Joaquin Phoenix talks about portraying a legend
Joaquin Phoenix earned plenty of acclaim, plus an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award, for his inspired performance as music legend and legendary hell-raiser Johnny Cash in the 2005 film “Walk the Line.”
Remarkably, Phoenix, who did his own singing and guitar playing, was not a vocalist before signing on to play Cash, whose baritone sound is unmistakable.
“I was surprised just to get through a song,” Phoenix confessed in a 2005 interview with CNN. “I never sang before, but if I had tried to sing along to something it was to John Lennon and David Bowie, who both sing quite high. So to suddenly go to John was so odd to me. It was very strange to have to use a part of my voice that I didn’t know existed.
“Of course I had doubts. It was completely foreign to me,” Phoenix told CNN. “But I felt confidence in the people I was working with and their judgment. To have someone like T-Bone Burnett (the film’s music producer) guiding you through the process obviously gives you a great deal of confidence.”
In a 2006 interview with The Guardian, Phoenix said, “I think we have a sense of when something is authentic and when it isn’t. With this part I didn’t think I had to sound like (Cash), but I certainly had to know how he felt when he was singing.”
In his rave review of “Walk the Line,” critic Roger Ebert wrote that while watching the film he presumed he was hearing Cash’s voice and that when he learned otherwise from the film’s final credits, “I was gob-smacked.”
As fate would have it, Phoenix had met Johnny Cash and his wife, June, a few years before “Walk the Line.” Cash, a fan of Phoenix’s Oscar-nominated performance in the 2001 film “Gladiator,” invited the actor to dinner with his wife and family, and even quoted Phoenix’s dialogue from “Gladiator.”
“It was pretty amazing,” Phoenix recalled about the meeting in an interview with IndieLondon. “They were totally unpretentious, down-to-earth. And after dinner we sat in the living room. John was actually quite shaky. His hands were shaking and he picked up the guitar. He felt obligated to play and yet he couldn’t anymore but he was going to try it. The moment he touched the guitar, the shaking stopped. I couldn’t believe it.”
Neither Johnny not June lived to see their turbulent romance portrayed onscreen by Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon. She died in May 2003 and he followed her that September.
“Certainly playing someone like John is more difficult than playing the love interest in a romantic comedy,” Phoenix told IndieLondon. “But it’s far more interesting. I think what’s captivating about John is in some ways he encapsulated the duality of human experience. I think we all have those dark and light sides and John’s really unique in that he was in full recognition of both those aspects of himself and he didn’t deny one or the other.
“He really spoke from the heart and had a level of truth and honesty that he conveyed. It’s amazing to me when his contemporaries like Elvis went on and sang songs about teddy bears, John always told stories about humanity and what he saw around him.”
WHAT: “Walk the Line”
WHEN: Feb. 28, 8 p.m., with a concert of Johnny Cash music by Cody J. Martin at 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: Palace Theatre, 605 Market Ave. N, Canton.
ADMISSION: $10.
