FACT: If you play a country music singer in a movie, you have a fifty/fifty chance of winning an Oscar.
Of the six actors have been nominated for playing country musicians, three have won: Reese Witherspoon for her portrayal of June Carter in
Walk the Line (2005), Robert Duvall for
Tender Mercies (1983), and Sissy Spacek for
Coal Miner's Daughter (1980).
(Those who have been nominated who didn't win are Jessica Lange for playing Patsy Cline in
Sweet Dreams (1985), Ronee Blakely for
Nashville (1975) and Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in
Walk the Line.)
Today I want to revisit the country music biopic because I think it's one of the best genres of film ever, second only to films starring Winona Ryder.
Country music films are modern-day fairytales; rags-to-riches stories crammed with poverty, pills, alcohol abuse, self-destruction, onstage breakdowns and big comebacks. And the music pulses through them so intensely that the really good ones makes your heart start to pound with an unexpected ardour for country music, even when you always thought you hated it.
Maybe you went and saw this year's
Crazy Heart—both Jeff Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal are nominated for Oscars for it. Did you enjoy it? Then may I suggest you go and revisit
Coal Miner's Daughter, the biopic of country music star Loretta Lynn, which, in my opinion, is the best of this genre.
Don't believe me? Read this:
She was married at thirteen. She had four kids by the time she was twenty. She's been hungry and poor. She's been loved and cheated on. She became a singer because it was the only thing she could do. She became a star because it was the only way she could do it.
Wow.
If that wasn't enough to convince you, here are five more reasons why you should watch or revisit
Coal Miner's Daughter.
1. Sissy Spacek!
As mentioned, Spacek won the Academy Award in 1980 for Best Actress for her role as Loretta Lynn, and I think it's one of the best performances I've ever seen. After a while you almost think you're watching a documentary.
She has to play a character who starts off as a thirteen-year-old girl and ends up as a woman in her mid-thirties, and she does it without wearing make-up (Loretta's husband didn't let her wear any), and mostly through her posture, which is amazing to watch. Plus, she sings all her own songs in the film. Which brings me to:
2. Sissy Spacek's voice!
It's excellent. Really excellent. Incidentally, I just found out that, before she was an actor, Sissy Spacek
was a singer. She recorded a single called 'John, you've gone too far this time', under the pseudonym 'Rainbo', before she hit the big time with
Carrie. The song is a novelty ditty about how she felt when John Lennon and Yoko Ono posed nude on the
Two Virgins album cover.
Does that whole idea seem really weird to you? I seriously didn't believe it was a true song when I first read it on
Wikipedia, but there it is. Let's just quietly note it for future games of Trivial Pursuit and move on. To:
3. Tommy Lee Jones!
I love Tommy Lee in this film. He plays Loretta's husband, Mooney, who marries her when she's thirteen, but that's apparently what you do in Kentucky.
He's so wonderful though that you almost want to marry him yourself. Sure, he's controlling, he has affairs, and he's generally a bit of a dick, but he loves her and believes in her, and the depiction of their tumultuous relationship is superb.
This is one of my favourite clips, where Loretta is in the recording studio and Tommy Lee is making it all happen.
4. Work/life balance!
These days, we go on and on and about how hard it is to raise a family and having a career, but Loretta Lynn did it! Again, see the clip above for advice on how to juggle—the recording studio becomes a nursery, and bedsheets become backdrops for press shots.
5. Loretta Lynn herself!
Can you even imagine being a grandmother at 29?
Loretta Lynn was. Her story is incredible. Just finding out about her life blows your mind. You should totally get into this woman. And see? Jack White loves her too.
Now off you go and watch Jeff Bridges win the Best Actor Oscar at next Monday's Academy Awards.