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Released
1984 · FILM

Songwriter

A washed-up country music songwriter struggles to reclaim his creative voice while navigating the cutthroat Nashville music scene, where fame and authenticity are at war.

“He got mad when they took his money and his business. But when they tried to take his songs... Nobody ever had a better time getting even.”

Directed by
Alan Rudolph
Written by
Bud Shrake
Runtime
94 min
DramaMusic
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

Doc Jenkins may be one of country music

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 22

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Stephen LovejoyShot by Matthew F LeonettiScored by Larry CanslerDesigned by Joel Schiller

Box Office

1984 · Box office

📉 Underperformed — grossed 0.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$866K

Budget$8.6M
Worldwide gross$866K
break-even (2.5×)

Opening weekend: $497K — 57% of its US run. Front-loaded — most of its money arrived opening weekend.

Opening week (7-day): $671K — 78% of its US & Canada run.

Peak 499 theaters

Also known as

  • Der Songschreiberde

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