Actor/ musician Waylon Payne plays ill-fated Nashville guitar genius Hank Garland in "Crazy."Favored Nations Entertainment
"Crazy" represents both a promotion and a demotion for Waylon Payne, an actor/musician who is the son of country performers Sammi Smith and Jody Payne, and the godson of Waylon Jennings.
Actor/ musician Waylon Payne plays ill-fated Nashville guitar genius Hank Garland in "Crazy."Favored Nations Entertainment
The film is a promotion because Payne is the star. He plays ill-fated Nashville guitar genius Hank Garland, who recorded classic songs with Elvis, Roy Orbison and Patsy Cline. Released in 1961, Cline's hit "Crazy" lends the film its title while also foreshadowing its hero's troubles.
The film also is a demotion, of sorts, in that Payne -- a good-looking guy who might have earned a studio contract in the heyday of Hollywood -- portrayed a much more famous and significant figure, Jerry Lee Lewis, in the Johnny Cash biopic, "Walk the Line."
"Crazy" suggests "Walk the Line" by way of "Frances," the film in which Jessica Lange starred as Frances Farmer, the strong-willed Hollywood actress who clashed with studio bosses and eventually was committed to a sanitarium and subjected to shock treatment.
The story begins in Nashville in 1945, where young Garland makes his Grand Ole Opry debut after some encouraging words from Hank Williams (played by guitar hero Steve Vai, one of the film's executive producers; "Elvis," "Conway Twitty" and "Bobby Helms" also make appearances).
Ten years later, Garland is an in-demand studio hotshot and a member of Cowboy Copas' touring band. "They say you're the best guitar player in Nashville," a flirtatious beauty tells Garland. He responds: "I'm the best guitar player in the world."
The movie presents Garland as a restless perfectionist with a yen for jazz who was increasingly frustrated by the assembly-line production, songwriting politics and exclusionary racial hiring practices of the Nashville music industry. Garland is shown as a man blind to skin color but attuned to talent; in one scene, an eavesdropping black hotel chambermaid nods approvingly as she hears him practice some jazz-blues licks copped from Wes Montgomery.
The film bounces between Hank's battles with his glamorous wife, Evelyn (Ali Larter), and the "Dixie Mafia" of studios, record companies and musicians' unions trying to control his destiny. "You like that thing more than me, don't you?" Evelyn demands, indicating Hank's signature "Sugarfoot" guitar. "No," he replies. "I've just known it longer."
Produced independently on a tight budget, "Crazy" is opening exclusively today in Memphis and Nashville after a successful run on the film festival circuit; its reception in the Tennessee music capitals may determine whether it expands to other theaters across the South and the rest of the country.
Directed by Rick Bieber and scripted by Bieber, Jason Ehlers and Brent Boyd, the movie deserves a shot. Like similar celebrity biopics, it offers the happy-sad pleasures of a soap opera for those unfamiliar with the central character-- career triumphs, romantic antics, family dust-ups, injuries and tragedies -- and fun moments of recognition (hey, is that Kitty Wells?) as well as frustrations for those already interested in the subject. The vintage decor, costumes, hairstyles and attitudes also are entertaining -- sort of like "Mad Men," with a country twang.
-- John Beifuss, 529-2394
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