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
If you respect the events and respect the real life tragedy, you can drive your film to address it in some mature way.
A fantasy film is often improved by some kind of human reality.
Movies aren't just supposed to be a representation of reality. They're supposed to be an art.
The boundary between real life and acting is hard to find.
For me, making a lot of dramas on one side it's a different sort of challenge, and on the other, it's not a challenge at all, meaning that my goal is to try and bring the realism and acting you might find in a straight drama with the intentions and conflict, where it doesn't feel tongue-in-cheek, but rather committed and real.
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.
People don't remember how good the music was (back then)... There's some real blood and guts in that music.
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.
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?
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!
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 didn't want to make a movie about what we already know.
The two of them have a lot in common, and I don't mean life story, ... I mean a kind of core energy.