Joan Tewkesbury's mark on cinema is Nashville: a screenplay that lets a crowd talk over itself and trusts us to keep up. As a director she has worked mostly in television, where her hand is harder to see.
Fi1m perspective
Nobody in Nashville (1975) is listening. People talk across one another in crowded rooms and at the edges of songs, each waiting for a gap to get their own piece in, and the joke lands before any single line does. Joan Tewkesbury's screenplay follows several lives and puts none of them in charge, so the first half hour is spent learning how to watch. We found it funny at first, all that inattention, and then, somewhere in the second hour, we felt sorry for nearly everyone in it, because these are people who want badly to be noticed and the script has quietly arranged that they never are. That is the work we know her for, and it has lasted.
She came to it sideways. A child dancer and stage actress, she was script supervisor on Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), a job she has described as "like film school for six months". Altman then had her write Thieves Like Us (1974) and Nashville, the second built from her own diary of the city, from watching rather than inventing, which is why its conversations sound overheard rather than composed. The method suited Altman's improvising exactly: give the actors a structure, not a plot, and let them fill it.
Her directing career is a different shape. Old Boyfriends (1979) was her feature debut and, for a long while, more or less her only one; what followed was television, films made for it and episodes of Doogie Howser, M.D., Felicity, The Guardian and Northern Exposure. She has also directed theatre and ballet, taught screenwriting and written novels. We rate Northern Exposure warmly, but it is Joshua Brand and John Falsey's show, and a director of episodes serves the design she is handed. Having given Altman his structure, she spent much of the next two decades working inside other people's. We have not seen enough of her as a director of features to say what she would have done with a free hand, and that is the frustration of the career rather than a fault in the work.
She has been plain about why: she went into television because she could not get films made. It shows in the shape of the filmography and not, so far as we can judge, in the quality of the pages. Start with Nashville, and watch the people at the edge of the frame who are waiting to speak. She wrote them all.
Biography
Joan Tewkesbury is an American screenwriter, director, producer and former actress. She began her career as a dancer and actress before working as a script supervisor, including on Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), credited as Joan Maguire. She collaborated with Altman as co-writer on Thieves Like Us (1974) and sole writer on Nashville (1975).
Tewkesbury made her feature directorial debut with Old Boyfriends (1979). She has directed numerous television episodes and films, including for series such as Northern Exposure, Doogie Howser, M.D., Felicity and The Guardian. She received a BAFTA nomination for best screenplay for Nashville.
