Johnny Cash & The Simple Things In Life

by
R. O'DONNELL

"Hello, I'm Johnny Cash," says the man dressed in black, his guitar swung around his shoulder, draped behind his back. A genuine Country Western star that was as much about rock and roll as Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis, and he even dug Bob Dylan too. That was John R. Cash, the man that flips his guitar around, starts strumming, and breaks through the hoots and hollers singing Folsom Prison Blues.

Wish I could have been there, heard that landmark concert in the big house. Yeah, that would be a moment to remember. Would've been nice to watch Johnny's father Ray "eye" him from the wings or survey Cash introduce Glen Sherley, asking him to take a bow. He was the inmate who penned Greystone Chapel, the song Cash finished the concert with, and which was sadly omitted from the film.

Cash struggled with inner demons, sure, just like every other artist in the world. No big deal really. He's just one of the many in that regard, but his music, his lyrics, his baritone intonations, and as important, his revelation to make his family the band that backed his image up onstage, that's the story there to tell. The Carter Family, Country Western royalty that included daughter June were present when Cash swaggered onto that Folsom Prison stage in front of thousands of incarcerated cons. So were Marshall Grant (bass), W.S. Holland (drums), Carl and Luther Perkins (electric guitar), and The Statler Brothers doing vocals. Wow. But most of that was wiped away, the excuse of the 90-minute window, Hollywood's favorite lie.

Joaquin Phoenix plays Cash all subtle and complex; I've got no problems there. And Reese Witherspoon as June was enough to make me drool, but the truth, the truth just wasn't in the spotlight. Give us less of those fictitious conversations and more of his in-studio incantations or ripping it up onstage or hanging with the band eating tenderloin on a biscuit June cooked-up. Take us there, to the simplicity of a rebel's life, and his need to make the band his family up onstage. There's the story of Johnny Cash my father used to tell.

My dad was your average blue collar Joe. He had a handsome twelve-string guitar hanging on the wall. A tall lanky, square-jawed rebel that loved to sing that Country Western. Not to mention the stacks and stacks of Nashville in our livingroom. LPs like Willie Nelson's Stardust, Roger Miller's King of the Road, Tammy Wynette's Stand By Your Man, and Dolly Parton's Just Because I'm A Woman were just a few of the stereophonic viny's in our house. But it was Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison that dad listened to all the time. Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Eve my old man listened to that scratchy-old, fizz a-poppin' record croon The Green Green Grass of Home. He'd look at me and wink, drink his Miller Highlife, and nod his head in appreciation for the man dressed black on black. For like Johnny Cash, my father believed in the uncomplicated life. He left the intricate alone.

I got a sense my daddy wasn't by his lonesome. I think Cash touched a lot of men across America. Regular guys that understood his primal insolence to the bone. For after a bullet ripped a president's skull and Vietnam claimed the lives of many sons, everything was questionable. With that much anarchy about, a more tangible way of life was prayed for. That's what my dad and his buddies desired most. Make it yesterday, dear Lord.

So the movie Walk The Line missed the horseshoe (no "almost" in that game), and spiffed a story up that was way better black and white. But damn, that's what Hollywood does. A system run by bankers and get-rich-quick kids that toss minimal all to hell.

But I believe that Johnny Cash knew deep inside his soul, that life was getting way too complicated, way too thorny for the average Joe. So when he stepped onto that stage one cold day in January, 1968, to sing his ever-lovin' heart-out, he was recording for the everyman, a simpler way to go.

Johnny Depp is a brave man

by
R. O'DONNELL


Johnny Depp is a brave man. In an age where bravery is hard to find, let alone name, Johnny Depp is a brave man that has touched my heart specific. He has reached out and taken a single finger and gently brushed it against the beating of my spirit. He has done this as a writer. He has done this as an actor. He has done this as a director. But more importantly, he has done this as a man.

The Brave, written by Paul McCudden, Johnny Depp, and D.P. Depp (based on the novel by Gregory McDonald,) and nominated at the Cannes Film Festival for a Golden Palm for Depp's performance, reveals a world of poverty that we would rather forget about. Poverty that far exceeds material possessions but evolves into a deficiency of the human spirit; exhausted through years of oppression and then neglect. Whether that poverty touches a Native American named Raphael (Depp's Character) or a Mexican named Luis (Luis Guzm's character), it seeps into the soul and inevitably alters the mind like a bitter and dangerous drug.

Poverty is something most of us will never endure, and so to see it on the screen in front of us is as distant and incomprehensible as the violence also dripping crimson from the screen these days. Unless you've sat in a ramshackled trailer wondering how to feed your family while thinking prostitution might be a viable alternative to minimum wage, a film like The Brave is a far-flung pill to swallow. We just don't get it. We view it simply as a movie to be critiqued alongside King Kong and the 40 Year Old Virgin. A better life has made us jaded and somewhat numb around the edges.

