Why Johnny Cash’s children disowned ‘Walk the Line’
Many biopics have faltered in trying to strike the right balance between celebrating their subjects to the point of hagiography while making a point of dedicating time to exploring the darker or more unsavoury aspects of their lives. Walk the Line did an admirable job with the life and legacy of Johnny Cash, but not everyone was left enthused by the results.
Director James Mangold and co-writer Gill Dennis were hardly the first filmmakers to take some creative, artistic, and factual liberties when trying to distil a cultural icon into a couple of hours of cinema. Still, the legendary musician’s children were left affronted by the way their mother was depicted within.
Whereas Reese Witherspoon won an Academy Award for ‘Best Actress’ after being given her ample share of the spotlight as June Carter, Cash’s first wife Vivian Liberto Distin wasn’t given the same treatment. The pair were married for 13 years and welcomed four daughters together, and the song the movie takes its name from was written by Cash as a promise to be faithful to her.
Although Cash was married to his second wife for 35 years, and she was always going to be a bigger part of the story than Ginnifer Goodwin’s Vivian, the crooner’s first four children were nonetheless left infuriated by the way their mother was portrayed on screen. Not only that but whereas Johnny and June’s only child, John Carter Cash, was credited as an executive producer on Walk the Line, his daughters weren’t involved in the process at all.
As a result, when they saw Mangold’s awards-bothering drama for the first time, they didn’t want anything to do with it. “My mom was basically a nonentity in the entire film except for the mad little psycho who hated his career. That’s not true,” Kathy Cash said, per Fox News. “She loved his career and was proud of him until he started taking drugs and stopped coming home.”
Vivian passed away in May 2005, just six months before Walk the Line was released in cinemas, but even though she was unable to defend the way she was realised on-screen, her kids continued fighting on her behalf. “Anyone who wants a good sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll movie is gonna love it,” Kathy offered. “I’m anticipating dyed-in-the-wool fans objecting to a lot of stuff.”
One of their biggest points of contention was a lack of scenes covering their upbringing, or the way Vivian and her daughters struggled in the face of Cash’s battles against drugs and alcohol, how it affected them as a family, and the impact their parents’ divorce had on them at such a young age.
As mentioned, biopics don’t always need to be slavish recreations of real events to succeed, but angering the children of the subject for being slighted wasn’t a good look for Walk the Line, regardless of the Johnny and June years being the primary focus.
