“Set the bar pretty high”: Jeff Bridges names the best movie ever made about music
He might be an actor by trade, and has been for over 50 years, but you get the sneaking suspicion that Jeff Bridges would have rather dedicated his professional life to music.
That’s mostly because he’s hinted as much, and on numerous occasions, too. He’s been able to balance the best of both worlds, though, with the Academy Award-winning veteran releasing several albums and playing live shows with his band, The Abiders, named in honour of his iconic Big Lebowski character.
The second-generation star was years into his big-screen career before he fully committed, but he’s never lost the urge to scratch his musical itch. He wouldn’t be caught dead on set without a guitar, and it’s led to him jamming behind the scenes with everyone from Kris Kristofferson to Bob Dylan.
He even won his Oscar playing a grizzled country musician in Scott Cooper’s Crazy Heart, a role that was 30 years in the making and can be traced right back to the infamous Heaven’s Gate, where he first encountered several of the names and faces who’d become friends, collaborators, and inspirations.
Strangely, given his lifelong adoration of the form, that’s one of only two pictures he’s made that were specifically about music or the music industry. They were also separated by 20 years, and even though it didn’t win him an Oscar, it would seem that he holds 1989’s The Fabulous Baker Boys in higher esteem.
“Baker Boys set the bar pretty high, as far as creating an authentic movie about music that rang true,” he explained to The Quietus. “So while it’s wonderful to play music in a film, I love music a lot, and I don’t want to screw it up by making a crummy movie about it. So it’s kind of hard to get me making a movie about music unless it’s gonna be really good.”
Well, that explains why he’s only made a pair of them since making his screen debut as a baby in his father’s 1951 flick, The Company She Keeps, and Bridges has no doubt fielded plenty of offers in a similar vein. As he said, just because it’s a movie about music, it doesn’t mean he’s going to do it, unless the script and story speak to him on a level as deep as his adoration for the medium.
The Fabulous Baker Boys also had the benefit of teaming up with his older brother, Beau. They play the titular siblings, a relatively rinky-dink but still successful piano act, who try to reinvigorate their stalling careers by recruiting a singer, only for those damned emotions to get in the way and drive a wedge between them.
Is it the greatest movie ever made about music? It’s debatable, but it should at least be a part of that conversation, even if the film thrives more on its central performances than its insights into the business. It’s good enough for Bridges, but, then again, he was in it, so he’s hardly being objective.
