Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake, a Gretsch G6122 1959 Chet Atkins Country Gentleman slinging guitarist.
Photo by Lorey Sebastian, courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Four-time Academy Award nominee Jeff Bridges stars as the richly comic, semi-tragic romantic anti-hero Bad Blake in the musical/drama film Crazy Heart from writer-director Scott Cooper. Bad Blake is a down-and-out country music singer/songwriter who tries to put his drinking and cheating ways behind him after starting a relationship with a young journalist, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. As he searches for salvation, Blake learns the hard way just how tough life can be on one man’s crazy heart.
As seen in the photo and video package (right), Bridges––who says he’s been playing music since he was a kid––is often spotted onstage in the film with a Gretsch G6122 1959 Chet Atkins Country Gentleman guitar.
On it, Bridges performs songs from the film’s soundtrack, produced by T-Bone Burnett––the same mastermind behind the Grammy-award winning O Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack.
Burnett’s involvement with the project is what convinced Bridges to take a second look at the script.
“When T-Bone and I started talking, he was saying the songs that he was going to choose for me to sing would be songs that were right in my pocket,” Bridges said in a video clip located on the movie’s official website. “He wasn’t going to force me to sing something that I wouldn’t be able to sing or that we would have to get somebody else to sing. So the songs we were looking for were songs that we all thought I could do, that were in my range, and also, (that) we would write the majority of the songs based on the script and my character so they would come right out of the story. They were very organic to the tale we were telling.”
The movie’s theme song “The Weary Kind” (co-written by Burnett and Ryan Bingham) fits right into that category, and is currently in the running for an Oscar for best original song.
Crazy Heart has also received Academy Award nominations for best actor and best supporting actress. The movie opened in over 450 theaters last Friday to the tune of rave reviews.
“Crazy Heart is blessed with so many marvelous moments, lovely lines and vivid characters. This is the finest, fullest work of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s career. And it revels in the glory of Jeff Bridges. A performance on a scale with the West’s wide open spaces.” – Joe Morgenstern, The Wall Street Journal
“A juicy, career-crowning role. Bridges – a master of subtle brilliance – plays the hell out of it.” – Rolling Stone
Crazy Heart will be featured at more than 100 additional theaters starting this Friday, Feb. 12.