pile-up accidents, and of course, both films have country bands in them - "The Gold Old Boys" and "The Misty Mountain Boys". "The Blues Brothers" also had a scene that ties into current events, by featuring a Nazi rally. I'd say that Jake and Elwood's solution to what to do when a Nazi rally is blocking traffic - to drive right through it - would be ideal, if not for the fact that the white supremacists in Charlottesville used the same tactic against their protestors.
Also starring Lily Tomlin (last seen in "The Pink Panther 2"), Ned Beatty (last seen in "The Trouble with Spies"), Karen Black (last seen in "The Great Gatsby"), Keith Carradine (last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller"), Michael Murphy (ditto), Bert Remsen (ditto), Allen Garfield (last seen in "The Conversation"), Henry Gibson (last seen in "The Long Goodbye"), Scott Glenn (last seen in "The Bourne Legacy"), Jeff Goldblum (last seen in "Tim and Eric's Billion Dollar Movie"), Barbara Harris (last seen in "Plaza Suite"), Gwen Welles, Keenan Wynn (last seen in "Finian's Rainbow'), Ronee Blakley, Barbara Baxley, Geraldine Chaplin (last seen in "Doctor Zhivago"), David Arkin (also last seen in "The Last Goodbye'), Timothy Brown, Robert DoQui, David Hayward (last seen in "The Big Picture"), Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Cristina Raines, Thomas Hal Phillips, Richard Baskin, Merle Kilgore with cameos from Elliott Gould (also last seen in "The Big Picture"), Julie Christie (also last seen in "McCabe & Mrs. Miller").
RATING: 5 out of 10 rambling childhood stories
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