 "Photo: Lorey Sebastian")
Shortly after his performance in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line, we lost one of the better actors of our generation, Joaquin Phoenix, to the destructive allure of a music career. Oddly enough, he went into hip hop, of all things. Yet with an album still yet to materialize, I am inclined to believe that Phoenix’s career change was actually a dramatic retirement coup wrapped in a joke. Jeff Bridges, on the other hand, already has an album, 2000’s Be Here Soon, now available on iTunes. He also did one hell of a job on the Crazy Heart soundtrack, which he sang on and helped to write, along with his friend T-Bone Burnett (also one of the film’s producers) and the late Stephen Bruton (music producer, composer and one of the inspirations for the protagonist, Bad Blake). So take that, crazy Joaquin.
Part of me is tempted to blame Walk the Line and the megalomania of inhabiting Cash’s shoes for playing a part in stealing Joaquin from us, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Phoenix made three films after Walk the Line, ending with 2008’s Two Lovers. It seems that broody weirdo went off the deep-end alone, famously depositing his chewing gum on Letterman’s desk in the process. Jeff Bridges has responded to his recent Oscar buzz with a characteristically laid-back attitude. He is, after all, one of the most affable and underappreciated guys in Hollywood. Thank God we didn’t lose Jeff Bridges to music earlier, or at least before Crazy Heart. Now, having delivered the performance of a lifetime in a film that is undoubtedly better than the endemically uneven Walk the Line, Mr. Bridges, who’s had a longstanding interest in music, can do what he wants. Then again, he always has.
Jeff Bridges, 61, is the son of the late actor Lloyd Bridges (Airplane, plus literally hundreds of other TV and film projects), and has been in more than 60 movies. His first major success was with the classic The Last Picture Show in 1971. Since then, the notoriously hardworking Bridges has starred in everything from the art house (Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King) to the big screen (TRON, or more recently, Iron Man), even including the occasional Disney film (Surf’s Up). Begging the question, how do you get to be known for both a prolific amount of work and a chill, laid back attitude? Bridges has somehow become a kind of Yoda of Hollywood, but then again it helps to be The Dude or El Duderino, if you’re not into that whole brevity thing.
Hear that familiar voice telling you to buy a Hyundai or trust Duracell? That’s Jeff Bridges — also an amateur photographer, musician, producer, doodle artist and a perennial documentary narrator. There seems to be only two things Jeff Bridges can’t do: break out of his cult demigod status from The Coen Brothers’ The Big Lebowski and win one of those little golden statues.
An Oscar would be nice; Bridges is up for Best Leading Actor, against admittedly stiff competition like Colin Firth. I’m not going to put too much stock in the statuette (besides, I have a whole other Oscar column this week). Bridges has been up for four Oscars before, all for Best Supporting Actor, and none for the much-deserved Lebowski, a film that so far has proven to be his most immortal role.
He doesn’t seem to mind his permanent status as The Dude, which entails being the subject to a lot of amateur film criticism and stoner philosophy, as well as a popular yearly Halloween costume. Also, what would Kahlua sales since 1998 be like if not for The Dude’s preferred White Russian? And they say movies don’t impact the real world. The Dude is even abiding his way into my opinion of Bridges’ other work. When I saw him play an FBI agent in the terrorism thriller Arlington Road I thought, “How un-Dudely, man Bridges is working for the Man.” In Iron Man as the power-hungry industrialist Obadiah Stone, he is the Man. Crazy Heart is a good enough from the get go to make you lose the Dude assumptions immediately. He’s actually a little more similar to Sam Elliot’s character, The Stranger; from The Big Lebowski but only if he drank McClure’s whiskey instead of sarsaparilla. Though Crazy Heart often doesn’t earn points for originality (critics have found a lot of connections to 1983’s Tender Mercies with Robert Duvall, who here has a tip-of-the-hat cameo), the blessing of Bridges’ knowing, world-weary performance and his presence on the soundtrack really bring this once-doomed movie into a life of its own. Scott Cooper’s directorial debut was once slated for straight to DVD oblivion before Bridges and T-Bone Burnett got involved, helping to produce both the film and it’s convincingly authentic country western soundtrack.
Crazy Heart is a funny, bitter and heartfelt portrait of an aged country singer struggling with alcoholism and increasing obscurity as his pop country protégée Tommy Sweet (Colin Ferrell with a really terrible ponytail) takes all the fame and glory. Cooper’s direction is commendable in a meat-and-potatoes kind of way (lots of Southwestern sunsets, lonesome roads, etc.), but it is really Bridge’s that makes this film. Hopefully Crazy Heart will prove something of a moment of career remaking, in which Bridge’s vaults into the highest category of stars, up there or maybe even beyond that now-faltering DeNiro and Pacino generation, of which Bridges is something of a younger, hipper brother.
Oscar or no, there is good news on the horizon for Bridges, who after a perhaps ill-advised re-vamp of TRON is returning to a collaboration with the Coen Brothers and stepping into none other than John Wayne’s boots for a remake of the 1969 Western True Grit. As The Dude would say: far out, man, f**king far out.
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