VALLEY OF THE DOLLS 1967

Given the vast number of great films out there and the slim chance any of us have (in our all-too-brief lifetimes) of ever finding the time to see them all, one has to wonder why anyone would waste their moments watching (and re-watching) a film one already knows to be bad. 

Well, first off, the term “bad,” as applied to film, is a terribly subjective signifier governed by strict classifications of rank. For example: there’s straight-out unwatchable, bottom-of- the barrel bad, like Adam Sandler, Michael Bay, or Eli Roth movies; then there’s the waste-of-celluloid, forgotten-even-as-you’re-watching-it kind of bad you’re guaranteed with a Matthew McConaughey or Jason Statham film; and finally, there is the top-tier, rarefied, irresistible awfulness of a film like Valley of the Dolls. 

What makes this final category of bad so special is that, unlike the sluggish product born of dull incompetence and a lack of talent, this distinguished rank of terrible is the kind of delightfully vibrant, peppy wretchedness that only the truly talented can create. It entertains, it engages, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry (from laughing) ...in short, it does everything a good movie does...yet it's not. Now, that HAS to be some kind of achievement!

Patty Duke is Neely (Ethel Agnes) O'Hara: Nice kid turned lush!

Barbara Parkins as Anne Welles: Good girl with all the bad breaks!

Sharon Tate as Jennifer North: Sex symbol turned on too often!

Susan Hayward as Helen Lawson: A gut, fingernail, and claw fighter who went down swinging!

This hilariously self-serious film adapted from Jacqueline Susann's ragingly popular novel about three girls balancing career, romance, and pharmaceuticals in the seamy world of show business, is one of the best examples of that forgotten 60s subgenre: the glossy, career-girl soap opera. Films like Three Coins in a Fountain (1954), The Best of Everything (1959), The Pleasure Seekers (1964), and The Group (1966 ) all purported to be modern exposés on the lives of young, emancipated American womanhood, but what they really were were moldy cautionary tales warning women of the dangers of seeking lives outside of the traditional home and family.

Love Eyes
Career-girl Anne hopes to put the "double harness" on her boss, Lyon Burke (Paul Burke)

A master's thesis could be written (and probably has) on the many missteps taken in bringing Susann's sex-filled potboiler to the screen, but any such dissection has to start with the screenplay and director. Really, who thought it was a good idea to have 60-year-old Helen Deutsh and 57-year-old Dorothy Kingsley collaborate on a screenplay about three women in their 20s? With their tin ear for sixties idioms and maiden aunt's sense of shock at Susann's yawn-inducing concept of naughtiness (spelled out in bold letters in case we are dozing — Adultery! Pre-Marital Relations! Homosexuality! Abortion! Insanity!), Valley of the Dolls has all the up-to-date urgency of an issue of "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang."

53-year-old Mark Robson, the stodgily old-school director best known for that antiseptic paean to small-town debauchery, Peyton Place (1957), directs Valley of the Dolls as though he had made a bet with someone that he could make a 1967 film look like it was made in 1957. A bet he would win, I might add. Looking at the film's flat, high-key lighting (which makes location shots look as artificial as soundstages) and the stiff, camera-nailed-to-the-floor cinematography, one begins to understand why, in just a couple of years, Hollywood would be opening its doors and throwing directing jobs at anyone under the age of 30.

Although we're spared Neely's actual nightclub act, its look is reminiscent of "Steam Heat" from The Pajama Game. A number originated on Broadway by Carol Haney, and whose understudy was one Shirley MacLaine. MacLaine, who became a star after stepping in for the ailing Haney one night (holy 42nd Street!) incorporated the number into her own nightclub act for many years.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Everything. And there aren't even many "good" films I can say that about, but it's true. There's not a single thing about Valley of the Dolls I would change. It's a perfect aggregation of people capable of better delivering their worst. Jacqueline Susann - who had dreams of seeing her film cast with top-tier stars like Judy Garland, Candice Bergen, and Ann-Margret - loathed the cast of TV Guide unknowns assembled for her opus. (Lee Grant and Barbara Parkins were both from TVs Peyton Place.)

