Walking the line

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) – "Walk the Line," the biopic of late country music legend Johnny Cash, is reportedly set to start filming in June. Joaquin Phoenix plays the "Man in Black" with Reese Witherspoon as his wife, June Carter Cash. James Mangold ("Identity," Girl, Interrupted") sits in the director's chair.

The movie … chronicles the late singer's life, from his days on a cotton farm in Arkansas in the late 1940s, to his early stardom with Sun Records in Memphis, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It will also explore his troubled time as a superstar in Nashville in the late 1960s.

Cash died Sept. 12 at age 71, four months after his wife of 35 years, June Carter Cash, died at age 73.

Sounds like Mr. Phoenix has landed himself a heck of a role. Reese too. (This guy disagrees with the casting here, but it sounds like he's never seen Return to Paradise or Freeway.)

The movie is still in "pre-production" and IMDB doesn't include any more casting info than the above. Consider, though, that this is a biopic that requires casting people to play both Elvis Presley and Billy Graham.

(Semi-related tangent: Cash often related his respect for Graham, but the evangelist's admiration for — and emulation of — Cash isn't always noted. Billy Graham had Johnny Cash hair. See for yourself: Billy, Johnny. Johnny, Billy. Billy, Johnny. I think this one is Billy, but it might be Johnny. Somewhere, there's a picture of Billy that's just like this, but they'll never let you see it.)

Francis Davis has another nice profile of the original Man in Black in The Atlantic Monthly, titled "God's Lonely Man." There's a bit there I'd quibble with, but this is dead on:

In 1956, when he recorded "I Walk the Line" for Sun Records, Johnny Cash became an overnight sensation. But it was his many years of singing as if he knew from personal experience all of humankind's strengths and failings — as if he had both committed murder and been accepted into God's light — that made him a favorite of liberals and conservatives, MTV and the Grand Ole Opry, Gary Gilmore and Billy Graham. … His credibility … owed as much to the moral effort involved in endlessly putting himself in others' shoes as it did to his professional savvy in putting a song across. …

In 1975, when an interviewer for Penthouse asked him if he was a political radical, he replied, "I'm just tryin' to be a good Christian" — a good Christian, but not a professional one, despite his many songs about Jesus and his tours as a member of his friend Billy Graham's Crusades. He was a Christian who didn't cast stones, a patriot who didn't play the flag card.