The Joaquin Phoenix performance Johnny Cash was obsessed with: “He relished every word”
If you’ve seen the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, but you’ve also seen Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, then it can be a little difficult to remember which is which.
A lot of things that happen in the former also occur in the latter, including a tragic sharp blade accident, a descent into drug use and a marriage to a childhood sweetheart. But the Joaquin Phoenix movie does not have a scene in which the hero meets Jack Black and Paul Rudd playing The Beatles, so that’s probably a good way to remember which is which.
Phoenix, as he tends to do, put his heart and soul into playing Johnny Cash, the legendary country star who battled alcohol and amphetamines to go from the cotton fields of Arkansas to the TV screens of America. The actor, who was 30 at the time, had to learn to play the guitar and sing exactly like Cash: for almost a year, he listened to nothing but his music, affected his accent and even had to check himself into rehab once filming finished due to a reliance on drinking.
But Phoenix didn’t have to do it all by memory, because the two men had spent some time together thanks to an invitation by the legendary singer for him to come over and have dinner at his Nashville home around a year before work began on Walk the Line, the biopic that won an Oscar for Reese Witherspoon and a nomination for Phoenix.
The request for Phoenix’s company came about due to Cash’s immense admiration for the young actor’s work in Ridley Scott’s 2000 movie Gladiator, starring Russell Crowe. According to Phoenix, he insisted that all present prayed before the meal, and then serenaded those in attendance with some of his hit songs, apparently able to play very well despite his frail health.
Amazingly, Cash was also able to recite huge chunks of Phoenix’s dialogue from the hit movie word for word, perfectly mimicking the character of Commodus of the Roman Empire. Phoenix remembers the night, saying, “He relished every word and gave a better performance than I could have done. That was John. Those two things equally – that darkness and that light. A complete person, not denying one side or the other.”
Cash died no more than a year later from complications arising from his diabetes at 71. Walk the Line was released in 2005 and sparked renewed interest in the singer who had released one of the finest albums of his career as late as 2002 with American IV: The Man Comes Around, which notably includes his cover of Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Hurt’.
Walk the Line was a massive global hit. For some time, not only was it perhaps the greatest musical biopic of all time, but it delivered $200million at the box office. All of the songs featured in the movie are sung by Phoenix, and the soundtrack received a Grammy the following year, showcasing that perhaps the actor missed a chance at becoming an iconic singer in his own right.
Phoenix has recently had to deal with a few flops, including Joker: Folie a Deux, this year’s Covid comedy-drama Eddington and another Ari Aster film, Beau is Afraid, which, despite his performance garnering some acclaim, lost something in the region of $30m at the box office.
