YOUR CHEATIN' HEART

If you're looking for a movie that's an accurate portrayal of  Hank Williams life, be forewarned, Your Cheatin' Heart is NOT the movie for you. This film takes some of the basic facts of Hank's life, adds in some events of its own, and then dramatizes a story around those facts and events.  Hank's wife Audrey was the technical adviser for the film, which of course, makes the film somewhat slanted to present her in a good light.

The Hank Williams songs in the movie are done by Hank Williams, Jr. (who was only 15 at the time) and George Hamilton lip synches them. Hamilton does a good enough job with the lip synching that it doesn't distract from the film. 

Just like when Richard Thomas played Hank Jr. in Living Proof,  George Hamilton seemed an odd choice to portray Hank Williams, but Hamilton really does a credible job in making you believe he's Hank Sr. A few years later, he would also do another great acting job in portraying the title character in another biopic, Evel Knievel. As stated above, Your Cheatin' Heart is more of a dramatic film with a few true facts about Hank Williams' life mixed into the storyline. It's still a pretty good movie, and as long as you view it with that fact in mind, you should enjoy this film, I know I did.

CRAZY - The Hank Garland Story

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.

ROADIE

While Meatloaf and his best friend Gailard Sartain are delivering Shiner Beer, they find an RV that has broken down. Meatloaf is good at fixing anything, so he repairs the RV and agrees to drive it to its destination, which happens to be Hank Williams Jr's gig at a honky tonk. This leads to Meatloaf becoming a roadie for Mohammed Johnson's (Don Cornelius) Rock and Roll Circus Tour. Part of the reason Meatloaf goes for the job is to be with Kaki Hunter, who is saving her virginity to become an Alice Cooper groupie. That's pretty much the plot of Roadie.

Roadie was made in 1980, when you could have a cast as diverse as Art Carney playing Meat's dad, Gailard Sartain playing his best friend, Alice Cooper and Deborah Harry playing themselves, Blondie fighting a group of midgets from a band known as Snow White and Don Cornelius playing a rock promoter and somehow having all of this work to make a very enjoyable movie. You're not going to have many laugh out loud moments while watching Roadie, but most of the time the movie should keep a smile on your face.

For some reason the dvd box cover has absolutely nothing to do with the movie, I guess some marketing genius thought that it would really make the movie sell. Must not have worked, since I got my copy at Big Lots for $3.00 and I see Amazon sells it for $3.98.

Some of my favorite things in Roadie were Roy Orbison giving his growl from "Pretty Woman" in a bar when (duh!) a pretty woman walks by; Roy and Hank Jr doing a duet; Blondie doing "Ring of Fire"; cameos by Merle Kilgore and Ramblin Jack Elliott (don't blink or you'll miss him) ; and musical performances by Alice Cooper, Asleep At The Wheel and Alvin Crow and The Pleasant Valley Boys.

There's a couple of lines in the movie that stayed stuck in my brain long after I had watched Roadie. One was Meatloaf working on equipment and telling someone "Get me 2 beers and a hubcap...I need a Ford" and when Meat tells Kiki he doesn't know who Alice Cooper is , she replys "Don't you read T-shirts?"