4
Wednesday, August 20, 1975
University Daily Kansan
Robert Altman
'Nashville'an American medley
By CHUCK SACK
By CHUCK SACK Contributing Writer
"If I don't make some money for somebody pretty soon, I'm not going to be able to maneuver as more busy as my friend director Robert Altman during his visit to the University of Kansas a year and a half ago, indicated how precarious his position in the motion picture industry."
At the time Almanac had one tremendous hit, "MA'A'S-H" and a string of pictures that were critical successes but did not receive much attention. Office. Now Almanac is back with a second big hit, "Nashville," and those familiar with "Brewster McCloud," and "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "California Spit" will be introduced as "Nashville" contains the same vital elements.
THE FIRST OF THESE elements is the meandering plot. During his KU visit he came to watch the two men with shooter scheduled to begin in less than two months, he confided that the picture
Aliman and screenwriter Joan Tewksbury (who was his cowriter on "Thieves Like Us") follow two dozen different characters in and around the country in a movie just as the 1802 "Grand Hotel" dealt with many people living in a big hotel.
would be his "Grand Hotel." It is an apt comparison.
A director who has never been particularly interested in linear plots, Altman benefits greatly from the freedom that this multiple story affords.
"I really try to get more atmosphere—to get the audience involved more emotionally than intellectually." Aluman said. "I'm going in more essays than I am in stories."
Thus, in "Nashville," whenever the action involving one set of characters begins to slow, the film just cuts to a more lively group.
NOT THAT THE FILM GETS dull very often, in fact, "Nassville" is easily the most funny movie.
nave been cover stories in "Newsweek," "Village Voice" and "Rolling Stone," as well as articles in almost every other major magazine.
Pauline Kael wrote a glowing review of the film for "The New Yorker" three months before its world premiere. "The New Yorker's' other reviewer, Penelope Gilliat, after it was released that year, after the film was finally released that was much less complimentary.
How could a movie about country and western music arouse such interest? Part of the answer lies in the film's depiction of American values.
Nashville is Almanar's synecdoche for the United States, and he glefully depicts a gaudy nationalism that pervades the area. Nashville's camera is a charged image for Almanar's camera.
National allusions permeate the music, too, and like his earlier works, "Nashville" features a soundtrack that is jammed with hip-hop. In "Ladybird," Overlapping dialogue, radio shows,
background noise and the ever-present music all visi for the audience's attention.
MUCH OF THE MUSIC was written by the actors who sing it, and the open simplicity of songs takes on black connotations as the private lives of the characters come to light. "When you look at Years" is ostensibly a tribute to America. But the writer-performer is Haven Hamilton (played by Henry Gibson), a self-righteous car star who is being pushed through.
While the soundtrack carries the recording session ("We must be doing something different") and shows the various characters onscreen can do nothing right. Ironically, at the end of the song, Haven coldly says to his black chorus, "do it again with more religious fervor."
Gibson wrote "200 Years," and actor Keth Carrillead the film's dominant piece, "It Don't Worry Me." But most of the good material is from the pen of newcomer
See ALTMAN page 11
Student life . . .
From page 1
instate when the wise man bid the pause? Then art men, and being men are brutes.
"So stuff up thy ears and the wise man not on, with the fight, let gore be unmanned."
While the freshmen and sophomores were buysing themselves in preparation for their annual skirmish, upperclassmen were giving up the opportunity to more intellectual and/or practical pursuits.
Before the first football game at KU in 1890 and the first field meet (track and field events) in 1880, the big men on campus were the leaders not of athletic teams but of literary societies, which were involved mainly in debating activities.
THE ACROPOLIS SOCIETY in 1868 was the first club devoted to debate, oratory and verbal skill at KU. When the Acropolis Society changed its name to the Orophilian Society and began to exclude women, the Athemena Society was formed.
Throughout the 1870s and early 1880s these and other debating societies grew and prospered. Intercollegiate competitions were staged and well attended. They became so popular, in fact, that some colleges cut classes to prepare for their debates.
The debate topics included:
resolved: That the time consumed in completing a thorough course of study could be reduced.
"Resolved: That it is better to have tried and failed, than not to try at all."
"Resolved: That the whites were and are more to blame in the present and past Invasion."
"Resolved: That military glory is a just object of ambition.
In the first state oratory contest in Kansas in 1884 a KU student was the winner. But an excess of motivation caused him to be accused of homicide. He was convicted of plagiarism.
IN THE LATE 1880s and the early 1890s the literary clubs began to die out. The Moot Senate, the Webster Debating Club, Paladium, the Macedonian Club, the Gotonian Club, the Sunflower Club and others declined in membership.
Probably because of the rise in the popularity of competing fraternities—called secret societies—the debating clubs and organizations some diehard literary clubs remained.
The Kansas University Weekly of Feb. 14, reported the presence at a kind of fire in a building.
"A queer tribe of erratic students has been discovered within the precincts of the University, who call themselves Bohemians.
"They meet in a place called Buzzard's Roost, the whereabouts of which is yet unknown. There are about 15 or 20 of these creatures, but literary freaks can join the tribe.
"IT IS VAGUELY understood that they are prepared poetry, and the philosophical nature of their work."
From ants freshmen to sophisticated senior Bohemians, the University in the first decades of its existence offered a plethora of student types and social lives.
Griffin wrote of that era, "Variety was still the student body's most important characteristic. Intellectuals and aesthetics joined playbolds and playgirls; the rich and well-behaved were few." University had both its mindless girls and its girlless minds.
"If there were students with average grades, Griffin said, "there were no grades."
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