Alan Rudolph always makes interesting films and this little-seen mid-80s effort is no exception. The plot involves a singer/songwriter who discovers that the record company who initially signed him up have screwed him over with a disadvantageous ironclad contract that he is unable to break. Not one to give up though, the music legend attempts to release his own songs using a female singer as a front, but will the record company eventually catch on? While this might sound very slim as far as plot lines go, 'Songwriter' is a film more about its characters than any story, with lots of memorable dialogue as lead actor Willie Nelson interacts with various associates who band together to help him out of the jam. "Everybody has to kill their own snakes," he philosophises at one point and a poolside treatment that one such associate gets from sleeping around leads to possibly the film's most memorable scene. The film takes a while to warm up though, and catchy as Kris Kristofferson's songs for the film may well be, the song performance scenes are never as interesting as the character drama, but generally speaking, this is a worthwhile experience. There is a lot of fun to be had in Nelson using the tricks of the trade that he has acquired over the years to get back at the record company and Lesley Ann Warren's internal dilemmas resonate as the young female singer fronting for Nelson. The title for the movie is really quite astute in this regard; it could apply equally to her and Nelson as the actual and fake songwriters of the film respectively.
