An Impromptu Nashville Girl Reunion Four Decades Later at Belcourt

Last night, as the credits rolled on the vintage exploitation picture Nashville Girl at The Belcourt, the audience burst into applause after more than a dozen higher-billed actors had gone by. Turns out the applause was for Phillip R. Jones, a local guitar-maker of some repute, who'd made his acting debut in the Roger Corman-distributed film some 39 years ago. 

"Boy, I thought I had it made," chuckled Jones, surrounded by well-wishers after the movie. Released in 1976, Nashville Girl was the kind of picture no one thought would survive the decade: a down-and-dirty B movie about a struggling starlet (Monica Gayle from Jack Hill's Switchblade Sisters) whose road to country stardom passes through a grabby gauntlet of rapists, ripoff artists, predatory female prison guards and on-the-make honkytonk heroes. And yet here a robust crowd of 80 or so people was, gathered four decades later to watch a low-budget sleaze epic that made its world premiere at the old Martin Twin in Murfreesboro.

Nobody seemed more surprised than Jones and another person from the film in the audience: veteran songwriter Rory Bourke, perhaps best known as co-writer of the Charlie Rich blockbuster "The Most Beautiful Girl." Back in the day, Bourke was hired to provide songs for the movie's country singers and to teach Gayle and co-star Glenn Corbett how to lip-sync them. The music was one reason an insider in the audience — a major figure behind the current Country Music Hall of Fame Dylan/Cash exhibit — admitted he likes this movie a whole lot more than Robert Altman's Nashville from the previous year.

The shy, unduly modest Bourke and his wife Rita seemed pleasantly puzzled by the reception to the movie — to news Quentin Tarantino had once programmed Nashville Girl at one of his QT marathons at Austin's Alamo Drafthouse, and to further news that the film is now out on Blu-Ray (from Scorpion Releasing). Bourke had fond memories of star Corbett (who called a halt to the shoot his first day until the crew was fed) and director Gus Trikonis. He was there on set in the old Chappell publishing headquarters (now Sound Stage) the day Gayle filmed one of her big scenes in the movie, when her much-abused character flees yet another Music Row scoundrel. Back then, he remembers, R-rated language just wasn't something you heard much in Nashville, at least publicly.

"All the secretaries came out to watch, because nobody ever got to see a movie being made," Bourke remembers with a sly smile. On cue, Gayle started running down the hall pounding on doors — and each time she got to a door, she screamed "Fuck you!" at the top of her lungs. All faces froze.

This was the first entry I'd seen in The Belcourt's "Music City Mondays" series of films shot in Nashville, and it was hugely entertaining. The movie itself is pretty good — well cast, paced and acted, with a punchier script and direction (and more skin) than you'd expect, and the Pepto Bismol-colored 16mm print gave it that grindhouse je ne sais quoi. Best of all — and one of the main reasons behind the series — were its time-capsule location shots of Printers Alley, Bradley's Barn, Demonbreun Street, and bad old Lower Broad in its coin-op-porn-and-pawn-shop days. Look forward to seeing these in Blu-Ray splendor.

Pictured above in the Belcourt lobby: Jones and Bourke. Up next in "Music City Mondays": two by the invincible Ormonds, Nashville's "First Family of Exploitation," including the notorious The Monster and the Stripper.