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

Stuart, Jan

4.1

125 ratings by Goodreads

9780879109813: Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman's Masterpiece

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0879109815 ISBN 13: 9780879109813

Publisher: Limelight Editions, 2004

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The Nashville Chronicles is a fascinating journalistic tour de force of the movie that legendary film critic Pauline Kael called "The funniest epic vision of America ever to reach the screen". In writing this book, Jan Stuart enjoyed the benefit of full cooperation from Altman, who sat for many hours of interviews, as well as most of the motley crew of cast and characters. Illustrated throughout with behind-the-scenes photos.

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About the Author:

Jan Stuart is a film critic for Newsday and The Advocate. His essays, profiles, and criticisms of film and theater have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, American Theater, Los Angeles Times, The Saturday Review, GQ, Elle, Travel and Leisure, 7 Days, and Mirabella.

From Publishers Weekly:

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 starsAparticularly Ronee Blakley, who played the film's central characterAand 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.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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