'Walk the Line' Q&A

Director James Mangold discusses bringing the Johnny Cash story to the big screen.

Feb  2 2006

James Mangold, director of the Johnny Cash biopic 'Walk the Line', spent several years working closely with Cash and his wife June Carter on the film's script before their deaths in 2003. The film draws a line from Cash's upbringing in Depression-era Arkansas to his marriage in 1968 to his fellow country music star. Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon play the couple.

Joaquin Phoenix told me last year that he never wants to watch your finished film. He couldn’t bear it.

He's unavoidably seeing bits and pieces but, yes, he runs out of the room whenever it starts. I understand, but it’s still so hard for me to believe that he won’t look at it. At the same time, it’s the truth – he hasn’t seen it.

He says that he's too scared of imitating himself in future films.

And he's very self-conscious. He's not going to see what he did well. He knows that, so in a way it's protective. He's said to me that he knows there are scenes where he thinks he's full of shit and he doesn't want to see them because he thinks it will be too painful. He's got very high standards for himself. He's an idealist.

How closely did you work with Cash himself on your script?

I met him in 1999 for the first time. Then we did tons of interviews and phone calls and I went to Tennessee and met with him and June several times. His autobiographies had huge holes in them that needed filling. The books didn't do the job. They were very pleasant, inspirational stories but they didn't contain the stuff that you could make scenes from and fill in the gaps in the movie. I needed that from him and June. The stuff in the books about the '50s and '60s was sketchy. I had to confront him with facts that I knew and stitch it together. Also, when he wrote his two autobiographies he didn't really dredge up his drug abuse and womanising. By the end of their lives, I think they were more comfortable – John particularly – with talking about it.

Did Cash and Carter enjoy the process of reminiscing?

They had fun – on some days. Sometimes John got worried that we'd be too dark or that we were taking him places in his life that he wasn't comfortable to talk about. I remember the last time I saw June alive. I'd just bought out-of-print recordings of her from a dealer in Michigan. I put them on my iPod and brought them to her. It was early 2003. I wanted her to listen to them and tell me everything that occurred to her about these songs. We had a great time and she loved telling me everything that was behind all this music. That evening she told me how she came to write 'Ring of Fire'.

It sounds like you left yourself little room for narrative licence.

No, I did. There's a bus scene in which Cash proposes to June which I just wrote, I made up. But I wrote it from the knowledge of them. I knew June had feared being consumed by him, that even after he got off drugs she feared that she'd spend the rest of her life being his caretaker or being second banana artistically to Johnny Cash all her life. Which in many ways she did. These are not things which a person with her own ego or sense of artistic destiny gives into easily. She was twice-divorced. Could she depend on him? I knew all these things and I wrote scenes around them.

What stage was the screenplay at when Cash and Carter died in 2003?

Very close to finished. It was done in that they'd each read it twice. They were pleased. I got vague notes from John on the first script. The funny thing was that the notes on the first were really helpful in getting them to crack open more information to me. They both thought it wasn't romantic enough, that it didn't deal enough with their courtship. I said that they were right, but only because they wouldn't fucking tell me anything! They were pretending it didn't happen because they were married to other people. I did another interview and John looked at June and told me for the first time about the time they slept together in Vegas. Before then, they'd always gone out of their way to make it seem that they never even touched each other until they were married. I told them that I didn't believe them.

Why did you decide to end your film with their marriage in 1968?

Everything came to a head then. Cash got off drugs, he gave the greatest concert of his life, he beat his depression, he married the woman he loved. And he became the Man in Black. There was an incredible sense of completion in that year.

'Walk the Line' opens tomorrow (February 3). To see our exclusive video interview with Joaquin Phoenix, click here.

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