James Mangold may walk the line but he is sure as shit doesnt toe the line. He made sure of that when he made the movie, Walk the Line, which dramatizes the most important period in Johnny Cashs life. When he was stuck in an unhappy marriage and couldnt be with June Carter who he truly loved. Cash is played by Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon plays June Carter. Mangold obviously found parallels in Cashs life because he is married to his producing partner Cathy Konrad just as Cash was married to his music partner June.
Check out the official site for Walk the Line
Daniel Robert Epstein: Its a pleasure to talk to you again. I spoke to you when you were doing your rounds for the Identity website.
James Mangold: I remember. I was really high on that Internet site. Weve actually got to get something going on for this movie. Theyve got nothing much going on right now.
DRE: I dont think it will lend itself to being as interesting.
JM: What do you mean? Were going to create a land of Johnny Cash and you going to open all these doors and you find lyrics to his songs and pieces of his life.
DRE: Are you serious?
JM: Im kidding. Im kidding. Its going to be more of a standard thing.
DRE: Johnny Cash helped you out with this movie before he passed. What was it like having him around?
JM: First of all he was a great person. Then on the level of helping things out, when it seemed like this movie wouldnt even happen I felt like my life was so much richer just from having known him. It was the unusual experience of having a guy who is already so beloved and is such an icon but yet youre telling this true story of a period in his life when he did something that hes not proud of. I encouraged him to come clean on this stuff and be honest about what was dark in his life as well as what was light. Thats the way he is in his own work and it would be a crime not to be that way in his own life. I think he agreed. He certainly never shied away from darkness or the shadows in his own songwriting.
DRE: Besides Johnny being an amazing musician, what resonated with you about his life?
JM: Several things. One it just seemed like a real movie story. I dont even think that our movie is a standard biopic in the sense that it isnt birth to death. Most movies that are biopics are literally an illustrated version of a biography which our movie is not. Its very much a very specific moment. The more I learned about Johnny through my love of his music, the more it dawned on me that in the 50s and 60s there was this very real nexus of about three things. One was the ascendance of rock and roll and how these young musicians completely turned the world of pop music on its head. It wasnt that their musicianship was so high, its that their exuberance, passion and their energy was so high that their music out passioned and out-edged anything that was going on in the world of music. At the same time, they were the first rock stars in existence and in a way the first young people that got in trouble with substances as part of that career. Its an incredible trajectory. That was the time when medical science thought you could prescribe a drug for anything including being on a tour where you never slept. Thats how people like Elvis, Marilyn and a whole generation of performers got in trouble with prescription drugs. Third was the fact that Johnnys career, his artistic development and his spiral of self destruction with drugs would intertwine with what was a very powerful love story in which a man falls in love with a woman hes been listening to on the radio since he was four years old. But since they were married to other people they couldnt be together. The only time they could be alone together was on stage in front of 5000 people. So that love story with all its unique intricacies and that romantic component made it not just a biopic but a movie.
Also the fourth reason would be is that I think Johns songs were so much more autobiographical than anyone knew. So many of the songs about prisoners and internment and incarceration and guilt and shame were so much a product of both his feelings about his brother and his dad and also his feelings of guilt about being in love with June and married to someone else. It almost makes the movie a musical as opposed to a movie about a musician because so many of the songs are about him really getting out his feelings about his internal life.
DRE: I loved that scene where Sam Phillips recognized the talent in Johnny but just didnt like the songs he was singing.
JM: Johnny was singing cover songs. Johnny was singing songs he hadnt written because he had never really believed in the songs that he had written himself until that moment when he auditioned. Sam Phillips was a genius. In his studio, which by the way is exactly the size to the inch of the actual room it all took place in Memphis, called Sun Studios was the birthplace of the careers of Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters. This one guy with a shitty little recorder in a room the size of a walk-in closet, changed rock and roll history and its not because he got lucky. He had an incredible eye and an incredible attitude about what young people really wanted to hear. Sam Phillips was a real maverick who changed the music we were hearing forever.
DRE: Even though Identity was something that you were obviously very interested in, was there any kind of plan like if I could make a movie thats a mainstream hit I can get something like Walk the Line made?
JM: No, because it just doesnt work that way. Identity was very successful but all that would do is make someone happy to make another Identity with me. But I just dont think of it that way. I really loved the script for Identity and I just wanted to make the movie because I knew that Johnny Cash wasnt going to happen right away simply because we were having problems getting a studio to make it. It had nothing to do with me proving I could make a movie well, it just had to do with that studios dont make these movies very much anymore. The easiest way to think about it is that studios dont like making movies that will only make money if theyre good.
