SOURCE: "Trashville," in Commentary, Vol. 60, No. 3, September, 1975, pp. 72-5.

In the following essay, which was reprinted in Movie Plus One, Horizon Press, 1982, Pechter traces Altman's portrayal of America in Nashville.

Why make a film about—and full of—country music, if you don't like it? I ask this not as any devotee of country music myself, well over nine-tenths of what I've heard of it striking me as a pile of lachrymose slop. But any film crammed with some 25 country-music original numbers ought, statistically, to hit on one that's better than pathetic. Even a nonentity like W. W. and the Dixie Dancekings (whose principal characters are involved with a country-music band) manages to pull one attractive original tune out of its hat for its finale.

Nor do I ask the question rhetorically. There is a reason to make a movie about country music when you don't like it...