IMAGE IS LOADING, PLS BE PATIENT.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

UPDATE!! please look at the websites that i have put on my blog. they are only the best, very professional. not some cruddy-millions-of-pop-ups kinda sites. please have a look. they are all of my favorite ppl. thanks. enjoy!

<3 Me

ps: They're all under CHATS in the right column! :) (thanks)
pss: some are in different languages but you'll get the gist of it

4:22 PM

I will never be with you.



Hey Y'all~
I'm going iver to my Aunt Lori's house on sunday and staying there until monday. She lives in the city. Don't you LOVE the city. I absolutly LOVE it. Y'all wanna here my DREAM day? ok! ok, it's starts out that i wake up in my (aunt's) house. I absolutly LOVE my aunt's house. It looks like a doll house. It's so cute and absoluty PERFECT for one or two ppl. Anyway, i wake up and i look out the absolutly perfect window to see a day that i LOVE in the city. It's cloudy and kinda chilly and looks like it's gonna rain. I love the rain. I'm not one of those ppl that are all dark and emo, i just like days like that. Anyway, so i go downstairs and i make a cup of coffee and then i go back upstairs, take a shower, get dressed, check my emails, grab the leash's and we're outta there. I'm talking about my aunt's dog, golden retriever Sweetpea and my boston terrier Spike. We get into the car and go to this perfect cafe or starbucks or w/e and i grab coffee and a muffin and i eat outside w/ my dogs. Then I take the dogs down by the water and just let 'em loose. look at them run! and then after about an hour or so, we drive to the perfect little bookstore and look at books. after about 30-1 hr in there we go to another coffee place and i sit down and read the new book or magazine i just got. Isn't that the most PERFECT day!! it is to ME!! i love that idea!! anway, gonna go. talk to y'all later! love ya all!!

<3 Me

9:18 AM

I will never be with you.



Friday, May 26, 2006

hey everybody.
Like my new background? LEAVE COMMENTS!! I'm so tired. We (Me and Molly) just came back from "Just My Luck". It was good. I despise Lindsey Lohan but she's a good actress, i just can't stand her in person. Anyway, gonna go. I'm SOO tired and i have a POUNDING headache. Have a great weekend you guys!! Love ya ALL!! ciao


<3 Me

9:29 PM

I will never be with you.



Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Interview 4

Newsday.com
By John AndersonNovember 18, 2005

Joaquin Phoenix sings, plays and acts his way into a career-making role.
LOS ANGELES -- 'The most uncomfortable person in his own skin I'd ever seen," is how one former studio employee recalls Joaquin Phoenix, from the days of the "Gladiator" publicity campaign. But why should that be a surprise? What better reason to become an actor? What more compelling motivation to inhabit another's persona - most recently, for Phoenix, spending six months burying himself in a role for which even he admits he was physically unsuited?

Along the way, he learns his subject's music. His mannerisms. He sings all the numbers in a movie about a musical icon and even writes his own songs, just to learn what it was like. That he's now comfortable in the skin of a man he never met doesn't seem so odd.

A legend's trademark"There was a point during the filming," said Reese Witherspoon, who plays June Carter Cash to Phoenix's Johnny Cash in the upcoming biopic "Walk the Line," "when Joaquin said, "Hello ... I'm Johnny Cash...'" It was the country legend's trademark intro. "It spooked me out," she said.

Right now, the economy-size Phoenix, in a hooded red sweatshirt and baggy jeans, is walking around a Beverly Hills hotel room in Johnny Cash's imaginary shoes."It was difficult, the way that John walked," he said, standing up now to better impersonate Cash, "because he was so big he didn't bend his legs, like he just moved around."

Phoenix pivots on his heels, sort of teetering, stiff-legged, to demonstrate. "And there was something to the way he held the guitar, something commanding about it. And that's so foreign to me. It really gets down to the way he held the guitar, this commanding thing - which I don't feel naturally. But you find out what that process is. And get comfortable with it."

Phoenix, who has never before held such a dominating role in a major motion picture - his filmography includes "To Die For," "Gladiator," "Quills" and "The Village" - certainly isn't comfortable with all the non-acting duties that accompany starring in a Hollywood movie.

Oscar talk
But if he was feeling any pressure preparing to play Johnny Cash (he admits he was "downright terrified") with the film opening, the attention will likely intensify. His performance has already been talked about as one of the best of the year. The Oscar chatter is widespread and noisy. And it's a role rife with pitfalls - of both the actorly and audience-related variety. The movie industry used to ask, "How will it play in Peoria?" Now it wants to know, "How will it play in Nashville?"

