Nashville is a 1975 American satirical musical comedy-drama film directed and produced by Robert Altman. The film follows various people involved in the country and gospel music industry in Nashville, Tennessee, over the five-day period leading up to a gala concert for a populist outsider running for president on the Replacement Party ticket.
Nashville is often noted for its scope; the film contains 24 main characters, an hour's worth of musical numbers, and multiple storylines. Its large ensemble cast includes David Arkin, Barbara Baxley, Ned Beatty, Karen Black, Ronee Blakley, Timothy Brown, Keith Carradine, Geraldine Chaplin, Robert DoQui, Shelley Duvall, Allen Garfield, Henry Gibson, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Barbara Harris, David Hayward, Michael Murphy, Allan F. Nicholls, Dave Peel, Cristina Raines, Bert Remsen, Lily Tomlin, Gwen Welles, and Keenan Wynn.
The screenplay for Nashville was written by Altman's frequent collaborator Joan Tewkesbury, based partly on her experiences as an outsider visiting the city and observing its local music industry. Several incidents she experienced appear in the finished film, though Altman improvised numerous additional scenes and plot strands during filming. The film was shot on location in Nashville in 1974.
Nashville was released by Paramount Pictures in the summer of 1975, and opened with widespread critical acclaim, praising the ensemble cast (mainly Blakely and Tomlin), mise en scène and soundtrack. It garnered numerous accolades, including five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (for both Ronee Blakley and Lily Tomlin), and winning for Best Original Song for Carradine's track "I'm Easy". The film was nominated for a total of 11 Golden Globe Awards, to date the highest number of nominations received by one film. Since then, it has been considered Altman's magnum opus, and one of the greatest films of all time. In 1992, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".