Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Walk the Line’ Director James Mangold Thought ‘Walk Hard’ Was “Hilarious”
Nearly 20 years later, James Mangold is still finding inspiration in the musical biopic genre, despite previous jabs at his work.
The 2x Oscar nominee, who co-wrote and directed the 2005 Johnny Cash pic Walk the Line, has not been scared off from paying cinematic tribute to other legendary musicians after the parody Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).
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“I found Walk Hard hilarious. But I also never understood why satire would negate making the real thing anymore,” he told Entertainment Weekly. “I wasn’t frightened off any more than Robert Eggers should be frightened of making a monster movie in the face of Young Frankenstein or if another filmmaker might be frightened of making a Western in the face of Blazing Saddles. It’s unfair to say that if someone makes a satire of a genre, it somehow has put a tombstone in the genre for all time. That seems a little ludicrous to me.”
Although John C. Reilly, who played the titular musician in the Jake Kasdan-helmed Walk Hard, said they “tried to kill the musical biopic” with the parody, Mangold thinks the following lull in the genre was unrelated.
“That was just that they had run their course for that moment,” he told EW. “It takes so long to make a movie that I don’t think things operate in quite the instantaneous fashion where everyone suddenly stays away.”
Mangold still has a good sense of humor about Walk Hard, which Kasdan co-wrote with Judd Apatow. “I was more unnerved that the studio who made the movie paid twice as much for Walk Hard and refused to pay half as much for Walk the Line,” he said.
With a $28 million budget, Walk the Line grossed more than $186 million. Although Walk Hard received a $35 million budget, it fell flat with a little more than $20 million at the global box office.
Mangold most recently gave Bob Dylan the biopic treatment with A Complete Unknown, which stars Timothée Chalamet as the folk singer.
The film follows an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota who arrives in NYC in 1961 with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. He forges intimate relationships with music icons of Greenwich Village on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking and controversial performance that reverberates worldwide.
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