Why “Walk the Line” director James Mangold circled back to Johnny Cash for “A Complete Unknown”

James Mangold didn't anticipate that he'd be going down, down, down into a burning ring of fire for a second time in his life.

The filmmaker first tackled the life of Johnny Cash in 2005's Walk the Line, which garnered tons of acclaim, including an Oscar win for Reese Witherspoon and a nomination for Joaquin Phoenix. Now, Mangold returns to Cash in A Complete Unknown, another musical biopic, this time centered on the rise of a young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet).

Here, Boyd Holbrook, working with Mangold for the third time, takes on the mantle of the Man in Black.

"[It was strange] in an intellectual way," Mangold tells Entertainment Weekly of revisiting Johnny Cash. "But not at all in a real way. I found myself watching Boyd sing a song that Joaquin sang 20 years ago in a different movie, but the movies have such entirely different perspectives. Johnny Cash is crossing through the New York Folk world because he was such a fan of all music and was an early advocate of Bob's. It's a very different story, but one that does overlap."

Related: When A Complete Unknown met Joan: Why James Mangold needed an actress who could ‘hold her own’ as Joan Baez

Cash was not originally a part of A Complete Unknown (in theaters Christmas Day). When Mangold was developing the film under the title Going Electric, he and Holbrook discussed potential roles in the film. However, after he had to delay the project due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mangold discovered the letters between Cash and Dylan that serve as the basis for their relationship.

"The Johnny Cash part wasn't in [the book] Going Electric," Holbrook explains. "It was only after doing some research with Bob that [Jim] found out that Johnny and Bob were pen pals. He didn't know that when he made Walk the Line."

Related: Boyd Holbrook is ready to 'make some noise' as Johnny Cash in A Complete Unknown trailer

Dylan shared the letters with Mangold, who lifted some of the film's dialogue directly from them. "It's a beautiful series of letters," adds Mangold. "Johnny started writing to Bob after his Freewheelin' album came out."

Holbrook was also able to read and use the letters to inform his performance. "Jim didn't know this when he made Walk the Line because Johnny didn't keep the letters," Holbrook notes. "He found them through Bob. That really tells you which person is which. I read those and they're great, man. They're on the back of airplane sickness bags. These guys are at the pinnacle of their lives, road dogs traveling in the isolation of maximum fame. They're a big insight into them and their lives and what made them tick."

Still, Holbrook was initially apprehensive about playing such an iconic musician. "I was shocked and a little daunted," he recalls of his response to Mangold's offer for the role. "I said, 'Well, I don't look anything like Johnny Cash.' And he said, 'Well, nobody looks like anybody really.' It's true. Nobody does, but you can build in these impressions and this essence."

And it was added value to Holbrook that Mangold knew Cash's story so well. "Johnny's purpose in this story had nothing to do with that movie," the actor notes. "Yes, Jim made that movie. But I wouldn't have done this if somebody else had asked me to do it."

The actor took a holistic approach to transform into Cash, including dying his hair dark brown, wearing red contact lenses to turn his blue eyes brown, wearing a small prosthetic on his nose, and learning to sing, play guitar, and speak in Cash's cadence.

Related: See Timothée Chalamet's Bob Dylan perform "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" in A Complete Unknown trailer

"I studied his movement, his behavior, what was going on with him in his life at the time — substance abuse or whatever he was fiddling with," Holbrook says. "Slowly, that feeling came with putting the music together, learning how to play and sing at the same time, and figuring out his voice and his resonance."

Related: Timothée Chalamet performs 40 Bob Dylan songs live in A Complete Unknown: 'On guitar, on harmonica, and singing'

Yet, it wasn't his costumes, his make-up, or his guitar lessons that really gave Holbrook insight into the man that was Johnny Cash. "There was a tipping point and the full-on confidence of, 'Man, I love this guy's sense of humor,'" he explains. "That's brimming out of me and of my own sense of humor. The humor in his songs too — the irony of 'I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.' That's pretty rough. 'A Boy Named Sue' — what kind of rascal writes a song like that but a guy with a good sense of humor?"

That humor is part of the key differences between this version of Cash and the one in Walk the Line. In part, because Cash is a supporting character here and also because Dylan's story is so different from Cash's in many ways.

"Walk the Line is a story of the psychic damage Johnny Cash carried forward into his life from his childhood," Mangold says. "Bob is not that story. If anything, he's kind of a mystery. Even in the movie, what exactly he came from and what his life was before is intriguing and mysterious. He's this young, blank vessel that arrives in New York with a guitar and takes the world by storm. No one can ever quite figure out who is he. He is so many people all in one. Instead of trying to answer that question in a simpler, psychological way like we did in Walk the Line, this movie doesn't try to answer that question because it's unanswerable in Bob's case."

Related: Timothée Chalamet recalls going to sleep 'panicked' about nailing Bob Dylan role in A Complete Unknown

Perhaps one of the only people who did understand Dylan, or at least a version of him, was Cash, who had been through the same kind of radical life change Dylan experiences in the movie. "John was 35-ish and Bob was probably early 20s," notes Holbrook. "Johnny reached out to him saying how brilliant his music was. So, you had the older guy extending his hand to the younger one. There's a humility in that, and there's an admiration of Bob too. But Bob is a sponge in a sense. I'm sure that he soaked up everything he could from a veteran of the game of the road and of the circus. Because if you're not careful, the machine will eat you alive."

Related: Timothée Chalamet sings live on set, says Bob Dylan 'had the balls' to defy expectations in new biopic clip

Even with that wisdom to impart, Cash stands as more of a fan and occasional advisor to Dylan in A Complete Unknown than anything else (though we do see him raising a bit of hell performing at the Newport Folk Festival). "I don't know if Johnny is a mentor to Bob so as much as he is an admirer of Bob's," Holbrook posits. "Maybe they're comrades. Bob, he's at a fork in the road, and he's trying to figure out what to do. He sees in Johnny that you have to keep the integrity of your voice in life and how you feel and want to express yourself."

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Indeed, it is that notion of a singular voice and the lengths one will go to in order to ensure it is heard that fascinates Mangold about both Cash and Dylan. "It's not just a history lesson about music," the director says. "It's really about this unique character. The movie is as much a meditation about Bob Dylan specifically, as it also is a meditation on what is genius? Why are some people so special and how does that affect them? On the other side, what's it like to be in love with someone like this or a friend, a competitor, a rival, or a peer when one of you seems so blessed with this innate ability to capture lightning?"

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