Lee Grant as Miriam Polar
The one-time blacklisted actress admits to only taking the role for the money 

Paul Burke was another familiar TV face, having done years of episodic TV and was best known for the series, Naked City. Sharon Tate was a starlet on her way up, after having appeared in The Beverly Hillbillies. Even Oscar-winner Patty Duke (The Miracle Worker) was primarily a television face...er, faces (she played twin cousins). When Judy Garland dropped out (or was kicked out) as Helen Lawson, 2nd choice Susan Hayward was hardly at the top of her career game, either.
There are likely many reasons why established stars were eschewed in favor of so many contract newbies, but the most likely reason is that the movie's wig budget didn't allow for big star salaries.

Random thoughts: How did she get all of that hair into that cab?

"Well, Broadway doesn't go for booooze and dope!"

Richard Angarola as Claude Chardot: "Art film" director and winner of the Pepe Le Pew Award for the world's worst French accent.

"Ted Casablanca is not a fag!" 
Neely asserts to sweet, emasculated, homophobe Mel Anderson (Martin Milner); a.k.a, Mr. O'Hara.

 

PERFORMANCES

Although she gets plenty of competition, no one in  Valley of the Dolls really comes close to Patty Duke, who was the reigning queen of epically bad performances until Faye Dunaway blew her out of the water 14 years later with Mommie Dearest. Hers is the film's meatiest role, but that meat soon takes on a rancid smell once you get a sample of the risible dialog she's given ("Boobies, boobies, boobies...nothin' but boobies!"), and marvel at her tendency to bark, rather than speak it ("It was NOT a nuthouse!"). She's better than bad, she's magnificent.

Personality Plus. Sparkle, Neely, Sparkle!

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

With its old-fashioned plot full of wheezy, show-biz clichés, Valley of the Dolls' sole concession to modernity ('60s style) is in its eye-catchingly overblown fashion sense. The costumes are by Oscar-nominated designer William Travilla (The Stripper -1963, How to Marry a Millionaire -1953), the overkill is courtesy of The Sixties!

Neely O'Hara...younger than springtime - and twice as exciting!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

In 2006, when Valley of the Dolls was released as a two-disc Special Edition DVD in a hot pink case loaded with camp-tastic extras, it became official: 20th Century-Fox was no longer going to pretend that Valley of the Dolls was anything other than what it was— deliciously entertaining, high-octane cheese. That moment of if-you-can't-beat-'em marketing lucidity was rather a long time in coming considering that the gay community had single-handedly kept the film alive for decades.
As is often the case when a cult film is discovered and embraced by the masses, there's a bit of something lost in the appreciation of it. Nostalgically, I miss the days when loving this film and enjoying it in theaters with the faithful was like a secret ritual enjoyed by the few. Today Valley of the Dolls is enjoyed by people who wouldn't know irony or camp if it hit them between the eyes. But without all that mainstream attention, Fox never would have gone through the trouble and expense of mounting such an impressive and well-deserved DVD package, so putting up with the hetero appropriators is a small price to pay.

A young Marvin Hamlisch accompanies that bundle of talent, Neely O'Hara

The first time I saw Valley of the Dolls it was in 1968 at the Castro theater in San Francisco. I was 11 years old and I went with my older sister who had seen the film the week before and raved about how good it was. Hard for me to imagine now, but at the time, I took Valley of the Dolls deadly seriously and even cried when Sharon Tate's character took that handful of pills and expired so glamorously on that ugly orange bed. I thought Barbara Parkins was very beautiful, but I was kind of confused by my teenage Patty Lane/Patty Duke's transformation into an adult with big hair and a potty mouth. I had been a fan of The Patty Duke Show, and I really don't think I was ready at so young an age to see Duke looking all puffy and exposed in a bra and half slip. The strongest memory I came away with that day was the almost traumatizing "wig snatching" scene. Not sure why, but it scared the hell out of me.

I'll never be able to view Valley of the Dolls through such innocent eyes again, but I'm gratified that it has finally come into its own as a mainstream cult hit. To this day it amazes me just how durably enjoyable and fresh it remains after so many viewings. Quotable, full of memorable, jaw-dropping scenes and over-the-top performances...this kind of bad is too good to be forgotten.

Neely's back alley breakdown

Copyright © Ken Anderson   2009 - 2011

JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR 1973

From Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943):

Joseph Cotten- "How was church, Charlie? Did you count the house? Turn anybody away?"

Teresa Wright- "No, room enough for everyone."

