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.
Similar in structure to Second Fiddle To A String Guitar, Road To Nashville (RTN) is a collection of musical performances tied together with a simple plot. Doodles Weaver playing a character named Feetlebaum (a nod to his character Professor Feetlebaum from his stint in The Spike Jones Band) is sent to Nashville to sign acts for a country music movie his boss is going to produce. Doodles' boss also tells him to add Colonel to his name, because he'll get more respect down South.
Connie Smith meets Doodles at the airport at the request of Marty Robbins (also the associate producer of the movie). Connie takes Doodles to the studio to meet Marty, who it seems is always too busy singing or driving his race car to stop long enough to sign a contract. In the meantime, Connie tours Doodles around the studio meeting other country acts. This of course, sets up the musical performances.
RTN has performances by The Stonemans, Waylon Jennings, Don Winters, Bobby Sykes, comedy act Quinine Gumstump and Buck, Kitty Wells, Johnny Wright, Bill Phillips, Faron Young, Lefty Frizzell, Connie Smith, Marty Robbins, Margie Singleton, Bill Anderson, Norma Jean, Dottie West, Webb Pierce, The Stonemans, Hank Snow, The Osbourne Brothers, Porter Wagoner, The Carter Family and Johnny Cash. Surprisingly, most of the performances in RTN appear to be sung live instead of lip synched. This makes me surmise that the movie actually used a real Nashville studio for filming.
There are two oddities in the movie: Instead of Doodles, Ralph Emery starts introducing acts in the last part of the movie. It doesn't appear Ralph's part was taped at the same time as some of the acts he introduces. Ralph, who was a top Nashville DJ, was probably added to get some free publicity for the movie when it was released, the same as the DJs in Jamboree. Speaking of no reason to be in the movie...Doodles' boss is talking to him on the phone and a secretary brings him coffee. All I could think was "somebody was promised a part in the movie". She even made the lobby card, as you can see in the bottom left picture in the photo above.
My only problem with the movie is the copy that I saw was in "pan and scan". While this wasn't a problem for the solo singers, it caused problems with the group acts. For example, when The Stonemans appear Pop is sitting in a chair to the side of the group and he is cut almost completely out of the picture due to the pan and scan (see video below).
As with any of these music based movies, you will have your own favorites when viewing. Everybody was good in RTN, but I particularly liked The Stonemans (especially Donna giving the mandolin a hell of a workout), Porter Wagoner with Norma Jean, seeing Waylon Jennings pre-outlaw, and a very gaunt Johnny Cash singing "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord"
I couldn't find a trailer for Road To Nashville, but below is a video of one of The Stonemans performance from the movie. There are some more videos of different artists from the movie, if interested just search the movie title on youtube.
