I've only seen a couple of biopics in which the lead actor was so able to meld their own personality with the subject they were portraying, they made it hard for me to see where one person ended and the other began. This was the case with Sissy Spacek in Coal Miner's Daughter, Gary Busey in The Buddy Holly Story, and adding to the list is Joaquin Phoenix in Walk The Line.
Walk The Line starts with Johnny Cash (Joaquin Phoenix) preparing to go on stage at Folsom Prison. When Johnny sees a table saw, it reminds him of the death of his older brother Jack and the movie flashes back to that traumatic event in 1944. The film then moves Johnny into adulthood with his service in the Air Force, where at an on-base showing of a documentary about Folsom Prison, Johnny gets the idea for one of his most famous songs, "Folsom Prison Blues".
Johnny returns to the United States, gets married, and has a very unsuccessful career as a door to door salesman. He forms a gospel band on the side, and when they finally get a chance to record at Sun Studios, things are a bust when they sing Sam Phillips a gospel song. Johnny mentions that he has a song he wrote and when he plays it for Phillips....as the old saying goes "it's history in the making".
During his early years we see Johnny on tour with Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, and even the king himself, Elvis Presley. [A side note: Waylon Payne plays Jerry Lee in this film, the last time I saw Waylon Payne he was playing Hank Garland in Crazy....I kept thinking I was watching Waylon Payne playing Hank Garland playing Jerry Lee Lewis]. On one of these tours, Johnny's path crosses with June Carter's (Reese Witherspoon) and he is smitten from the start. Too bad for Johnny, because June won't have anything to do with a married man. Also, on these tours we see Johnny getting hooked on pills, explaining why he always wears black (Johnny: "Couldn't Find Anything Else") and where he came up with his sound (Johnny: "We'd play faster if we could"). Walk The Line continues showing us parts of Johnny Cash's life back up to his performance at Folsom Prison.
Other musicians of note in Walk The Line: Shooter Jennings has a couple of brief appearances playing his own dad, Waylon Jennings. Sandra Ellis Lafferty, as Mother Maybelle Carter, has a great scene when the family is trying to get Johnny off drugs and she chases a drug dealer away with a shotgun. Shelby Lynne plays a very convincing role as Johnny's mother in the early part of the movie.
One final small thing to look for in Walk the Line, right before Johnny decides to play Folsom and record a live album there (even though the record company didn't think it was a good idea) he's looking through a box of prisoners' letters. If you look closely, one of them is from Folsom prisoner Glen Sherley. This is the man who wrote Johnny's song "Greystone Chapel" about the chapel at Folsom Prison.
Even though he grew up in Cowpens, SC (not too far from where I grew up) I knew nothing about Hank Garland before seeing Crazy. The movie stars Waylon Payne (godson of Waylon Jennings, son of Jody Payne (Willie Nelson's long time guitar player) and Sammi Smith). Waylon Payne has released one cd, "The Drifter", and previously played Jerry Lee Lewis in "Walk The Line". Waylon has enough pedigree, as just about anyone you could find, to play a country music performer.
I'm going to try to touch on all the musicians included in the movie, and since there are so many this review will be pretty much cut-and-dried. The characters and events in my review are as shown in the movie. They may or may not be accurate, I can only report them as shown to me. Now on to the movie.
Crazy opens in 1945 with Hank's first appearance on the Grand Ole Opry where he gets some advice from another Hank...Williams (Steve Vai, who is also the producer of Crazy). The movie then skips ahead 10 years where we find Hank has become a professional guitar session man and a member of Cowboy Copas' band along with Billy Byrd (Garland and Byrd helped develop the Byrdland Guitar for Gibson Guitars). Crazy shows Garland doing session work with Patsy Cline (Mandy Barnett), Roy Orbison, Chet Atkins, Conway Twitty, Bobby Helms (recording "Jingle Bell Rock" which Helms and Garland sued over, claiming they were cheated out of writing royalties because they were under contract as artists and not writers) and most famous of all, Elvis Presley, with whom Garland had a long association.
While on tour with Copas, Garland happens upon a bar where Wes Montgomery (Tony MacAlpine) is playing. Montgomery's playing captivates Garland and influences him toward a more jazzy style. Later in Crazy, Hank forms his own jazz band, which included bass player Joe Benjamin (Ryan Cross), to play in local Nashville clubs. Garland would eventually record his own jazz album (Garland claimed it was the first jazz album ever recorded in Nashville) "Jazz Winds from a New Direction". In Chicago, Garland also meets a woman named Evelyn, who became the love of his life. At their wedding Kitty Wells (Shawn Colvin) sings "Tennessee Waltz" and "I Can't Stop Loving You". To further his career, Hank leaves Copas' band to join Eddy Arnold which allowed him to make more money for his family. On the Eddy Arnold TV show we see Hank playing his million-selling hit "Sugarfoot Rag".
Crazy did a good job of fitting most of a lifetime into 106 minutes.....until the last 15 minutes or so, when it tried to squeeze the remaining years of Garland's life into too short of a space. Crazy would have been so much better IF it had just ended after the debilitating car wreck that ended Garland's career. As it is, I still highly recommend the movie for anyone wanting to see a story about a music legend a lot of people, including myself, are probably not familiar with.
