James Mangold
James Mangold
James Mangoldis an American film and television director, screenwriter and producer. Films he has directed include Walk the Line, which he also co-wrote, The Wolverine, Cop Land, Girl, Interrupted, Knight and Day, and the 2007 remake 3:10 to Yuma. He also produced and directed pilots for the television series Men in TreesNYC 22and Vegas...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionDirector
Date of Birth16 December 1963
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
It was unbelievably hard to get this done, ... Over the years, Johnny understood. He was patient beyond belief. I'd tell him that people are frightened of musical films, but even more so they're frightened of movies that require the talent to be successful in order for the film to be successful. It's much easier to make a comic book.
Everybody had an idea about Joaquin and kind of his relationship, his darkness and the things he had done playing more cynical or dark roles, ... But this charisma when he gets behind the mike, the joy in him, the unmitigated joy you see in his face when he's watching Reese, and the love. These are things I feel we haven't seen before in his many roles.
I didn't want to make a movie about what we already know.
I think one of the most courageous things about Joaquin in that scene is that he sounds not perfect, not at all. He's not brilliant from the get-go, but he's got so much room to grow. And we grow Johnny Cash in the movie - until, by the end, he's awesome!
That's the mythic album where you see his face, sweaty, looking dangerous, and he's there singing to murderers and robbers and sharing a good time with them. As a kid, how could you not be interested?
John was not just a singer, but a songwriter, ... He was always riding this river of shadows in his writing. He was singing about a kind of pain everyone lives through.
June and John are the last generation who can sing about these things first hand, ... The fact is, these people grew up in a field and they were singing about what they saw.
I saw those songs they sang together as love scenes.
He was much more concerned about protecting others than himself. The thing he would always say to me was, 'I don't care if I look bad. Just don't make other, innocent people look bad, because they were my mistakes.'
John always said whoever played him, 'make sure they hold the guitar like they own it, that they don't hold it like it's a baby,'
When I was making 'Cop Land' in 1996, people were asking what my next movie was, ... Without thinking, I said, 'I want to make a movie about Johnny Cash.'Ã
I remember being real concerned about the music and singing -- that's something we were both concerned about -- and Jim said if people want to hear Johnny Cash, they can get a Johnny Cash record, he's made a few.
I had the advantage of making a movie about a man who was an artist himself, and an artist of the shadows, in the sense that he understood life's lonelinesses and life's mistakes, and that people make them. In that sense, he wasn't interested in hiding them.
Can't you just hire someone who sounds good?