Cotten- "Well, I'm glad to hear that. The show's been running such a long time I thought maybe attendance might be falling off."

When it comes to movies based on the final days in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, Hollywood has been running a near-nonstop show on the subject since 52-year-old H.B. Warner portrayed the screen's first grandfatherly Jesus in Cecil B. DeMille's 1927 silent classic, King of Kings. Since then, the movie industry has cranked out a new Jesus film every couple of years or so. Sometimes just to make use of new technological advancements (sound, color, Cinemascope), other times, merely to keep in step with the times, theologically speaking.

Thus, with so many iterations of the same tale already committed to celluloid, it's fair to assume that by 1973, when the 1971 Broadway rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar was ultimately adapted for the screen, no one involved harbored any illusions that audiences would be flocking to the film eager to find out how it all comes out.

The major selling point of Jesus Christ Superstar was not the story, per se, but its telling. This was to be the screen's first all-singing, all-dancing Jesus, and its daring, once-controversial, "hook" was to have the Passion Play told (with a decidedly youthful slant) from the perspective of, and in sympathy with, the apostle Judas. In Jesus Christ Superstar Judas sees Jesus not as a God, but merely a mortal man guilty of believing his own publicity. What distinguishes the film version is that it is not as decided on the fact of Jesus' mortality as the stage production, and that uncertainly has been presented in such a manner as to provoke questions more than provide answers.

Ted Neeley as Jesus

Carl Anderson as Judas

Yvonne Elliman as Mary

Barry Dennen as Pontius Pilate

In a significant stylistic departure from the glam-rock roots of the Broadway show, film director Norman Jewison (who so memorably sliced, diced, and bisected theater screens in the stylish crime caper, The Thomas Crown Affair [1968]) went the realist route. Taking a multiethnic cast of young singers, dancers, and actors to Israel and filming on actual locations (some sites breathtakingly dressed by production designer Richard Macdonald with Roman remains and ruins), Jewison lights on a visual concept that, with surprising effectiveness, blends the ancient with the contemporary. It's an aesthetic choice rich with tonal and symbolic anachronisms, perfectly suiting the neoclassical, pop/rock musical score by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.

Contemporary symbols of military power provoke and bedevil the morally besieged Judas

Armed with machine guns and spears, Roman guards march in tank tops and battle fatigues.

The angel Judas descends from heaven by way of an industrial crane.

America's hippie-inspired Jesus movement of the late 60s (Jesus was, after all, the first long-haired, counter-culture revolutionary) which fueled pop-culture works like Jesus Christ Superstar and its off-Broadway cousin, Godspell (1971), greatly influenced my perception of religion during my teen years.

June 1971

Between the years 1971 and 1974, I attended Saint Mary's College High School in Berkeley, which was then an all-boys Catholic school. These were the years when the Catholic Church was all about making itself relevant and hip to us youngsters (Bay Area residents of a certain age recall the regular 60-second radio broadcasts of Father Harry of "The God Squad"), so the Christian Brothers that taught at the school eschewed dark robes and clerical collars for colorful wide ties and bellbottoms, and assembly sermons were apt to be kicked off with a pop song like The 5th Dimension's "Working on a Groovy Thing" blasted over the P.A. system.
Add to this the fact that virtually every citizen of Berkeley at the time seemed to look exactly like the flower-children cast of Jesus Christ Superstar (Saint Mary's custodian/caretaker was a ringer for Ted Neeley's Jesus Christ, only taller, muscular, and with really tight jeans—can't tell you all the spiritual inner-conflict that little teenage crush inspired) and you get a good idea of why looking at Jesus Christ Superstar today feels for me a bit like watching a home movie.

The troupe arriving by bus to enact the Passion Play in the desert brings to mind all those
Catholic School weekend retreats where we kids were encouraged to "rap" and "tell it like it is"

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

In spite of my Catholic upbringing, I confess that I find it difficult sometimes to become emotionally moved by religious films. I can enjoy the spectacle, the performances, and the moral of the narrative; but few things are more disconcerting and distancing than having ethics-challenged Hollywood try to convince me of the value of a virtuous life, simply led. Thus, one of the great pleasures of Jesus Christ Superstar is its ability to be enjoyed from either a secular or spiritual perspective. Jewison achieves something rather extraordinary in having devised a timeless, utterly cinematic approach to the material (the past and present keep bleeding into one another) that doesn't merely "open up" the play, but rethinks and re-imagines it in a profoundly fundamental way.

