James Mangold Quotes (19 Quotes)


    As for the Folsom Prison show, ... would anybody have the guts to do that show now 50 Cent, maybe I think the whole idea of even playing to a crowd of people like that is so politically unfavorable now - it's like, 'What are you doing, singing for these people Do they deserve it' There's such anger in our culture right now, that kind of grace and forgiveness, we don't see that very often.

    That's the mythic album where you see his face, sweaty, looking dangerous, and he's there singing to murderers and robbers and sharing a good time with them. As a kid, how could you not be interested

    They were each an antidote for the other. John had a hole in his heart... and June was an antidote... John was a real ambassador for her to the edge or away from a safe place as part of the first family of country music. It's the most wonderful set of opposites you could ever encounter.

    I knew I wanted to make a movie about Johnny Cash since '96, but my first exposure to Cash was the live Folsom Prison album on my dad's shelf, ... I saw Cash's incredibly ravaged face with a rivulet of sweat running down his cheek on the cover. And when I listened to it, I heard all these men cheering - guys in prison. He's singing about murder and they're all cheering. There's such an incredibly rebellious attitude in that material and such danger that even as a kid it stood out to me.

    When I was making 'Cop Land' in 1996, people were asking what my next movie was, ... Without thinking, I said, 'I want to make a movie about Johnny Cash.'


    I had the advantage of making a movie about a man who was an artist himself, and an artist of the shadows, in the sense that he understood life's lonelinesses and life's mistakes, and that people make them. In that sense, he wasn't interested in hiding them.

    People don't remember how good the music was (back then)... There's some real blood and guts in that music.

    All you have to do is listen over and over and over again to any one of his songs. Even when they first started appearing in the early to middle '50s, the lyrics are incredibly dark. Everyone else is singing about getting girls and being happy, and he's singing about, 'I go out on a party and look for a little fun, but I find a darkened corner, because I still miss someone.' That's a dark lyric for a pop song.

    I didn't want to make a movie about what we already know.

    He was much more concerned about protecting others than himself. The thing he would always say to me was, I don't care if I look bad. Just don't make other, innocent people look bad, because they were my mistakes.'

    The big thing that I wanted to do was touch on the very start of rock and roll, I loved this moment in rockabilly music. I loved the idea of people making music because they loved music and not because they saw the video or how to market themselves. A very big point for me in this movie is that John didn't arrive at Sun as the man in black. He didn't already know his marketing angle. He didn't have it worked out. He was just trying to be heard and however that would work or not work was fine, but he just needed to be heard. What was magic to me about that moment in time was that it was a moment before the term 'rock and roll star' existed.

    John always said whoever played him, 'make sure they hold the guitar like they own it, that they don't hold it like it's a baby,'

    It was unbelievably hard to get this done, ... Over the years, Johnny understood. He was patient beyond belief. I'd tell him that people are frightened of musical films, but even more so they're frightened of movies that require the talent to be successful in order for the film to be successful. It's much easier to make a comic book.

    There was a point when they got into enough of a groove that when they played for the extras in Memphis we felt the love,

    I remember being real concerned about the music and singing -- that's something we were both concerned about -- and Jim said if people want to hear Johnny Cash, they can get a Johnny Cash record, he's made a few.

    They had a beginning the loss of Jack and his father's reproach. They had an end, with the love reconciled between June and John. But the middle wasn't there, ... I was nibbling around the edges. The dynamism of their attraction, the struggle, was the middle of the story. The movie was dying here.

    As we got to know John and June, what we needed them to understand was that the people they were now was not the people they were then, ... And there was the challenge of combining the grand wisdom and spirituality of these elder legends backwards into the young people they were, as they were learning those lessons. To tell how they got to be here, we had to go to those darker places, and not temper it.

    The two of them have a lot in common, and I don't mean life story, ... I mean a kind of core energy.

    John was not just a singer, but a songwriter, ... He was always riding this river of shadows in his writing. He was singing about a kind of pain everyone lives through.


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