At the age of fifty-seven, Bad Blake is on his last legs. His weight, his ticker, his liver, even his pick-up truck are all giving him trouble. A renowned songwriter and "picker" who hasn't recorded in five years, Bad now travels the countryside on gigs that take him mostly to motels and bowling alleys. Enter Ms. Right. Can Bad stop living the life of a country-western song and tie a rope around his crazy heart?
***NOTE: There is a spoiler quote for the book / movie Beguiled at the end of this post***
★★★☆☆
Fifty-seven year old "Bad Blake" is a country-western singer / songwriter in the twilight of his career. His body is beginning to give out from years of wild living and hard drinking. There's also the matter of his estranged, now grown son whom he hasn't seen since the guy was a little one of four. Put it all together and Blake has a life chock full of regrets he's usually trying to play down.
Blake hasn't released any new music in five years. Instead, his manager has him on a small peanuts tour of bowling alleys, motel lobbies and seedy bars across the country. It's at one such bar in Santa Fe, New Mexico that Blake meets Jean Craddock, (played by Maggie Gyllenhaal in the film) a journalist for the Sun Scene newspaper. She covers the music scene around town and is interested in doing a special write up on him while he's in town. Blake is instantly smitten with her and it doesn't take much convincing for him to agree to a series of interviews. Though Blake is in no rush to add another ex-wife to the roster, the more time he spends with Jean, the more he begins to feel that she might just be his last real chance at true love. Though he acknowledges that Jean is certainly the type of woman one wants to be better for, it turns out that old habits most certainly do die hard. Very hard.
Blake also gets an opportunity to get back in the big leagues when he's invited to do another collab / tour with Tommy Sweet (played by Colin Farrell in the film, who also does his own singing here), a singer Blake had mentored, even wrote material for, and then had a falling out with over their last project together. His songs he developed with Tommy are typically the only ones most in the crowds want to hear these days.
I've seen the film adaptation a few times of the years and each time minus the last had missed the fact that it was based off a book. Finally noticing this on the most recent viewing, I decided to finally seek out the book and see if I loved it anywhere near as much as the film. So here we are!
Truth be told, I liked the novel but no, it's nowhere near as brilliant as the film. While Blake is certainly an interesting character in both formats, there is SO much that Jeff Bridges brings to the screen... the book ends up feeling like a letdown. It's also not always the easiest read, as there are racist / homophobic characters , some sexually graphic jokes and a whole lotta profanity. Not necessarily out of character for the country western bar environment, but often cringey to say the least.
If you're going to pick one or the other to try, definitely go with the film. Bridges does his own singing! Watching him bring Bad Blake to life on screen is almost as if The Cowboy (from The Big Lebowski, also starring Bridges) morphed into The Dude... Crazy Heart's opening scene even takes place in a bowling alley! 😄
Some of the scenes get pretty in your face, one showing the character of Blake vomiting and crying all while rocking tighty-whiteys... Bridges just BRINGS it!
There's a lot of classic country to the look of Bad Blake --- you can see hints of Merle, a touch of Waylon --- and some of Blake's best lines of dialogue from the book do make it into the film version, one of my favorites being the scene where the band members come check on Blake who is late for sound check. One guy asks "when should we start rehearsing?" and Blake, without missing a beat, comes back with, "Soon as you can, as often as you can, that's the secret."
One small change though -- book Blake is a fan of Jack Daniel's Whiskey. Perhaps because of a copyright / licensing issue, the drink of choice in the film is changed to McClure's.
To its credit, both Bridges and actor Robert Duvall served as producers on the film, so you know quality wasn't compromised.
Also, strangely.... around the time I did the book / movie watch-read on this one, I'd also done the same with the film Beguiled, also inspired by a book and starring Colin Farrell... and it seems that on page 215 of Crazy Heart, Thomas Cobb wove in a brief description / nod to the film version of Beguiled... but a Clint Eastwood version I was not aware of (but now am interested to look up), not the more recent Sofia Coppola production:
"Clint Eastwood is on the late movie, a Union soldier, wounded, tended by the teachers and students at a girls' school. Bad has seen this one three or four times now. At the end, the girls, mad with jealousy, will poison him with mushrooms..."
It doesn't get an official name shout out in the novel, I only caught it because I happened to be in both stories around the same time.... but funny how books cross over like that sometimes!
Stay tuned for my thoughts on Beguiled.
Comments
Post a Comment