SPOILER TAGS, people! 
j/k
Anyhoo, I haven’t felt all fired up to see it after sitting through Ray. Ray wasn’t bad but formula’s formula.
I was totally shocked when I saw a clip on tv and they had Phoenix singing! That’s like having the Sistine Chapel painted with originals by Charlton Heston, rather than Michelangelo (Great news, art enthusiasts! It’s not Heston copying Michelangelo’s work! He’s actually doing the painting himself!) I would never have dreamed in a million years that somebody else would dare to have a non-Cash soundtrack. Cash’s voice was totally unique; take any other great singer, even better than Cash and somebody somewhere can imitate it pretty easily and faithfully, but not him. Cash’s voice IS the Johnny Cash story. So, let’s get this low rent singer to use his own voice? Give handsomeharry a break!
hh
I thought Phoenix did a better Cash than Witherspoon did Carter. Witherspoon was good, but didn’t sound like June Carter.
Yeah I think probably they should have actually used Cash’s singing voice. IIRC during the credits they played an authentic Johnny and June song.
I do know that Johnny Cash was not living with either his wife or June Carter in 1966. (We lived in the same apartment bulding.) I don’t know when his divorce was final, but I don’t think that he had been living with his wife for quite a while before he actually married June Carter.
He was way, way, down in 1966.
Did the movie give the impression that he wrote I Walk the Line especially for June?
(I apologize for not having seen the movie and asking all the questions. It is next on my Netflix list.)
Johnny’s real life may have seemed like a cliche to many of you, but he was one of the original bad boys of the generation before the Boomers. And June Carter really did give him a reason to pull out of it. I don’t know anything about her marital situation before Johnny.
I do know that I, too, have been divorced and remarried.
Did the movie address his early life? His lack of a name? His brother’s death?
Did it reveal his philanthropic nature? (That was one of the things he was best known for in Nashville.)
I know I’m sounding defensive without seeing the movie. The film may be awful. Generally I don’t like country music. But Johnny Cash’s life – however familiar it may seem now – was not a cliche. If it seems that way from reducing it to a two hour movie, that’s a shame.
I am reminded of youngsters who go to see The Godfather for the first time or read Shakespeare and are horrified at all the cliches.
I know. Gotta see the movie…
I love Johnny Cash, but I thought the movie was not very good.
What I liked about the film was that it showed the “wild side” of rich and famous 20 somethings. It was the fifties, but the drugs, alcohol, angst and hell raising was very evident.
Reese Witherspoon was much too pretty for June Carter Cash. If Alanis Morrisette could don a Virginny accent, it would of been better. The evil cyborg from Terminator 2 played the father! I heard that guy went crazy on coke after T2, but there he was.
Phoenix’s Cash seemed to me to be weird, distant, quiet and almost timid. He did a good job playing someone stoned and out of control, probably from watching his late brother River. I have a video of Cash playing Folsom, and the real Cash was outgoing, wild, funny and gregarious. Unless the public Cash was different than the private one, I just don’t buy the movie for accuracy.
I liked it, and I bought the soundtrack, but in my defense I bought a Cash album first and loved it. I think Phoenix makes a not bad Johnny, but Witherspoon, while okay, doesn’t sound at all like Carter (as has been said). I bought the soundtrack because of the songs’ different arrangements, not because I thought the actors were better singers. It also contains covers of other artists as well, so it’s not all Cash & Carter covers.
It was formulaic, however, and I hear that it followed Ray’s storyline pretty much exactly (I haven’t seen Ray).
Yep you gotta see the movie, specially if you used to live in the same building as him.
The movie addressed some of his early life. I don’t remember anything about his name, but it showed his brother’s death, and the movie portrayed his father as being cruel to Johnny.
Don’t remember anything philanthropic.