DRE: [laughs] Thats hysterical.
JM: Its true. They like making movies as if they are a business model. They dont want to have to depend upon inspired work in order to make money. Movies that dont have to be a good film in order to fill a theater are better from a purely financial point of view. Thats obviously a smarter investment than depending on people being geniuses. So studios tend to make movies that dont require anyone to have a creative breakthrough to be possible.
DRE: How did you come to cast Joaquin as Johnny Cash?
JM: Cathy Konrad, the producer of Walk the Line, threw down a picture of him and said What about Joaquin? Just a few weeks later we sent him my script and two days later he called and said, What do I have to do to be in this movie? I said, Buy a guitar.
DRE: It doesnt seem like you guys put too much makeup on him to turn him into Johnny.
JM: No, he looks a lot like a young Johnny Cash to me. The only place wed have ever put makeup on him was if we were doing the older years. But we never broke 37 years old in the movie. One of the clichs of biopics is actors with all that glued on shit on their faces looking like old people and clutching their backs and all that shit.
DRE: In Ray they had Ray Charles do all the singing. Why did you choose to have Reese and Joaquin do their own music?
JM: I cant speak about Ray, I dont know about their process. But Johnny Cash is one of the great storytellers of all time and so is June Carter, meaning their relationship with the audience was probably a little different than people like Ray Charles. It wasnt about the sonic perfection of their voices. It was about their human connection with the audience. They could stop the song in the middle and tell you a story. They could laugh in the middle of their song. There was a million ways that Johnny and June made you feel like you were at home with them. The idea of turning Joaquin and Reese into Natalie Wood in West Side Story by pressing play on a tape recorder and having someone elses voice come out of their mouth would have contradicted everything Johnny stood for. As Johnny would attest to, he would easily scrap a record he had made where he hit every note perfectly if he thought there was a take where he hit the emotions perfectly even if he was off pitch. So his entire aesthetic was not about being perfect as a musician, it was about being connected. As a director, I felt that my best connectors are my actors. So to deny them the ability to do that with an audience seems to me that I would be denying them something. Also I really felt there was something they gained from them becoming musicians that would affect the way they performed in other scenes where they werent singing. If youre an actor and every time a musical moment is happening someone takes your voice away from you and plays a record it seems to me that youre robbing the actor of a kind of confidence they need to really fully become this person.
DRE: I read that James Keach was a producer of the film because he was friends with Johnny. How did that happen?
JM: James was friends with Johnny through the TV show that his wife Jane Seymour did, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Johnny and June were guest stars on a couple of times. Back in 1996, James wanted to direct a movie about Johnny. Then around 1999, James decided that he might not get it made as a director and he met with Cathy and myself and I got a shot to work on the script and to try and get it in a position where I thought we could get it made. Then Cathy Konrad set up the film through her deal at Sony.
Also James was an important ambassador for us because he introduced us to Johnny and June. Then over the next five years until their deaths Cathy and I got to do extensive interviews with Johnny and June.
DRE: Because you and Cathy are married and work together in the same business, does it in any way parallel what June and Johnny had?
JM: In many ways. There were many times that Cathy and I would be doing interviews with Johnny and June together and we would feel really inspired. There are so many dark stories about marriages in the world of show business so there was something truly inspiring about Johnny and June in the sense that they were both creative professionals and both really good at what they did and deeply respectful of each other to the day they died. That meant a lot to both of us because theres a wonderful energy when you work side by side with your love in your business. Theres a wonderful energy in the sense that theres no one you trust more in your life. But theres this other aspect where youre going to fight, youre going to bump and there will be moments that one of you is going to be upset by the creative choice of the other. However all of that is very exciting as well and it was something I recognized having lived it myself that was a big part of Johnny and Junes life. They were an incredibly romantic and wonderful couple, but that doesnt mean they never had cross words and that doesnt mean as two very powerful artists they never butted heads with each other. They did and that was part of the wonder of their marriage. Part of their romance was that June was truly unafraid of Johnny and she was willing to demand the man that she expected from him as opposed to the man that others accepted from him.
DRE: Whats 3:10 to Yuma?
JM: Thats the movie that Ive been working on with [Collateral screenwriter] Stuart Beattie. Its a remake of a really great western from the 50s based on a short story by Elmore Leonard.
