At the Movies with Governor Tom: Crazy Heart and The Big Lebowski

The one thing I'll never forget about Jeff Bridges is his laugh. He just turned sixty a month ago, but his laugh is the high-pitched cackle of a little boy. I shit you not.

I didn't think about it until seeing him in person last night, but Jeff doesn't laugh much in his films. He may smile. He might even laugh a little. But he almost never, ya know, outright laughs. He doesn't laugh at all in The Big Lebowski or Crazy Heart, the two films I saw last night. When I think about his other films, it's pretty much the same. I never would have thought about that, but after hearing that weird, yet innocent, laugh, it occurred to me. It's all good, don't get me wrong. It's hilarious actually, but if you're a director, you don't want a big tall guy in his fifties or sixties laughing like that in your film. Not unless he was, ya know, playing a character who would have a reason to do that.

Well how's about this? I don't go to the Aero at all for months, over half a year, and suddenly I'm practically living there. The last time I went in 2009 was for a James Bond festival, two Bond films a night for three nights. That was the first weekend in May. Then last Friday I'm there for the Jim Sheridan double feature. Last night (Saturday night) I was there for a Jeff Bridges double feature. In two weeks I'm going back for a double feature with Frank Pierson, followed by a twenty-fifth anniversary event for Better Off Dead three days after that. That's four--count 'em, four!--trips to the Aero in a month. You know, one of these days I'm going to have to face up to becoming a member of the American Cinemateque, the nonprofit that runs both the Aero in Santa Monica as well as Sid Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. After last night, I'm feeling very motivated.

Last night's event was one of the best I've been to, and that says a lot after having seen Robert Duvall in person at the ArcLight Hollywood last month for a screening of Crazy Heart. Last night Crazy Heart was the first film on the double bill, but the whole thing wasn't about Duvall, who produced the film and has a supporting role. It was about the film's leading man, Jeff Bridges. Like Duvall, Jeff Bridges is one of those actors I've followed and admired for quite some time. I've been aware of Duvall pretty much my whole life. And then when he played Josef Stalin in the 1992 HBO movie, I really sat up and took notice. It was a similar pattern with Jeff Bridges. I've known of him for as long as I can remember, going back to Tron and Starman and other flicks from my eighties childhood. But then when he played the Dude in The Big Lebowski, which came out in the spring of 1998, my last semester at Temple U., things changed. Not right away, though. I didn't know what to make of The Big Lebowski at first. I kinda liked it, but another part of me was like, "Eh." When my mom got me the DVD for Christmas 2005, I watched it again and liked it much more, and have seen it on the big screen several times since, thanks mainly to the ArcLight as well as the Egyptian's tenth anniversary screening of it in March 2008. The Big Lebowski is now one of my favorite films. If you follow my blog, you'll know that last May I went to my first-ever Lebowski Festival at the Wiltern. Now that was quite an experience, although when I go to the next one, which will hopefully be in 2010 sometime, I'll need to regulate my intake of the ol' White Russians.

Let's see, I think the first time, or at least one of the first times, I noticed Jeff Bridges was when Against All Odds was on HBO in the early or mid eighties. To this day I've never seen it, but HBO showed the previews for it all the time. Phil Collins did a song for it, I think. While I have seen parts of Tron and Starman, I'm not sure I've seen either of those all the way through.

The Aero was showing the double bill last night as part of a three-day Jeff Bridges retrospective. Emphasis on retro. Besides Crazy Heart and Lebowski, it's mainly focusing on his older stuff. Tonight they're showing Starman and The Fisher King, and tomorrow it's Cutter's Way and Thunderbolt & Lightfoot. No I'm not going to either of those events. A time and money thing. Too bad too, because I loved The Fisher King. It's easily one of Terry Gilliam's best. And like I said, I've yet to see Starman all the way through. As for Cutter's Way and Thunderbolt & Lightfoot, this might sound like heresy to cineastes, but I've never heard of either of those. See? This is why God created Netflix.

