The Business of Film: For Love of Money or For the Power of Love (Avatar vs Crazy Heart)
By Mark Monchek − January 25, 2010
I must admit that I’ve never been a fan of Jeff Bridges…until now. I always saw the Bridges persona leaking through the characters he portrayed. Not this time. The moment he steps into the spirit of Bad Blake, broken down country singer who seems like he won’t last through the film, you forget Bridges the actor, and are forever moved by the power of love. It is that power that prevents Blake from killing himself and allows him to rise from the near-dead. The film opens with a slow, underscored tracking shot across the high mountain desert of New Mexico. Bad Blake, 57 chronological years old, hauls around a body that has decades more wear and tear on it. Bad, once a major country star and prolific songwriter, is relegated to playing third rate bowling alleys and seedy lounges and gets by with the kindness of strangers-fans who remember the star he once was.
Despite the nonstop smoking and boozing Blake still cares about giving his fans what they want; he is graceful and professional on stage and loves the adoration of the audience, most of them having aged almost as badly as he has. Except that is, for Jean Craddock, (Maggie Gyllenhal in an understated powerhouse performance) a young journalist after a story, recently divorced and with a four year old son. Her shining heart sees the shy, intelligent, caring man behind the world weary façade that is distant and sometimes made grotesque by booze and cigarettes. They fall in love and, of course, too good to be true, Blake almost loses her son in a shopping mall. She leaves him to go back home to Santa Fe and look for a love that can sustain her.
But her deep and enduring love for Bad that continues even after they part, forces Bad to admit that he still cares enough about life to save himself. He begins the long, hard road to sobriety and a life lived as himself and not some B-movie version of himself. His best friend Wayne (Robert Duvall) provides the daily strength to help Bad (who changes his name back to Otis at the end of the film) stay sober and go back to writing the songs that had made him famous.
Why am I writing about a film in a blog about business? Because this is also a story about the movie business. Lately the film business is more about business than film. As Avatar, a cynical, fake spiritual blockbuster threatens to become the highest grossing movie of all time, Crazy Heart is the underdog movie that almost didn’t get made. It took Country Music Television, a division of Viacom, to make the film for $7 million, which is about what the craft service of Avatar cost. Jeff Berg, the Chairman of ICM. (the talent agency that represents the film’s writer and director, Scott Cooper) hounded Thomas Dooley, the CFO of Viacom, to sell the film to rival, Fox Searchlight Pictures, (a unit of the News Corporation), because Viacom had lost belief in the film and decided to let it die. Crazy Heart was due to be released this Spring. But when Bridges signed on to do a Coen Brothers remake of True Grit, it was clear that he would be unable to promote the film, which was in dire need of his star power. So, the studio rushed Crazy Heart into release just in time for Oscar consideration. The film opened to rave reviews and Bridges promptly won Best Actor from the Los Angeles Film Critics, The London Film Critics, The Broadcast Film Critics and the Golden Globes. Bad Blake rises from the ashes, inspired by the power of love. Crazy Heart was plucked from the scrap heap by the love of its producers, directors, writers and Bridges, who took a serious pay cut to make the movie. And Jeff Berg, an agent, who’s only supposed to care about money, cared enough to make a small film and make it big.
1 comment
By Ken Meseroll January 25, 2010 at 3:48pm
Wow. Great article Mark. This is the first time I have ever heard someone say they weren’t a fan of Jeff Bridges. I think he is one of the great unsung acotrs of his generation. Check out his work in American Heart, The Door in the Floor, just to name two.
First, let me say I agree with you about his performance in Crazy Heart, though I am less enamored of the film itself. He just won a SAG award too. You mentioned that you see Mr. Bridges’ persona leak through in other roles but not this one. I have to respectfully disagree and address what I think is a big misconception of what the craft of acting is. I think all we do see is his persona…what else is there? Most people would define acting basically as behaving truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the script. This means that while an actor may not be much like their character in terms of values, actions, life choices etc., they still bring their essential truth to the actions of the character even if the character demands some external traits like an accent, speech impediment, or physical traits. So our personas can’t help but leak through because that’s all we have! As with Iago, I may not know what it is like to convince someone that their spouse has been unfaithful and that they should be killed, but I can imagine what it might be like to get someone to do the right thing to eliminate a serious threat. Character exists on the page not IN the actor. Good writing gives us the literal actions of a character (Aristotle defined character as the sum of a person’s actions)and the actor must then discover the essentialness of those actions in him/herself. As a great teacher of mine Michael Howard once said, “Actors are extraordinarily generous people. And when they are committed and accomplished, what they give is themselves. They are saying to an audience, ‘This is a piece of me. Through this character you are getting me’”. We often hear the phrase, “He becomes the character.” This is a misnomer. Actors don’t become anyone…unless we are schizophrenic! So while Jeff B may not be a washed up drunk out of touch with his addiction, he does get in touch with that part of himself that might give up and lose an important battle and to overcome a great obstacle. He is bringing HIS truth of the essentialness of Bad’s actions thereby creating the illusion of character. He is giving the audience himself through the role. Any externals like an accent, losing or gaining weight, physical restricitons etc. meerly add to the illusion of a character but not all roles demand that. In fact, most actors are cast close to their type, based on their physical traits and personas. It is more rare than not that an actor gets to stretch and create a wider range of external characteristics, like Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, and Cate Blanchett to name a few. So if an actor doesn’t do big physical transformations, as with Mr. Bridges, then we are likely to see their persona by virtue of them being limited human beings.