And here we all thought we were just waiting to see “Avatar” and “The Lovely Bones” and “Nine” and “Invictus.”
Only days ago, Fox Searchlight was planning to release “Crazy Heart” in 2010. On Tuesday, they sent out a few invites; on Wednesday, they screened it a couple of times. On Thursday, they announced a new release date: December 16.
So now it’s time to join with just about everybody else at those Wednesday screenings, and start lobbying for a couple of guys who ought to be in the thick of the Oscar race.
In director Scott Cooper’s film, Jeff Bridges plays an aging country singer who’s had big hits, but not for years. He’s living on his reputation, on bottles of booze, on the kindness of strangers. He meets a reporter with a young son. Romance, and complications, ensue.
It is a simple story, and one that runs into a few problems in the telling. But that’s not the point of this gentle little movie. It is, after all, a character study – and in an alcoholic country singer named Bad Blake, we’ve got one hell of a character. More to the point, in Jeff Bridges we’ve got one hell of an actor.
Bad Blake is fiction, from a 1987 Thomas Cobb novel that’s grimmer than the movie. But in Bridges’ hands, Blake is indelibly real. I spent a great number of years writing about music, riding on tour buses, interviewing musicians in fancy hotels and cheap dives. And there is not a single false note in Bridges’ performance.
The guy I saw onscreen is a guy I know. Maybe not under the name of Bad Blake, but under many other names, and in many other guises.
I’ve sat in his living room and watched him strut down the hallway reeking of cologne because he thought a female reporter was coming to interview him. I’ve squirmed through a subsequent conversation that found him constantly yelling at his wife to fetch his bottle of Crown Royal, which she eventually found in the glove compartment of 10-year-old Caddy.
I’ve sat in the back of a car, on the road between Branson, Missouri and an autograph session at a giant fishing supply store, watching him gulp pain pills and complain that record companies and radio stations were no longer interested in what he had to offer.
I’ve ridden through the night between gigs and watched him stab at the dial on the radio and CD player, never letting a song play all the way through because he couldn’t find anything (including his own music) that sounded true enough to stick with.
I’ve spent three days on the road waiting for him to sober up long enough to do an interview, and then gone home empty-handed because he never did.
In “Crazy Heart,” Bad Blake doesn’t do any of those things. But there’s elements of all the guys who did in the character Bridges creates, along with a little bit of Waylon and some Hank Jr.