The story is straightforward and sadly sinister, whereby a forlorn Native American Indian living on a garbage-heap/trailer park with his wife and kids agrees to be tortured to death for fifty thousand dollars. Marlon Brando is McCarthy, the philosophical producer of "snuff" films, delivering a performance reminiscent of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Director Depp has allowed the camera to seize what few really understood about Brando's acting technique: simply let the camera roll and it will capture a performance that is both original and profound. McCarthy is a fiend; an angel of death with real tears in his eyes as he delicately explains how suffering excruciating pain until death is a testament to one's worth. He is no different than a pornographer defending their occupation to exploit the sufferers of sexual misconduct. That is the McCarthy character, a man who takes advantage of the wounded and victimized. Deep down, he despises all human beings, and ultimately himself.

There are wonderful scenes, touching scenes, humorous, and deeply tragic as Depp allows us to watch unencumbered by traditional tricks-of-the-trade. What's left to see and experience is an eclectic community on the brink of obliteration living in the moment and dancing recklessly on and on. There is no glamour, no Hollywood sugarcoating, just the raw visual examples of everyday people trying so desperately to endure.

Some of my favorite moments where between Raphael and Father Stratton. Passionately portrayed by Clarence Williams III, an actor of extraordinary depth (and highly underrated), his being embodied the enormous struggle any organized religion has in helping the poor carry on, to endure through faith and assured salvation. Confined by the doctrines of the church promising an afterlife of true riches, Father Stratton can only give words that serve as Band-Aids on his parishioner's ripped and bleeding souls. For he too is neglected, on hands and knees scrubbing his pews that in the city not far away would be taken care of by scores of altar boys. Sadly-money rules in all places, even sacred.

Johnny Depp is a brave man, and his film a small and mighty testament to his valor. It is, as it may be with many a great artist's work, an uncomfortable reminder that we all walk the thin blue line, and that poverty and despair can tap us on the shoulder at any moment, and swiftly push us to the other side. That if we should find ourselves there, living in the squalor, that we might be warriors for our families, and at all costs, willing to be The Brave.

I Remember John...

By
R. O'DONNELL


A buddy just sent me an iCard with a picture of John and Yoko inscribed, "we miss you John."

It made me really sad. I couldn't help the tears. I remember all the hoopla that was the Beatles. The yeah-yeah days when they first arrived - all the girls on my block in Philadelphia picking their favorite in the band. I remember lunch boxes, buttons, and Saturday morning cartoons. I remember John saying we're as big as Jesus Christ and their records being burned in piles of protest throughout suburbia. I remember their switching gears, pop songs dissolving into folk rock about run away girls, "Rocky Raccoon," and "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band." I remember weekend sleepovers with friends, listening to the long version of "Hey Jude," while making-out with someone's flower child. I remember their revolution/evolution into the world of lava lamps and psychedelics. I remember the secret messages if you played LPs backwards, about burying Paul, and I am the walrus. I remember my oldest brother waiting for their next LP as if he was going to shoot it into his arm. I remember the break-ups, the harsh words, and the bitterness between old friends Paul and John. I remember the goody Linda love thing while the black-sheeps got all bare-assed for the press. I remember John's struggle kicking cigarettes, and wanting to be a stay at home dad. I remember the solo sound of the rebels that lived in the castle Dakota on my block. I remember being 20-something and dropping acid just to Imagine. And I remember meeting John and Yoko on Seventh Avenue in New York. One week later he was gone.

The Beatles were the music that carved into our consciousness everything from wacky fashion trips to earnest war protests. And so now I get this silly reminder that I'm old enough to have been there, old enough to have thought when the announcement came over the television in Gleason's Bar on seventh avenue, that John was dead, that it had to be a lie. A really awful lie. I just talked with him, stood right next to him, talking doggies in the window at this pet store on our block.

I'm heading toward my apartment on 72nd street, the West side, my starving artists days, and I see this woman with gorgeous long black hair flowing down around her bum. I was young and stupid, so I made my way to meet her. I'm not even thinking about the tall lanky guy standing next to her. There's enough space for me to slip in there between them. So I did. They're chatting away about the puppies in the window when I join in, pointing and cooing like a jerk. I glanced to my right and noticed the woman was more mature than I had expected - I thought she was a teenager from behind. Then, I get all electrified because I instantly knew that standing to my left was John Lennon. Omigawd. I desperately acted cool. And to my delight they simply kept on chatting it up about pet care or whatever. John with his accent up and down and all sing-songy just like he was famous for, and I was mesmerized for good.

The whole thing lasted only minutes, but I walked away assured; felt I handled that pretty good, leaving them alone. They lived in my neighborhood, so I saw them walking hand in hand many times before. They often took rides in the horse-drawn carriages along Central Park and one time Yoko even sent a dish of food to our block party, but this was real up close and personal - he was a Beatle after-all.

Weeks later, I'm eating burgers and drinking wine with this pretty gal I just met and the television above our heads spouts its poison. Everyone stood up. The place was completely still. Some muffled screams, a few quiet sobs, but this could not be happening. It made no sense at all.

Later, I walked by the Dakota, before it was too heavily guarded and roped off. It was already happening though. The world was in mourning. The city felt so cold, a little sinister than before. It was dreadful. Really very sad. And I couldn't help but remember standing between the lost legend and his woman, wondering why'd they let me get so close? Just people I guess. A couple of lovers on a stroll. Easy going, no big deal, just watching the wheels go round and round.