Walk The Line

I walked the line between two streams of thought during this film: number one; why do I have to sit here listening to Joaquin Phoenix instead of the Cash voice and two; Ray was better. Having said that, it's hard for me to not like a musical biopic, even though I'm not a particularly big fan of Johnny Cash or country music. Despite the choice of vocals, I liked this film, particularly its focus on the road shows Cash played with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins, all his contemporaries who were then signed with Sun Records in the early 50's.

Once Cash sung for Sam Phillips my interest in watching the Johnny Cash story diminished and my desire to watch the Sam Phillips biopic grew. While Taylor Hackford fleshed out a solid portrayal of Ahmet Ertegun in Ray, this film teased with a scene of Sam Phillips taking Cash from a flat, ordinary gospel singer to the true artist by telling him to look inside and find his true voice. This is when we hear Joaquin launch into such a poor rendition of Walk The Line we wonder why Phillips would have been interested, but then, he got to listen to Cash, no such luck for us.

Why should Cash license for a biopic when they would have clearly preferred the money from the makers of some hemorrhoid ointment, to whom they licensed Ring of Fire for a commercial a few years back? For God's sake, June wrote that about her burning love for Johnny. I mean really, have they no pride? They did give the rights to their music for this film and I can't understand why the performances weren't used. On the whole commentary track, Mangold offered no clue.

But back to Sam Philips, this is the guy who brought us B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison and Carl Perkins, in addition to Cash. When you think about what music was in Memphis, and throughout the south, in the early 50's... it was slow dirge gospel in a slow paced culture. We are talking upright basses here. These traveling road shows of souped up music and screaming teens jumping around in gymnasiums were quite a stretch. To this day, we've rarely seen a performer like Jerry Lee Lewis, the guy was truly out there and this film does point to an enormous change in the musical landscape that was happening in that time and place.

I think this was the true birthplace of rock and roll. Maybe Alan Freed coined the term and got radio more involved, maybe Dick Clark was the ultimate popularizer, once it got to TV, but Sun and Sam is the real seed change, as he tells these turned on white boys to tune in and then recorded them, set up shows and let them go. One night in '54 Elvis was recording the same old country tunes in basically the same way they'd been sung forever and got bored, so he picked up a guitar and started speeding up That's Alright Mama. This is when Sam heard what he'd been waiting for. He knew it when he heard it. He recorded it on his two Ampex 350s. And the rest is history. Music was forever changed from that point on. Rockabilly soon became rock and roll.

This film did help me understand the relationship between country and rock in a deeper, fuller way. I hadn't realized that Cash was country music's biggest seller, at least till Garth Brooks, and I didn't find it out from this film, which focused exclusively, unfortunately, on his early years. He is also one of only three artists to be included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Again, that fact, and his unique ability to crossover into so many types of music, was not included in the film or commentary.

The film did help me understand the man, the role of his brother, who died as a child (something he shares with Ray Charles, Elvis and Joaquin Phoenix) and the role that Johnny Cash played in musical history, at least early rock music history. There was too much time spent on the first marriage and the kids, who played no real historical role and didn't do much to help us understand the man, much less the music. His relationship with June and the love and admiration he felt for her was portrayed well and Reese was able to convey some of her strength and spunk.

Although this film has flaws it is certainly worth seeing on DVD. The commentary track adds lots of personal insight from Jim Mangold, who directed and co-wrote the script over a four year period as they tried to get a studio to back this film. With a $28M budget, which is extremely low for a musical with two bankable stars, who were attached, it took four years to get this film made. Ray had not yet come out, and even with the success of this film and Ray, which won many awards and was a hit, it is still incredibly tough to get a biopic financed in any major way.

The Janis Joplin biopic with Pink was shelved, as well as the Hendrix biopic with Andre 3000. These are two musicals that would have been fascinating, and it is truly sad that they fell apart. How can you go wrong with Pink and Andre? Pink does a medley of Joplin songs at her concerts that blew me (and everyone else) away and Andre is the closest we're ever going to get to a reincarnation of Jimi Hendrix, so let's not wait till the guy's 40, OK?.

So, go out and buy this DVD, because, as Mangold points out, that's what you have to do if you like films like this and want to see more, which I do. It's either this or more comic book and video game derivatives. These biopics are the closest we'll ever get to musicals again and it's our folklore, our musical culture and history. We look at the artists, their lives, but all the while they are looking back at us. Or, I guess I should say we are looking back at ourselves in the mirror, because we all idolized these people. We were their fans. When I see Jerry Garcia's biopic, there I'll be, right in the front row. We watched these artists perform their music, listened to their records and now we watch their lives play out as they change the world around them.