Not just trying to pull off a distinctive voice, which was huge. But the story takes place over so many years ? it's a big story. And, also, finding a balance between impersonation and actually becoming someone appealed to me. |
Something's crawling out of my scalp. |
That song, every verse changes keys. ... I Walk the Line. |
That to me was really, certainly, the gateway into discovering John, ... I feel I found the speaking voice through the singing voice. |
That was Johnny Cash. He was a complete person. He acknowledged the darker side of his mind. He didn't try to deny it. Most of us are forced into labeling ourselves or others, but that's something John wouldn't do. This is a man who sang, 'I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die,' on 'Folsom Prison Blues,' and then would revel in singing the spirituals and would, in fact, leave Sun Records because Sam Phillips wouldn't let him record an album of gospel songs. |
That's the duality of Johnny: he was very, very family-oriented, and yet he was also a s---kicker. |
The expectation is this low, gravelly voice for John, but I went through his early recordings and there were songs in there where the voice was so different, I wasn't even sure if it was him singing, ... So it was interesting to me that we would see him develop the Man in Black sound. I thought it was really important that his voice change as his persona slowly solidified. The music was really the doorway into the character. |
The hope, ... was that we could sing. |
There's really nothing I can do about that. My work is to just make the film and try to make it as true as possible. |
They will watch the evening news, see the bloodshed, and will go back to dinner, |
They're getting very desperate in Baltimore, |
This is the best thing I ever did, |
Well, it's hard to say who John was because he was such a complicated character, ... You know, he represents so many things to so many different people. And that, to me, was why I was fascinated to play him. John's certainly not one-note. As an actor, there was a lot to work with. |
What the training did was teach me to trust my equipment and trust the other people that I'm working with, ... The firefighters will say, 'You should always be scared. If you're not scared then you should get out of the department because that's when you get hurt.' You have to have a level of fear and a level of respect for what it is you're doing, and if not, I think it breads a level of complacency, which is very dangerous. |
What was nice for me was not knowing anything about music and not being a singer or player and kind of discovering what that was like instead of having a set way of doing things. |