So what's the first Jeff Bridges movie I actually watched start to finish? Man, now I think about it, I can't be entirely sure. I'm not sure I could answer that question about Robert Duvall. Oh wait. Maybe I can. For Duvall it's probably The Natural. There was a time when I watched that flick almost every single day. There were other movies in the eighties that I obsessed over (e.g. Goonies, Amadeus, the Star Wars flicks), but Jeff Bridges wasn't in any of them. Yet he's been ubiquitous my whole life. I didn't see The Fabulous Baker Boys all the way through until I got it from Netflix a couple years ago. The Morning After, like Against All Odds, was on HBO all the time in the mid eighties, but again, I just wasn't interested. Tucker, maybe? My father's a big car buff. He rented Tucker when it first came out on video in the late eighties or thereabouts. Again, I may have seen parts of it, but I never saw it start to finish.

Wow, you know what? I think the first Jeff Bridges film I saw start to finish was also the first film of his I saw on the big screen: Blown Away. It came out in the spring of 1994 just as I was graduating from high school. I remember that because my mom came up to Jersey from North Carolina to see me graduate, and then the day after, she and I drove down to D.C. to hang out with my brothers and sister. One day, when my siblings were at work, Mom and I went to see Blown Away. The previous summer she and I saw The Fugitive when I visited her in Chapel Hill. That film led to Tommy Lee Jones getting an Oscar, so Blown Away had a lot of hype surrounding it because it was his first film since winning (although he shot it before the ceremony, of course, which had just been a couple months before). He played an Irish terrorist. Again, my memory's not perfect, so it's possible I did watch one of the aforementioned 1980s Jeff Bridges films when it was on HBO, but if that's the case, it's been completely wiped away from (buried in?) my noodle.

It's impossible not to notice the Aero's bias toward his older stuff. Dude's been in plenty of decent stuff in the new century. What about Charles Howard in Seabiscuit? Or better yet, the President of the United States in The Contender? Now that's a great flick, and Jeff's awesome in it. It reunites him with Lebowski costar Sam Elliot. In Lebowski Sam Elliot was the cowboy narrator who would just appear out of nowhere at the bowling alley bar to chat with the Dude. And then in The Contender he plays the White House Chief of Staff to Jeff Bridges as the Prez. A completely different dynamic and one worth seeing when you've already seen Lebowski. That's the thing with the American Cinemateque. They do awesome programs and events, but when it comes to celebrating the work of an actor or director, the past is always prettier. Of course I say this a mere week after seeing Jim Sheridan in person as part of a two-day event to celebrate his work. On the night I went, they showed Brothers, which is brand new, and In America, which came out in 2002. Then again, on the second night (I didn't go) they showed his first film, 1989's My Left Foot, followed by In the Name of the Father. Okay maybe Jim Sheridan's not a good example since he's only done about ten films in twenty years. Jeff Bridges, meanwhile, has done tons of things going back to the early seventies. If I were doing a retrospective of his work, I'd probably pick a more representative sample. Hey, don't forget the man just played Obadiah Stane (awesome name) in Iron Man. Any excuse to screen that's a good one in my book.

This is the first time I've written two blog posts about the same movie. Even though I just saw Crazy Heart a month ago, I didn't hesitate to buy this ticket. Last month's Crazy Heart screening, with Robert Duvall and writer-director Scott Cooper in person, was on Saturday, December 19. Three days later I found out the Aero was showing Crazy Heart as part of a double bill with Lebowski with Jeff in person, and I scooped up a ticket there and then. I was about to head to North Carolina for the holidays and figured I'd probably forget to buy a ticket while I was there and that it would be sold out by the time I got back. I would've been right on both counts. I didn't think about it at all while visiting Mom, and by the time I got back, the Cinemateque had updated their site with the usual "SOLD OUT" in bright red font.

When I do these "At the Movies" posts, I usually talk a little about the plot of the film(s). I try not to give away the good stuff, but I usually like to give some expository info about the premise and the major characters. Since I just blogged about Crazy Heart, though, I won't do that here. Ditto with the Dude. I provided more than enough exposition about The Big Lebowski in my Lebowski Fest post last May, both the film itself and my relationship to it. Let's just dive into the Q&A, shall we?