DRE: How far along in that are you?
JM: Im hoping actually we can make it next year.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official site for Walk the Line
Daniel Robert Epstein: Its a pleasure to talk to you again. I spoke to you when you were doing your rounds for the Identity website.
James Mangold: I remember. I was really high on that Internet site. Weve actually got to get something going on for this movie. Theyve got nothing much going on right now.
DRE: I dont think it will lend itself to being as interesting.
JM: What do you mean? Were going to create a land of Johnny Cash and you going to open all these doors and you find lyrics to his songs and pieces of his life.
DRE: Are you serious?
JM: Im kidding. Im kidding. Its going to be more of a standard thing.
DRE: Johnny Cash helped you out with this movie before he passed. What was it like having him around?
JM: First of all he was a great person. Then on the level of helping things out, when it seemed like this movie wouldnt even happen I felt like my life was so much richer just from having known him. It was the unusual experience of having a guy who is already so beloved and is such an icon but yet youre telling this true story of a period in his life when he did something that hes not proud of. I encouraged him to come clean on this stuff and be honest about what was dark in his life as well as what was light. Thats the way he is in his own work and it would be a crime not to be that way in his own life. I think he agreed. He certainly never shied away from darkness or the shadows in his own songwriting.
DRE: Besides Johnny being an amazing musician, what resonated with you about his life?
JM: Several things. One it just seemed like a real movie story. I dont even think that our movie is a standard biopic in the sense that it isnt birth to death. Most movies that are biopics are literally an illustrated version of a biography which our movie is not. Its very much a very specific moment. The more I learned about Johnny through my love of his music, the more it dawned on me that in the 50s and 60s there was this very real nexus of about three things. One was the ascendance of rock and roll and how these young musicians completely turned the world of pop music on its head. It wasnt that their musicianship was so high, its that their exuberance, passion and their energy was so high that their music out passioned and out-edged anything that was going on in the world of music. At the same time, they were the first rock stars in existence and in a way the first young people that got in trouble with substances as part of that career. Its an incredible trajectory. That was the time when medical science thought you could prescribe a drug for anything including being on a tour where you never slept. Thats how people like Elvis, Marilyn and a whole generation of performers got in trouble with prescription drugs. Third was the fact that Johnnys career, his artistic development and his spiral of self destruction with drugs would intertwine with what was a very powerful love story in which a man falls in love with a woman hes been listening to on the radio since he was four years old. But since they were married to other people they couldnt be together. The only time they could be alone together was on stage in front of 5000 people. So that love story with all its unique intricacies and that romantic component made it not just a biopic but a movie.
Also the fourth reason would be is that I think Johns songs were so much more autobiographical than anyone knew. So many of the songs about prisoners and internment and incarceration and guilt and shame were so much a product of both his feelings about his brother and his dad and also his feelings of guilt about being in love with June and married to someone else. It almost makes the movie a musical as opposed to a movie about a musician because so many of the songs are about him really getting out his feelings about his internal life.
DRE: I loved that scene where Sam Phillips recognized the talent in Johnny but just didnt like the songs he was singing.
JM: Johnny was singing cover songs. Johnny was singing songs he hadnt written because he had never really believed in the songs that he had written himself until that moment when he auditioned. Sam Phillips was a genius. In his studio, which by the way is exactly the size to the inch of the actual room it all took place in Memphis, called Sun Studios was the birthplace of the careers of Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Muddy Waters. This one guy with a shitty little recorder in a room the size of a walk-in closet, changed rock and roll history and its not because he got lucky. He had an incredible eye and an incredible attitude about what young people really wanted to hear. Sam Phillips was a real maverick who changed the music we were hearing forever.
DRE: Even though Identity was something that you were obviously very interested in, was there any kind of plan like if I could make a movie thats a mainstream hit I can get something like Walk the Line made?
JM: No, because it just doesnt work that way. Identity was very successful but all that would do is make someone happy to make another Identity with me. But I just dont think of it that way. I really loved the script for Identity and I just wanted to make the movie because I knew that Johnny Cash wasnt going to happen right away simply because we were having problems getting a studio to make it. It had nothing to do with me proving I could make a movie well, it just had to do with that studios dont make these movies very much anymore. The easiest way to think about it is that studios dont like making movies that will only make money if theyre good.
DRE: [laughs] Thats hysterical.
