The Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman's Masterpiece

Rightly considered both a critical and popular masterpiece, director Altman's 1975 film, Nashville, is a sprawling, audacious and brilliant mixture of political analysis and soap opera that features 23 major characters, all on a collision course with the American dream. This love letter to the film, the director and the cast is based on Newsweek movie critic Stuart's interviews with all of the cast and crew members who are still alive. He ably evokes the artistic excitement that galvanized the set amid the chaos of the filming (Altman, a great believer in improvisation, told his actors to ignore the script on the first day of filming), as well as the tensions that surfaced when the exacting, often cranky director clashed with many of his stars. Highlights are the insights of performers like Lily Tomlin, who relates how feminism and lesbianism shaped her wonderfully tender sex scenes with Keith Carradine (who claims to have ""just wanted to get laid"" during the filming""), and Barbara Harris, whose insistence on relying on her improvisational training at the Second City put her at odds with Altman. Stuart is at his best detailing the strained and often painful relationships between the stars--particularly Ronee Blakley, who played the film's central character--and the director. More an overview of the film and its principal players than a sustained critical analysis or a day-by-day account of the filming, this amiable journalistic account will please the film's legion of fans more than it will film critics or historians. (Nov.)