He picked cotton, sold door to door, and served in the Air Force. He was a voice of rebellion that changed the face of rock and roll. An outlaw before today’s rebels were born – and an icon they would never forget. He did all this before turning 30. And his name was Johnny Cash.
Walk the Line explores the early years of the music legend, an artist who transcended musical boundaries to touch people around the globe. As his music changed the world, Cash’s own world was rocked by the woman who became the love of his life: June Carter.
He was a voice of rebellion that changed the face of rock and roll. An outlaw before today’s rebels were born – and an icon no one would ever forget. He did all this before turning 30. And his name was Johnny Cash. Walk the Line explores the early years of the music legend, an artist who transcended musical boundaries to touch people around the globe.
In 1955, a tough, skinny guitar-slinger who called himself J.R. Cash walked into the soon-to-be-famous Sun Studios in Memphis. It was a moment that would have an indelible effect on American culture. With his driving freight-train chords, steel-eyed intensity and a voice as deep and black as night, Cash sang blistering songs of heartache and survival that were gutsy, full of real life and unlike anything heard before.
That day kicked off the electrifying early career of Johnny Cash. As he pioneered a fiercely original sound that blazed a trail for rock, country, punk, folk and rap stars to come, Cash began a rough-and-tumble journey of personal transformation. In the most volatile period of his life, he evolved from a self-destructive pop star into the iconic “Man in Black” — facing down his demons, fighting for the love that would raise him up, and learning how to walk the razor-thin line between destruction and redemption.
The story of the young Johnny Cash and his incendiary love affair with June Carter Cash, comes to life in Walk the Line, directed by James Mangold (Heavy, Cop Land, Girl Interrupted, Identity) from a script by Mangold and Gill Dennis (Riders of the Purple Sage), based on Cash’s books Man in Black and Cash The Autobiography. The film is produced by Cathy Konrad (Citizen Ruth, Beautiful Girls, Scream, Cop Land, Girl Interrupted, Identity) and James Keach (The Stars Fell on Henrietta),and was developed for seven years with the close cooperation of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash before their deaths in 2003.
The story begins in Depression-era Arkansas, as the film traces the origins of Cash’s sound back to his beginnings as a sharecropper’s son; moves through his wild tours with rock and roll pioneers Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Waylon Jennings; and culminates in his unforgettable 1968 concert in Folsom Prison. He became the hottest artist of the day, outselling even the Beatles.
Walk the Line chronicles the birth of a new kind of American artist who had to move past raw anger, the ravages of addiction, and the temptations of stardom to discover the voice that would make him a hero to generations. Those early years encompass the themes that ran through Cash’s music and minimalist style: death, love, treachery, sin, hope and faith.
These production notes provided by 20th Century Fox.
Walk the Line
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Reese Witherspoon, Ginnifer Goodwin, Shelby Lynne, Hailey Anne Nelson
Directed by: James Mangold
Screenplay by: James Mangold, Gill Dennis
Release Date: November 18, 2005
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for some language, thematic material and depiction of drug dependency.
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $119,519,402 (64.1%)
Foreign: $66,919,481 (35.9%)
Total: $186,438,883 (Worldwide)