The movie was scheduled to start at eight, and it's a good two hours. Before it started, that one guy Grant, who always gives little intros and plugs upcoming stuff (Bob Newhart in February!), came up to do his thing and admitted to delaying the movie's start time to give Jeff enough time to get to the Aero after the Golden Globes rehearsal dinner. No matter, he let the movie start a few minutes after eight, and it was over at ten on the dot. Grant came up again after the film to set up two chairs, and then stood there kind of awkwardly, facing the doors and waiting for Jeff to come down. Apparently some fans had stopped Jeff in the lobby to chat him up. Finally Grant said something good-humoredly about fans getting in the way before hurrying back up the aisle to help Jeff get past the fans.

"Ladies and gentlemen, Jeff Bridges!"

Jeff still had the forest of facial hair from Crazy Heart, but I think the Coens told him to keep it for this Western they're making with him, True Grit. Other than that, for someone who came straight from a Golden Globes dinner, he sure was dressed casually: Jeans and T-shirt with an open button shirt over that. Black boots. A cool dude. And yes, just like the Dude, he addresses people as "man" a lot. It was quite a contrast from Jim Sheridan last week. Poor Jim's that typical overworked director. He looked completely exhausted, rubbing his face in his hands and so on. Jeff? Totally chill. He took the second mic from Grant and initially forgot to hold it up to his mouth. Of course he's an actor. Jim's a director. As Harrison Ford said when asked why he never directs: "Why do twice as much work for half the appreciation?" And I would add "for a fraction of the pay."

I've been to the Aero for Q&As a bunch of times. A lot of them, including this one, have been moderated by Grant. Last night, as always, his first question was, "So how'd you get involved with this project?" Jeff said at first he didn't want to be involved. This is something neither Scott Cooper nor Robert Duvall mentioned during the ArcLight Q&A. Jeff took a pass at the script. Why? No music. Last night he was like, "It was a movie about a musician, but it had no music in it. No songs." I have to say that is kind of weird. Again, Scott didn't mention that little detail. Anyway, Jeff took a pass and forgot about it. Then about a year later he ran into T-Bone Burnett, music producer extraordinaire. T-Bone had also seen the script and liked it. As I recall from the ArcLight Q&A, Scott Cooper said the two people he absolutely needed to make Crazy Heart were Jeff Bridges and T-Bone Burnett. Jeff didn't like it, but T-Bone did. He asked Jeff to reconsider and told him not to worry about the lack of music. They'd make the music themselves.

They had help from this guy named Ryan Bingham. No, I don't mean George Clooney's character from Up in the Air. This Ryan Bingham is a musician from Austin. He's lead singer of a band called Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses. He moved out to L.A. with nary a penny to his name. Youngin' was literally living out of his car. One day he was putting on a little one-man show at Canter's Deli. For you non-Angelinos, Canter's is a well-known deli down in the Fairfax district of L.A., near the West Hollywood border. It's been there forever. On this particular afternoon, one of the folks grabbing a bite to eat there was Colin Farrell. While chowing down on his pastrami, he took notice of Ryan and found he dug the tunes. When Ryan was done, Colin got up to introduce himself. They got to talking. Just to show you what a tiny planet this is, it turned out that Colin's agent worked for the same company as Ryan's agent. By this point, Colin had already committed to playing Tommy Sweet in Crazy Heart. He knew T-Bone had taken it upon himself to compose a full-length album of original songs for the film and thought maybe he could use some help. Well, Colin was right. After Ryan auditioned, T-Bone took to him like a mentor of sorts. That song "The Weary Kind?" That's Ryan's. And he has a small role in the film. The first gig we see Jeff Bridges do is at this bowling alley called The Spare Room. Backing him up is a band called Tony and the Renegades. That's Ryan Bingham as Tony. I have to say that's pretty cool, how Ryan fell into that. And it proves yet again Clint Eastwood's adage from one of his Oscar acceptance speeches. He was like, "You need a little bit of talent. And a lot of luck." Amen. I'd like to think I have enough talent to be a novelist. Christ knows I've written enough of them. But I'm still waiting for Colin Farrell to discover me in Canter's Deli, so to speak. Yes, luck and timing are so important. And it sounds like Ryan really paid his dues before Colin discovered him. Just goes to show you what's possible. Tonight Ryan'll be hanging out at the Beverly Hilton for the Golden Globes, wining and dining with T-Bone, Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, Scott Cooper, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