The Last Supper - hippie style

The hippy-dippy / flower child look of the film, which so many revivals of the show are so quick to discard, is ideally suited to the time-mashup approach of Jewison's vision. It strikes me as ingenious that we are invited to make parallels between Jesus and his followers and the youth of the '70s. It's a concept that gives the events a timeless appeal while encouraging us to take subliminal stock of the way the hairstyles and modes of dress of '70s-era hippies and college students harken back to the look of ancient Israel.
In stressing the contemporarily familiar, Jesus Christ Superstar establishes a narrative point of view that asks us to question the difference between the myth and the man. And it does so in a way that manages to be both impassioned and reverent, yet refreshingly free of the kind of fervent self-seriousness that mars many films about religion. The non-traditional score (orchestrated pop/rock) and refreshingly ambiguous nature of its visuals (what time is all of this taking place in?) invite the re-examination of over-familiar events and characters.

PERFORMANCES

In listening to three decades' worth of covers, revivals, and re-recordings, I still find this version of Jesus Christ Superstar to be the best sung of the lot. This has a lot to do with the era in which I grew up and the pop sound I'm accustomed to, but the arrangements, orchestrations, and vocal performances here are just top-notch. This is especially true of the late Carl Anderson, whose powerfully clear and expressive voice can still give me goosebumps. Every singer in this role has had to live up to Anderson's standard, and in my opinion, not a single one comes close. His Judas was more than just a great voice, he was a passionate actor, as well.

Carl Anderson's show-stopping rendition of the propulsive title song is one of cinema's great musical moments. And who can resist the envisioning of an angel's wings as the fringe on a Vegas-era Elvis Presley jumpsuit?

Oh, and as every rule has its exception: when I wrote earlier that I'm not easily moved by religious films, that still stands; with the exception of Ted Neeley's performance of the song "Gethsemane (I Only Want to Say)." It's the only part of the film that can consistently bring tears to my eyes. Dramatically shot and emotionally intense, it is a really beautiful bit of filmmaking aided immensely by Neeley's wrenching vocal performance. It's the dramatic centerpiece of the film.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Where Jesus Christ Superstar truly shines is in the stark freshness of its visuals. It's a stunning-looking film from every angle. At turns, whimsical, epic, theatrical, and poetic, it is one of those rare adaptations of a stage success that achieve multiple moments of pure cinema.

When I first saw the film, glitter, disco, and Elton John glitz was all the rage, so I was a bit disappointed that Jesus Christ Superstar didn't look more like the stage production, As the years have gone by, I'm glad the film didn't mire itself in a look that would have given it the feel of a '70s variety show. Sure, the hippie style employed may be labeled "dated," but for me, it's a look evocative of the time which created this show's perspective (the '60s) - and somehow that feels more than perfect...it's ideal.

  

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

The dancing in Jesus Christ Superstar is phenomenal. And all those thin, lithe, 70s bodies are a welcome change from the earthbound, often clumsy-looking, gym-puffed bodies of so many dancers today.

My absolute favorite number in the film is "Simon Zealotes." It hits me from the opposite end of the emotional spectrum of  Neeley's "Gethsemane" soliloquy. It's joy and energy personified, given vivacious, eye-popping life by some of the most fantastic dancers doing dazzling choreography ever filmed. It has the power to bring me to a state of childlike elation in a single viewing. Even now, all I can think when I look at it is, WOW!!! Now that is what I call dancing! (Watching it makes me feel proud to be a dancer, although, if I were to try any of these moves now, I'd likely break into a million pieces like Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn in Death Becomes Her.)

Jesus Christ Superstar is yet another one of those motion pictures that grows better with age. Its themes nostalgically remind me of my youth, yet its enduring innovativeness as a film makes me appreciate Norman Jewison's commitment to making this particular "long-running show" one that will hold timeless appeal for new generations.

