The Other Side of Nashville leads you to believe, during the opening scene, that the movie is going to be about honky-tonk singers who are struggling to make it in Nashville. The movie then takes a turn with a host of stars bemoaning the fact Country Music has become too citified. Even Chet Atkins, who helped create "The Nashville Sound" joins the chorus. What The Hell....the man who was instrumental in pushing out "real" country music in order to line his own pockets with money, NOW, or at least in 1983 when this movie was made, thinks country has lost its roots. Maybe it goes back to the old saying "You don't miss your water, till the well runs dry".
As each of the country artists (most who would now (2011) fall into the category of Alt, Outlaw, or Americana) give their take on what's wrong with country music, the movie features song performances from that artist or the artist they are discussing. Musicians interviewed or in performance clips featured in The Other Side of Nashville include: Willie Nelson, Bobby Bare, Johnny Cash, Charlie Daniels, Emmylou Harris, Hank Williams Jr., Chet Atkins, Kris Kristofferson, Carl Perkins, Kenny Rogers, Ricky Scaggs, Terri Gibbs, Gail Davis, Jerry Reed, Porter Wagoner, Charlie McCoy, Rattlesnake Annie, and Bob Dylan.
Near the end of the movie, the point of the movie changes direction again, when Willie Nelson says "Music is Music", no matter who is making it, that all musicians have a similar outlook on what they are doing. The Other Side of Nashville then goes back to some of the artists who now contradict their earlier statements and seem to agree with Willie. I realize the movie was edited this way, still it was odd seeing this turnaround.
The movie returns to the honky-tonk from the first of the film and ends with Owen Davis singing his song "The Other Side of Nashville". I never could quite grasp what point The Other Side of Nashville was trying to make, since it kept changing directions. On the other hand, it was an enjoyable film due to all of the song performances. And where else are you going to see/hear a movie narrated by Bob (Is It Running, Bob?) Johnston.
This was probably as enjoyable a movie to make as it was to watch. Willie Nelson plays Doc Jenkins and Kris Kristofferson plays Blackie Buck....oh, who are we kidding....they just basically play themselves. Songwriter was directed by Alan Rudolph, who had previously directed Roadie (also a movie with music as part of the plot) and was written by Bud Shrake, who just a few years later would help Willie write his autobiography.
Willie and Kris are a couple of songwriters/performers who are on the road singing and making money. Willie always winds up investing his part of the proceeds in some type of failing business venture. One day Willie decides the real money is behind the scenes and he quits the road to be a writer/producer. Of course, even this doesn't work out good for Willie since, him being a trusting soul, he signs a contract giving away all of his writing royalties to a music executive.
Willie comes up with a scheme to circumvent his contract and get the proceeds from his songwriting. He finds a talented newcomer, Gilda (Lesley Ann Warren), who he will manage and put her name on his songs. He'll take most of the proceeds from the writing royalties and in return he'll make her a big star. There's a little inside joke when Willie is promoting Gilda. He takes her record to a radio station and asks a DJ to play it. The DJ says sure, as soon as the current record finishes. Willie asks him what he's playing and the DJ says The Geezinslaw Brothers, the joke is that the DJ is Sammy Allred, one-half of The Geezinslaw Brothers
At the same time Willie is managing Gilda, he is also managing Kris, who finds out about the scheme. Kris wants Willie to give him a song also, mainly to help Willie screw the music executive back in Nashville. Gilda becomes a big hit but she has never been comfortable on stage, and now she is also having a hard time with people thinking she wrote her own songs. She eventually turns to drugs and alcohol resulting in her OD'ing. After her brush with death, she gets clean and marries her longtime boyfriend/harmonica player (Mickey Raphael). Gilda getting clean is a plot point that really helps Willie get his revenge on the music executive at the end of the movie.
While Songwriter is classified as a drama, I really think it was more comedic than anything else. Sure the basic background plot is about musicians getting cheated by the men in charge of the music business, but the interactions between Willie and Kris are always playful, and Rip Torn as a shady concert promoter has a lot of great comic moments. Even the crooked music executive is portrayed more as a big boob, than someone that really knows what he's doing.
In my opinion, Songwriter should have used someone different in the role of Gilda. I had a hard time buying Lesley Ann as a country singer. Too bad they couldn't have cast someone else, maybe Tanya Tucker for example, to give the role more authenticity. For all you womenfolk, Kris, in most scenes, seems to either have his shirt off or mostly unbuttoned, and for all you menfolk, there's two scenes with women baring their breasts.
Besides the musicians mentioned above: Songwriter features members of Willie's band and Kris' band; Johnny Gimble has a small speaking part and Steve Fromholz can be spotted as a recording engineer. Booker T. Jones of Booker T and The MG's has a nonspeaking part as a member of Gilda's band and I even spotted Ray Benson in the background at one of the several parties featured in the movie. I'm sure I missed some but perhaps you'll catch them when watching Songwriter.
