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64 dga quarterly back to us) and a clapping, adoring crowd. "This is just to show you that it's all happening at the same time, live and simultaneous," says Barclay. "The singing is all done live. He doesn't want to show you truncated versions of songs. He shows you the whole song, but keeps the drama going within it. It's one of the things I've tried to do with a show like Glee or Smash. You have the song, but why stop the story? Since this is a movie and not a play, it's very easy to do that." Connie performs next, and Altman cuts to her despondent rival Barbara Jean in her darkened hospital room, surrounded by flow- ers, listening to the Opry radiocast with her domineering husband- manager Barnett (Allen Garfield) as she worries aloud what people think of her. It's a "top five" scene for Barclay. "I'm convinced this is three cameras: the two-shot, one on her, and one on him," says Barclay. "There's this nice two-shot, and he's not going to go into coverage until he absolutely has to. He's not an feelings, and let it play in their eyes, as Lily Tomlin does here. I think he zoomed her into an Oscar nomination." Later in the film, when Linnea quietly succumbs to another call from Tom, and Altman slow-zooms once more, Barclay says, "What's really amazing is that Altman lets [Tomlin] look almost directly into the camera, breaking a cardinal rule in contemporary filmmaking, but it doesn't quite feel like she's looking at us. She's contemplating [an affair]." For the Grand Ole Opry sequence, in which a handful of songs are performed in their entirety, Barclay points out at least three cameras going, including one facing the stage and one behind the band show- ing the audience. During Gibson's second song, "Keep a-Goin'," Altman introduces Connie (Karen Black)—his last major character and this universe's biggest star—by showing her in the wings watch- ing Gibson but throwing plastic smiles to photographers she senses nearby. Then Altman pans from her to reveal Gibson onstage (his I can't think of a film that has had more of an influence on how I like to direct than this film, which is the idea that you should be the host of a party at which everyone excels.