In terms of the project's genesis, Jeff said it could probably be traced back to Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino's failed follow-up to The Deer Hunter. Two of the main characters in the Western were played by Jeff and Kris Kristofferson. Jeff said he and Kris spent all their downtime playing music. He was like, "We played all night. Shoot, all day too." And since then Jeff's been dabbling in music with Kris as well as this guy named John Goodwin. Or Johnny G., as Jeff calls him. John Goodwin is Jeff's oldest friend. They've known each other since fourth grade. They both like country and so they formed a record label called Baby Records. I think Jeff's done at least one solo album there. And they've done stuff together. Anyway, it was thanks to working with Kris on Heaven's Gate that Jeff started taking music seriously at all.

He talked a little about Scott Cooper. "The kid's never even directed a high school play," Jeff said. He gave Scott props for maintaining a set that's relaxed and happy. Apparently that's a big bone of contention between actors and directors. Most actors would like to work on sets that are relaxed. "Happy" is a word often used for movie sets with a good vibe. But apparently there are more than a few directors who get their ya-yas out of creating tense sets. They like to play actors against each other. Why? I have no idea. They're insane maybe? Or more likely they feel it's the best way to make their movie. It's method, baby. Most actors think it's bullshit. Why not have a happy set and let the actors act? Scott Cooper has never directed before, but he's done plenty of acting, going back to the nineties. Among many other things, he guest-starred on a season seven episode of The X-Files, only my favorite show of all time. The acting makes up for no directing experience. When I was studying film, I had this one professor my junior and senior year who made no bones about it: Understanding acting and actors is key to being a successful director. Try acting yourself. And read books about acting by those who've done plenty of it. One of the texts he assigned us was Respect for Acting by Uta Hagen, whom I actually got to see at the Geffen Playhouse in 2001, which turned out to be shortly before she passed away. Anyway, with over a decade of steady acting under his belt, Scott can obviously relate to other actors. And he's learned about directing by observing directors he's worked with. A lot of actors who turn to directing have no formal training. Their training is having watched other directors on the job. And like I said in last month's Crazy Heart post, it didn't hurt that Scott became pals with Robert Duvall when they co-starred in 2003's Gods and Generals. Robert Duvall, man. You talk about the queen mother of all movie biz connections.

Suffice it to say Scott created a happy set. Jeff was particularly impressed because they hardly had any time to make the thing. Twenty-four measly days. I said it last month and I'll say it again: Friggin' amazing. If they can make something like that in under four weeks, there's no excuse for me not to do 48 Broad. I could have that thing shot in three weeks flat with enough planning and preparation. Although Jeff didn't mention the budget, I remember Scott saying they had seven mil, which might not be a lot by Hollywood standards, but it'd be awesome for me. You know how many 48 Broads I could make with a cool seven mil? I only need a small fraction of that amount to pull it off. I remember Scott saying the only thing that slowed them down was how Jeff, who's in every scene, reviewed each and every take on the feedback monitor. Jeff didn't mention that last night, of course, lest he make himself look vain. I wonder if he does that on every film or if he didn't trust the first-timer's judgment about what constituted a good take.

Jeff obviously had a lot of long-time fans in last night's crowd judging by their questions once Grant opened it up to the floor. A Coen Brothers question was inevitable. Jeff said he's thrilled to be making another picture with them, a Western called True Grit. In response to a question about when he'd make more music, he said when True Grit was in the can, he may do another full-length. It's obvious Crazy Heart's infected him with the music bug.