Judas Kiss

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011

NASHVILLE 1975

Nashville's unique title sequence recalls a popular style of 70s TV commercial for Greatest Hits record collections
70s K-Tel Record Commercial

A perhaps apocryphal story goes that Fox Television's insanely funny sitcom, Arrested Development was not more popular in the ratings and ultimately canceled because its rapid-fire jokes and almost subliminal sight-gags required viewers to actually pay attention. Whether true or not, it's a theory hard to dismiss when applied to the career of Robert Altman (a director a little over-represented on this blog, I know, but it's his fault, not mine. He was just too damned good). In a career as varied and immune to meeting expectations as Altman's, I don't think it's coincidence that his most straightforward, structurally conventional films—M*A*S*H, The Player, Popeye—have been his biggest hits, while his most intriguingly imaginative works have been critic's darlings but largely ignored by the populace at large.

Altman's fondness for multiple storylines, character-based films with large ensemble casts and overlapping dialogue just demanded a level of audience engagement that was rapidly going out of style with American moviegoers. (2001's Gosford Park, which fit the above criteria, was a huge success for Altman. An occurrence attributable to the fact that by then the 76-year-old director and his trademark style had grown as cozily familiar and commodified as Hitchcock's.) 

In 1975, American movie audiences - smarting from Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, and the Vietnam War - showed its first signs of wearying of Hollywood's "auteur" era and its films which strove to straddle the broad chasm of commercial and art. It took the blockbuster success of Jaws (released the same summer as Nashville) to unceremoniously put an end to America's brief love affair with "difficult" films that challenged and/or affronted; and audiences, speaking with their boxoffice dollars, made it known that they were in the mood to be reassured and comforted at the movies again. Whether it be with imaginative retreads of familiar genres of the past (Star Wars, Rocky) or remakes of past successes (A Star is Born, King Kong), America was just sick and tired of being asked to think and pay close attention at the movies all the time.

Ronee Blakley as Barbara Jean

Henry Gibson as Haven Hamilton

Lily Tomlin as Linnea Reese

Keith Carradine as Tom Frank

Karen Black as Connie White

Nashville, Robert Altman's kaleidoscopic vision of America as reflected through the interconnected stories of 24 characters over the course of 5 days in America's country music capital, was filmed in 1974, the year Richard Nixon resigned from the Presidency; and was released in 1975, one year before the U.S. Bicentennial—which also happened to be an election year.  

With one foot planted in an era of scandal and disillusionment, and the other poised on what could be the threshold of a renewed optimism and nationalistic stock-taking; Nashville (unquestionably one of the most timely films ever made) rather ambitiously set about giving the country an eyeful of itself. No one was expecting a red, white, & blue love letter from cinema's most acerbically cynical liberal, but Nashville's equating of politics with the phony, image-conscious flimflammery of show biz (the familist, piety-spouting, grassroots show biz of country music, at that) was a cautionary "Not so fast, America" hand raised to the nation's looming steamroller of ego-bolstering, rah-rah, Bicentennial back-slapping.

A constant visual and aural presence throughout Nashville is the campaign for fictional Presidential candidate Hal Phillip Walker

The traffic jam that opens the film and the political rally that closes it are the only sequences that gather all the main characters of the film together in one site.

BBC journalist, Opal (Geraldine Chaplin)- " I need something like this for my documentary! I need it!
It's so...American! Those cars smashing into each other and all those mangled corpses...!"

In 1975, Opal's glaring incompetence and unsuitability for journalism was obvious. Today, she would probably be a member of a Los Angeles morning TV news broadcast, or a top reporter for TMZ.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Nashville may not be THE view of America, but it's most certainly A view of America, and like it or not, it's a vision that proves itself more prescient and relevant with each passing year. The first and best of Altman's films to use the multiple-plot format he would later employ in A Wedding, H.E.A.L.T.H., Short Cuts, Pret-a-Porter, and Gosford Park, Nashville is staggering in its deft handling of the myriad shifts in tone and changes in focus required of this genre. I can't think of another director capable of balancing such disparate elements in a free-flow mélange of comedy, drama, tragedy, and social satire.

Some of the more affecting story threads:

The monumentally untalented Suleen Gay (Gwen Welles) would most certainly be a contestant on "Nashville Star" or "American Idol" today. In an early draft of the Nashville screenplay, it was Suleen who would die at the end of the film (suicide).

Linnea (Tomlin in her Oscar-nominated film debut), the only Caucasian in an African-American gospel choir, sharing a family moment with her husband Delbert (Ned Beatty) and their two deaf children (Donna Denton and James Dan Calvert).

