| THE HANDSTAND | FEBRUARY-MARCH2010 |
Closed Zone
Friends
and the silent majority
please
watch the movie.
INTERESTING TO SEE AN ISRAELI, PRODUCING SUCH A
MOVIE ABOUT GAZA UNDER DOUBLE SEIGE
http://www.closedzone.com/
Closed Zone:This is a film done by Yoni
Goodman, an Israeli director. It is Worth Watching
less than 2 minutes
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The L.A. Times music blog
Hank Thompson: 'Crazy Heart's'
real-life Bad Blake
December 28, 2009
Jeff Bridges' star turn in "Crazy
Heart" as downtrodden country music legend Bad
Blake has been earning the veteran actor some of the most
glowing reviews of his career, from writers who have
invoked the names of many real-life musicians in their
assessments of Bridges' portrayal of the fictional Blake.
"Peering into that face, you'd swear it's Kris
Kristofferson," Mary Pols wrote in Time
magazine.
Rolling
Stone's Peter Travers suggested that "Bad is an
outlaw combo of Waylon Jennings and Merle
Haggard."
And in the
New York Times’ review, A.O. Scott noted that
during the film, "You hear songs by Townes van Zandt
and Waylon Jennings, and you may also think of Willie
Nelson and some others. As for Mr. Bridges: He can't
help it if he looks like Kris Kristofferson and sounds a
little like David Allan Coe."
Few, however, have zeroed in on the Country Music Hall
of Fame member who actually inspired the creation of Bad
Blake in Thomas Cobb's 1987 novel: Hank Thompson.
"I used to be a country music writer," Cobb
told me after flying out from his home in Rhode Island to
attend the film's star-studded premiere in Beverly Hills.
"This was in Houston, and I went to cover a show one
night -- it was an arena show with Conway Twitty, and
Hank Thompson opened for him."
Thompson was best known for his 1952 hit "The
Wild Side of Life," which topped the country chart
for 15 weeks, and had a remarkably long career, placing
records on the country charts in five decades, from 1948
to 1983. He toured tirelessly, upwards of 200 to 250
shows a year until shortly before he
died at age 82 in 2007.
For that early-'80s show with Twitty in Houston, Cobb
recalled, "He was backed that night by a local band
that I knew had been called that morning and asked 'Do
you want to back Hank Thompson tonight?' I thought, 'What
a horrible thing: that someone of Hank Thompson’s
stature was playing with a pickup band, and a band that
didn't even know they were backing him until that morning.
That was part of it."
At the time, Cobb was working on his doctorate in
creative writing, and wrote up the incident for one of
his classes. "I had to have a story ready the next
day for a workshop, when I put on a new John Anderson
record and heard the song 'Would You Catch a Falling Star'."
That
song, written by Bobby Braddock, certainly evokes the
character that Bridges plays onscreen:
He had a silver plated
bus and a million country fans
And now there's just a few of us, and he
drives a little van
And they were beating down his door, the
lovely women, left and right
And now he's on the hardwood floor, a-wonderin'
where he'll spend the night
Would you catch a fallin'
star before he crashes to the ground?
Don't you know how people are, nobody
loves you when you're down
Pick me up and take me home, and I'll
bring my old guitar
Sing a golden oldie song, if you'll
catch a fallin' star.
With that image swirling in his
mind, Cobb said, "I started thinking of Hank
Thompson, sat down and wrote what was essentially first
chapter of the book.
"I had interviewed Hank
Williams Jr., Hoyt Axton, Lacy J. Dalton and George
Strait, when he was first starting out," Cobb said.
"I spent fair amount of time on their buses -- when
they were parked, so I had a really good idea of what the
life was about. … It took me eight months to write,
writing about three pages a night. Nothing has ever come
that easily again. It was one of those little bits of
grace."
The book, however, wasn't a big hit,
and went out of print not long after it was published.
The movie rights had been optioned several times, though
nothing ever materialized. When screenwriter-director
Scott Cooper approached Cobb about four years ago to take
another shot at turning it into a movie, the author
didn’t think much about, much less that it would
quickly land two Golden Globe nominations and much talk
about possible Academy Award nods.
"It's been a miraculous little
film," Cobb said. "Scott’s fond of saying
that if it had taken one more year, he never would have
gotten it made. He got financing right before Lehman
Brothers [investment bank] crash. There's been all this
serendipity, these wonderful accidents, with this person
getting attached, then that person. I frankly after 22
years never really expected to see this film made"
--Randy Lewis
Top photo: Jeff Bridges as Bad
Blake in "Crazy Heart." Credit: Lorey Sebastian/Fox
Searchlight. Second photo: Country singer Hank Thompson.
Credit: File