
An entertaining look at the life of Johnny Cash, with great acting by Joaquin Phoenix as Cash and Reese Witherspoon as June Carter. The down side is that the film focuses much more on Cash’s drug addiction and relationship with June than it does on him, and you come away with the impression that he was a bit feeble minded (he wasn’t) and that his success was all about her (it wasn’t). Both lead sang their own songs. Witherspoon sounded great, too great for the sometimes off-key Carter — Phoenix sounded okay when he had lots of reverb and a backing band, but he’s no Cash and he sounded LAUGHABLE in his big audition scene. The costumes were great, spanning the 1950s and 1960s, with lots of circle skirts and bouffant hairdos.
I’ve heard some wild stories about Cash. One is that when he and (I think) and Carl Perkins were staying at a hotel with really wide corridors, they moved all the furniture out into the hall and set it up just as though it were the room. Then they called room service. As soon as the waiter left, expectedly to report what he had seen, they moved it all back again. They also often repainted motel rooms in wild colours. Another Cash trick was to walk into a hotel in really grubby clothes carrying a paper bag. He’d go to the desk and ask that the bag be put in the safe. About the time the manager was about to throw him out, he’d drop the bag and a huge wad of cash would fall out.