As for working on Lebowski, he said yes, everything he said on screen was in the script, despite how loose he sometimes seems with the lines. The Coens had it all written down. The way he explained it, the Coens' rehearsal process is cyclical. They start with what's on the page. Then the actors adlib a bit, which might inspire the Coens to revise their script. At the end of rehearsals, they come back to the (perhaps revised) script, and the script becomes the bible for the whole of the shoot. No adlibbing. I wish he had talked about why it took him a solid year to commit to Lebowski. That's what Scott told us at the ArcLight. On Jeff's IMDb trivia page it quotes him as saying he was worried the Dude would set a bad example for his daughters and that it was them who gave him "permission" to do Lebowski because they understood it was just a movie. Really? Is that the only reason he vacillated for a solid year? See, I know Jeff seems laid back, but the way he picks his scripts so carefully, the way he's established this rep as being the hardest actor to get to commit to a project, and how he has to watch himself after each take, all this seems to suggest there's a control freak lurking under the laidback facade. Anyway, apparently the Coens are kind of that way too if they can't abide even a little adlibbing. After seeing Lebowski a bunch of times, I can safely say they did a yeoman's job with the dialogue. Whatever it says on IMDb, last night Jeff said the Coens finally got him to play the Dude by making him an animated surfer penguin, which turned out to be an unintentional harbinger of his recent Surf's Up character. This is where Jeff started cracking up with that very high-pitched childlike laugh of his. His assistant said something from the front row I didn't catch, which made him laugh more.

In a polar opposite situation from his Lebowski experience, where the screenplay was not only not followed to the letter but wasn't even finished yet, Jeff brought up Blown Away. I mentioned Blown Away up top as possibly the first Jeff Bridges film I saw from start to finish as well as the first on the big screen. It came out the spring of 1994, just after I finished high school. I saw it with Mom in suburban D.C. when she and I went down to visit some of my siblings. I remember after we saw it, Mom tried to tell people we'd seen it but could never remember the title. "Blown Up? Blown Away? Anyway, that one." I have to admit I probably wouldn't have seen it had she not suggested it. When a movie has such a generic title, it's usually not a good sign. I liked it enough, but it would've been better to wait for the DVD. Or, since I'm talking about 1994, VHS. Since it's a so-so movie, you wouldn't think it'd be sitting front and center in Jeff's cognizance. But it is. Actually, it might be because the movie was so-so while he obviously thinks it could've been better. The problem? The script wasn't finished. Jeff said he'd been so much looking forward to working with Tommy Lee Jones. And then when production began, they arrived on the set to find a script with no third act. No climax. They assured Jeff and Tommy they'd have the last part solved by the time the rest of it was shot, but according to Jeff last night, that was bullshit. The climactic scene, which I have practically no memory of, involved (I think) Tommy Lee Jones on the hood of Jeff Bridges' car. Jeff said since they had no script, they had to hold up cards with the dialogue on it for Jeff and Tommy to read during the takes. Suffice it to say Jeff wasn't thrilled. And he still isn't thrilled, fifteen years after the fact. He's done so much great stuff you'd think he could let one less-than-ideal experience go, but obviously not. He was so taken aback by the complete lack of care paid to the story that he, while sitting in his car between takes, snapped photos of Tommy Lee Jones and the title cards and eventually included them in his photography book, which is aptly called Pictures.

I've heard Terry Gilliam can be kind of, well, interesting to work with. But Jeff's experience with him on The Fisher King was awesome. He called Terry a kid in that he had a reservoir of energy that seemed bottomless. They'd shoot for twelve-plus hours and Terry would keep pressing them forward, unfazed by lack of sleep. This is where having someone like Robin Williams around became very advantageous. Jeff said Robin was the only one whose energy matched Terry's. So when the day was over and Terry was getting ready for night shoots, Robin would go around to the cast and crew and perform a whole bunch of comedy routines. Soon enough they all saw the point of what he was doing. He wasn't just showing off. He was trying to jazz everyone up so they'd catch a second wind. It worked. Jeff said he and Terry are always looking for an opportunity to work together again. They sort of got a chance with 2005's Tideland. Jeff had a small role and contributed to the soundtrack. Unfortunately Tideland was panned. I still haven't seen it. It made nary a blip on the radar. If you read my other Crazy Heart post, you'll know Robert Duvall's getting his Terry moment thanks to the resurrection of Terry's dream Don Quixote project. Duvall's playing Quixote.

