On location 50 years ago: Altman's 'Nashville' mixed gun violence, politics and country

The actors gunned down a singer at Nashville's Parthenon, cheered for a stripper in a honky tonk, smashed up cars on the Interstate, sang (at times) off-key at the Grand Ole Opry and watched a country music star faint at the airport.

The filming included extended shots of the Exit/In, the Fisk Jubilee Singers and the baton-flipping Tennessee Twirlers.

It was 1974, and the final days of the Richard Nixon presidency before he resigned on Aug. 8. Actor Keith Carradine was polishing up a song for the movie called "I'm Easy," and it would become a country music hit.

The movie was so Nashville, that's what they called it.

"Nashville," directed by Robert Altman, was shot on location in Music City 50 years ago this summer, and opened to warm reviews from critics even though the film seems to suggest country music fans will just sing along through a crisis (as happens in the final scene).

The film follows several characters as they converge on Nashville during the humid summer of a presidential campaign. They sing, fight, have affairs, sing some more, argue about politics and, in the end, a couple of singers get shot by a gunman who carries a pistol in a fiddle case.

The film was noteworthy for its criss-crossing storylines, and for Altman's insistence that the actors playing singers write their own songs.

"Nashville" starred Lily Tomlin, Keith Carradine, Ned Beatty, Jeff Goldblum, Karen Black, Henry Gibson, Robert DoQui, Ronee Blakley, Shelley Duvall, Timothy Brown, Michael Murphy, Scott Glenn, Barbara Baxley and Geraldine Chaplin (yes, Charlie Chaplin's daughter).

There are cameos from the stars of Altman's other films, including Elliott Gould (M*A*S*H) and Julie Christie (McCabe & Mrs. Miller).

The film was shot in 1974 on location here in Nashville, and seems like a commentary on the shootings of John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. It features an unseen populist candidate (whose voice is blasted through a loudspeaker in a van) who is running for president as a member of the Replacement Party.

"We try to present an analogy between our elected officials and our fundamental political process on one hand and the country music stars on the other," Altman told The Tennessean in 1974. "Both are involved in popularity contests in which it seems that content is less important than the way people greet and maintain their public."

Altman continued: "It's not necessarily the physical Nashville, and we're not pro or con Nashville. We're not out to disparage it in any way. We're just trying to show the mix of cultures that come together here."

Some people thought "Nashville" did not paint a pretty picture of Nashville.

"I felt there were parts of it that were, quite honestly, boring," said 1970s megastar actor Burt Reynolds. "I thought there were some gems of performances, but my reaction was a bit miffed at what he (Altman) was saying. I couldn't say I liked it, but yet I didn't hate it. Parts of it I liked and parts of it really made me quite angry.

"When you're doing a picture that's supposed to be the example of the good and bad in the United States, and you make the country and western singers the players, it does seem a little bit unfair."

Syndicated reviewer Rex Reed said the movie “floats like navel lint into the vulgar Vegas of country and western music, that plunking, planking citadel of bad taste called Nashville, Tenn.”

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Robert Altman's 'Nashville': Mixing country, violence and politics