Nashville is a 1975 American satirical musical ensemble comedy-drama film directed and produced by Robert Altman. The film follows various people involved in the country and gospel music businesses in Nashville, Tennessee, over a 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 to critical acclaim, praising the ensemble cast and soundtrack. It garnered numerous accolades, including five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director, 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". Plot Hal Philip Walker, Replacement Party candidate in the 1976 United States presidential election, arrives in Nashville for a fundraising gala. Meanwhile, two recording sessions are taking place in a nearby studio: in one room, country superstar Haven Hamilton records a patriotic song commemorating the Bicentennial, while next door, Linnea Reese, a white gospel singer, records a song with the Jubilee Singers of historically black Fisk University. Opal, an Englishwoman who claims to be working on a documentary for the BBC (though she refers to the British Broadcasting Company), attempts to listen in on the