JM: Its true. They like making movies as if they are a business model. They dont want to have to depend upon inspired work in order to make money. Movies that dont have to be a good film in order to fill a theater are better from a purely financial point of view. Thats obviously a smarter investment than depending on people being geniuses. So studios tend to make movies that dont require anyone to have a creative breakthrough to be possible.
DRE: How did you come to cast Joaquin as Johnny Cash?
JM: Cathy Konrad, the producer of Walk the Line, threw down a picture of him and said What about Joaquin? Just a few weeks later we sent him my script and two days later he called and said, What do I have to do to be in this movie? I said, Buy a guitar.
DRE: It doesnt seem like you guys put too much makeup on him to turn him into Johnny.
JM: No, he looks a lot like a young Johnny Cash to me. The only place wed have ever put makeup on him was if we were doing the older years. But we never broke 37 years old in the movie. One of the clichs of biopics is actors with all that glued on shit on their faces looking like old people and clutching their backs and all that shit.
DRE: In Ray they had Ray Charles do all the singing. Why did you choose to have Reese and Joaquin do their own music?
JM: I cant speak about Ray, I dont know about their process. But Johnny Cash is one of the great storytellers of all time and so is June Carter, meaning their relationship with the audience was probably a little different than people like Ray Charles. It wasnt about the sonic perfection of their voices. It was about their human connection with the audience. They could stop the song in the middle and tell you a story. They could laugh in the middle of their song. There was a million ways that Johnny and June made you feel like you were at home with them. The idea of turning Joaquin and Reese into Natalie Wood in West Side Story by pressing play on a tape recorder and having someone elses voice come out of their mouth would have contradicted everything Johnny stood for. As Johnny would attest to, he would easily scrap a record he had made where he hit every note perfectly if he thought there was a take where he hit the emotions perfectly even if he was off pitch. So his entire aesthetic was not about being perfect as a musician, it was about being connected. As a director, I felt that my best connectors are my actors. So to deny them the ability to do that with an audience seems to me that I would be denying them something. Also I really felt there was something they gained from them becoming musicians that would affect the way they performed in other scenes where they werent singing. If youre an actor and every time a musical moment is happening someone takes your voice away from you and plays a record it seems to me that youre robbing the actor of a kind of confidence they need to really fully become this person.
DRE: I read that James Keach was a producer of the film because he was friends with Johnny. How did that happen?
JM: James was friends with Johnny through the TV show that his wife Jane Seymour did, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. Johnny and June were guest stars on a couple of times. Back in 1996, James wanted to direct a movie about Johnny. Then around 1999, James decided that he might not get it made as a director and he met with Cathy and myself and I got a shot to work on the script and to try and get it in a position where I thought we could get it made. Then Cathy Konrad set up the film through her deal at Sony.
Also James was an important ambassador for us because he introduced us to Johnny and June. Then over the next five years until their deaths Cathy and I got to do extensive interviews with Johnny and June.
DRE: Because you and Cathy are married and work together in the same business, does it in any way parallel what June and Johnny had?
JM: In many ways. There were many times that Cathy and I would be doing interviews with Johnny and June together and we would feel really inspired. There are so many dark stories about marriages in the world of show business so there was something truly inspiring about Johnny and June in the sense that they were both creative professionals and both really good at what they did and deeply respectful of each other to the day they died. That meant a lot to both of us because theres a wonderful energy when you work side by side with your love in your business. Theres a wonderful energy in the sense that theres no one you trust more in your life. But theres this other aspect where youre going to fight, youre going to bump and there will be moments that one of you is going to be upset by the creative choice of the other. However all of that is very exciting as well and it was something I recognized having lived it myself that was a big part of Johnny and Junes life. They were an incredibly romantic and wonderful couple, but that doesnt mean they never had cross words and that doesnt mean as two very powerful artists they never butted heads with each other. They did and that was part of the wonder of their marriage. Part of their romance was that June was truly unafraid of Johnny and she was willing to demand the man that she expected from him as opposed to the man that others accepted from him.
DRE: Whats 3:10 to Yuma?
JM: Thats the movie that Ive been working on with [Collateral screenwriter] Stuart Beattie. Its a remake of a really great western from the 50s based on a short story by Elmore Leonard.
DRE: How far along in that are you?
JM: Im hoping actually we can make it next year.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
Missy said:
I am so excited to see this movie.
xoxo
-missy
Word! I won tix with Indie103 to go to the private screening and party this Thursday in Silverlake! Woohooo!!