Runaway bride Albuquerque (Barbara Harris) and loner Kenny (David Hayward) commiserate on the road.

PERFORMANCES

Of all the terrific performances in Nashville, Karen Black as Country Western queen (and Barbara Jean rival) Connie White is my favorite. The goody-goody, over-coiffed prom queen look of so many country stars of the era —and typical of every female performer on The Lawrence Welk Show— has always seemed too calculatedly homespun to me, so I love that screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury envisions Connie White... all cotton candy hair and sweet as sugar smiles...as a steely, professional phony with a rapier-sharp competitive streak. Although her role is one of the briefest, the ever-resourceful Karen Black does some wonderful things with the smallest moments. She's hilarious but never less than spot-on authentic in every move she makes (check out how she avoids acknowledging the gift Barbara Jean's husband tries to give her). Watching her is like taking an actor's master class in bringing a character to life.

Connie White sizes up visiting movie star, Julie Christie (playing herself).
Connie, disbelieving Haven's assertion that Christie's actually a famous Oscar-winning star-  "She can't even comb her hair!"  A characteristically bitchy Connie White remark improvised by Karen Black

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

The music in Nashville is so good and plentiful that it's a pity a full, complete soundtrack album has never been released. You don't have to be a fan of country music to enjoy the witty and sometimes surprisingly beautiful songs that play wall-to-wall throughout the film (many of which were composed and performed by the film's cast). In fact, so much of country music seems knowingly self-parodying that it's hard to tell the songs that are gently poking fun at the genre (like the self-serving moralizing of Haven Hamilton's "For the Sake of the Children") from the ones that sound like they could be the genuine article (Barbara Jean's rousing [but technologically dated] "Tapedeck in his Tractor").

Troubled married duo, Mary (Cristina Raines) and Bill (Allan Nicholls) perform "Since You've Gone." a superb song composed by actor Gary Busey that never made it onto the Nashville soundtrack album.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS
When it comes to a film like Nashville, there can never be too much of a good thing. I can barely stand to dwell on the fact that some 16 hours of footage was originally shot and whittled down to 159 minutes. My only hope is that some company will make good on the long-promised DVD that will feature deleted scenes and omitted songs.

Opal, the easily distracted BBC journalist.
In a filmed sequence that didn't make it into the final cut, it was revealed that Opal is a fraud and was only posing as a journalist.

What I find fascinating about Nashville is that no matter to what degree the passage of time dates the fashions, furnishings, cars, and music, everything else about the film is disconcertingly up-to-date and of the moment.

I think it speaks well of the brilliance of everyone's work involved that you can extract any single character or situation and find a contemporary correlative. When I look at Nashville, it surprises me how much Altman's intimate style and respect for what is extraordinary in the ordinary person, anticipates today's fascination with reality TV. Similarly, the lure of pop stardom (Sueleen and Albuquerque) and the very American desire to re-invent oneself (Shelley Duvall's airheaded changeling, L.A. Joan, nee Martha) find their modern parallel in image-based celebrities like Lady Gaga and assembly-line superstar factories like "American Idol."

Without question, the most dispiriting evidence of Nashville's ahead-of-its-time/up-to-the-minute grasp of cultural zeitgeist is in its foreshadowing of an era where the line between celebrity and politics becomes inextricably blurred.  A time when the senselessness of assassination (a heinous but somehow socially assimilated atrocity due to its exclusive connection to political, religious, or ideological motives) spills over to include any public figure (John Lennon, tragically) so long as it serves to propel the assassin to worldwide notoriety. As we keep learning from TV and the Internet, each of us Americans has a God-given right to be famous. At any cost.

Haven- "This isn't Dallas! This is Nashville!"
As the political rally erupts in tragic violence, a wounded Haven Hamilton loses his toupee and his composure.

Nashville is a movie held in very high regard, yet it's one of those classic films that rarely airs on television. Which is odd, seeing how Altman's layered use of sound is tailor-made for today's advanced sound systems, and his eye for detail and full, busy frame compositions are perfect for all those super-sized  HDTVs. I sure would hate to think that this great film is so seldom screened because it just demands too much of our attention.

AUTOGRAPH FILES

I got these autographs from Tim (Keith Carradine) and Mary (Cristina Raines) back in 1979 when I was working at a Honda dealership in Los Angeles (hence the grease-stained paper given to Raines).

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2011