Just before taking on the new Coen Brothers movie, Jeff made the new Tron film, Tron: Legacy. He didn't say much about it last night because he only just finished it and he's sort of bound by contracted studio secrecy until it comes out. He did say he had an awesome time making it. While he couldn't see a lot of the special effects during the production, Jeff did of course read the script and so has in his head what it's going to look like. What attracted him to the new Tron, he said, was the same thing that attracted him to the original: The sense of childlike play inside a computer.

Another film being shown during the Aero's retrospective is 1981's Cutter's Way, also called Cutter and Bone. During his intro, Grant went on and on about how the studio screwed up its release and that's why it made barely a ripple. It was directed by Ivan Passer who, ten years later, directed Robert Duvall in Stalin. Jeff plays Bone in the film, and John Heard plays Cutter. Jeff had nothing but great things to say about John Heard last night. He's not sure why John isn't in as many flicks as he used to be. I'm not sure either. I always liked him. He was in an HBO movie not long after Stalin about the Exxon Valdez disaster that I remember liking a lot. David Morse was in that. I do remember John getting in trouble for beating up his wife a few years ago. Maybe the man's got a temper and that's why directors avoid him. That might also explain Tom Sizemore, a great actor who's a bit off his rocker.

One entertaining anecdote Jeff shared from the Cutter's Way shoot had to do with the director of photography, Jordan Cronenweth. There was a scene Jordan thought would be greatly enhanced if he took one of the props, an orange ceramic goose, and shattered it all over the floor. After the scene was shot, the prop master went to the painstaking trouble of putting the damned thing back together. This was a kitchen scene, I believe. When they shot a scene in another room of the house, Jordan took the newly reassembled goose into that room and shattered it into a million pieces yet again, not because he had to, but as a prank at the prop guy's expense. Jordan, by the way, photographed Blade Runner right after Cutter's Way. Now that's sweet. And then Jonathan Demme hired him for the Talking Heads concert doc Stop Making Sense.

Jeff saved his best anecdote for last. This was in response to an audience question about working with Hal Ashby on 1986's 8 Million Ways to Die, which turned out to be Hal's last film. If you're not familiar with him and his work, Hal did some big stuff in the seventies like The Landlord (his first film, which starred Jeff's big brother Beau), Harold and Maude, Shampoo, and Bound for Glory. Despite making some solid films, he developed a reputation as a drug-addled maverick. His substance abuse got so bad that he collapsed while making the 1983 Rolling Stones concert doc Let's Spend the Night Together. After that the studios considered him virtually unemployable. While he did get hired to make 8 Millions Ways to Die, the gig came with a host of strings attached. The thickest string was the spy sent by the studio to make sure Hal behaved himself. I'm not sure "spy" is the right word since everyone knew who the guy was. Jeff said Hal had a great sense of humor about it and invited the guy into the fold, which of course is brilliant because it minimizes any awkward vibes. Nonetheless, the spy did have to answer to the studio. One of the biggest obstacles was that the studio would make changes to the script, and Hal would have no idea until after the fact. Toward the end of the shoot, the studio, via the spy, told Hal he only had one day left. But wait, Hal still had three scenes to shoot, the last three scenes in the film so obviously they were pretty important. The studio said it didn't matter, he had one more day. So what Hal did was, he consolidated the scenes into one long scene. This meant Andy Garcia's character had to talk on the phone for three pages' worth of dialogue. Andy was a nobody at this point, but Jeff said he did great. Right after this, Brian De Palma cast Andy in The Untouchables. Andy's career hasn't stopped since.

Like Bad Blake in Crazy Heart, Hal finally woke up and got his act together. He got clean. Only, it was too little too late. Just as he started doing smaller things to prove he was ready for a comeback, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, which had already spread to his liver by the time it was discovered. He died two days after Christmas in 1988 at the age of fifty-nine.

At one point Jeff mentioned he's been married to the same woman for over thirty years. Thirty-three to be exact. They met while he was making Rancho Deluxe in the mid seventies, right after Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. They got married in '77 and now have three daughters, all in their twenties. The way Jeff told it, "I've been married to the same woman for thirty-three years, and she keeps sending me out on these missions." How awesome is that? With a new Tron and the Coens' True Grit, it looks like the missions won't be stopping anytime soon.