The Greatest Rock and Roll Movie is a Country Movie (and the music aint that great either)
In 1975 Robert Altman was the King Of Hollywood who abdicated -the maverick improvisational director who’d shocked the world into submission with M.A.S.H. and then went his own way. But in 1975he hit a home run with his multi-story movie about politics, country music and the South. From Keith Carradine’s (who I saw off-broadway last year in a play directed by another seventies icon, Ken Russel) callous ladies man to Ronee Blakely’s broken country music star and many others converge at a political rally.
It’s a great movie though the music isnt great. It takes more to sing country than singing country and Altman’s decisions to allow the actors write and sing their own songs is the biggest misstep.The Oscar winning “I’m Easy” you know but maybe you don’t remember Ronee Blakely’s “My Idaho home” -I sure didn’t till I read a reiew a revue of “Daryl Glenn and Jo Lynn Burks Play and Sing Robert Altman’s ‘Nashville,’ playing at the Metropolitan Room on the first Sunday each month.
According to the New York Times’ Stephen Holden it is a good natured satire of the music…
Catch it Dec. 6, at the Metropolitan Room, 34 West 22nd Street, Flatiron district, (212) 206-0440, metropolitanroom.com.