Pretty well, so far: John Carter Cash, the son of the couple at the heart of the picture - and the movie's executive producer - has thanked Phoenix for his portrayal. But fears about how the movie will be received are well founded: Cash was a towering figure, a rustic, visionary giant who straddled musical genres; he is one of only five performers inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Country Music Hall of Fame. (The others are Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee, Chet Atkins and Hank Williams). His 1968 "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison" album was bought by everyone from George Wallace rednecks to Abbie Hoffman hippie freaks. So bringing him to the screen?
Impossible.
Maybe. "The thing is, John means something different to everybody," Phoenix explained. "So in some ways there's comfort in that, because he wasn't just one thing - even now, I couldn't tell you who John was in a sentence.
"Reese told me something," he said. "I was saying that John didn't really speak in metaphors and was really straightforward about his approach to music and how he wrote songs. In some sense that's true, but not really: Folsom Prison was a metaphor, Reese said, and the point is every time I say something about John I say, 'You know what? I don't know if that's right.' He was a really complex person."
And Phoenix says he found that liberating, "because I wasn't after one thing."

Director James Mangold said he first talked to producer Cathy Konrad about doing a Cash bio-pic back in 1996. The film they ended up with carries echoes of "Ray" (a brother dies young, and it haunts Cash forever) and, inevitably, "Coal Miner's Daughter." But it also has two performances that eclipse the flaws in the structure, performances that meet the criteria for greatness: When it's over, you can't imagine anyone else in the roles.

Hold the guitar right
When Mangold met Cash, the singer's "biggest concern was that whoever played him didn't hold his guitar like it was a baby." It was Konrad who put Phoenix's picture in front of Mangold, who was looking for a "modern James Dean." The film, he said, was modeled in a way after "East of Eden" - a story of brothers, one seemingly perfect, one not; a girl whom the lesser of the brothers thinks is too good for him. At the same time, Mangold said, "It's really a happy story. "But how do you make a movie about a guy whose trademark is authenticity, and then dub it?"

So Phoenix and Witherspoon both rehearsed for six months - an unheard of amount of time - before shooting started, taking voice lessons, learning the music and preparing to record it all themselves (The real Johnny and June are heard over the end credits. Otherwise, it's all Phoenix and Witherspoon). "He's more of a natural musician than I am," Witherspoon said. "He was playing, he was writing songs - which was great, because it brought something out in him that was there. "But I only had to take on a fraction of what Joaquin had to do," she said. "Twenty-six songs, and step into a legend's shoes?"

Phoenix had one encounter with Cash, or so he's told. "My mom actually told me that when I was very young we went to a Johnny Cash concert," he said, "and I don't remember it at all. But his songs are the kind that, as I started listening to his music, it was 'Oh right! I know that song.' And I remember hearing, when I was young, from my uncle and my father about 'old JC' - 'Remember when we were at the JC show?' They referenced him as JC, like it was someone that you know."

But that was kind of the effect Cash had on people, Phoenix said. "People who didn't know him felt like they did," he said. "It's amazing, because even when he was very successful, he was playing on the back of flatbed trucks at county fairs. Unheard of now. The amount of connection he had with the audience inspired and sustained him; I think when he suffered" - Cash had well-documented problems with drink and pills - "it was when he grew disconnected from that and I think through the prison, Folsom Prison, he reconnected in away with an audience and remembered his voice and where he came from. Because it's easy to lose track of what initially inspires your artistic endeavors."

Phoenix is a thoughtful man, whose enthusiasm for Cash seems to suppress a natural reticence. Ordinarily, he says, "When a movie's over, I want it be -- over." But "Walk The Line" is following him around.
"I don't think John became a songwriter for fame and fortune," he said. "Nowadays, kids who want to make it big want to make a video - they want to be on a video surrounded by good girls. John, he wanted to be the voice that had provided him such comfort growing up, the voice coming out of the [radio] speaker that sat on his Mom's table. I think that was what was most appealing to him. I don't think he thought about touring; I don't think he thought about live performances. When he was young, he was fascinated by this thing that had taken him away."

7:37 PM

I will never be with you.



Interview 1

Interview 1

The Cinema Source
By Dan Portnoy
November 26, 2005

Joaquin Phoenix, it's not a name you easily disregard. It has flash, pizzazz, it just sounds like the name of someone who should be in show business. And it just so happens that acting is the business, and the talented man attached to the name is not one you'll soon forget. Joaquin made his appearance on screen in the mid 1980's, however many remember him most as Commodus, the sinister emperor with a thing for his sister and a vendetta for Russell Crowe in the 2000 hit, Gladiator. This year Phoenix steps into the shiny black shoes of the Man in Black himself, rock and roll legend Johnny Cash in the new film, Walk the Line.

When you tell the story of a man like Johnny Cash, there are a number of roads that can be taken. Walk the Line chronicles the life of Cash from his early life in Arkansas to how he got his start in music and above all, the relationship with his wife, June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). Throughout the film, the hardships and triumphs of Cash's career are touched upon and the audience is able to become closer with Johnny Cash the man rather than just Johnny Cash the celebrity. Phoenix's portrayal of the rock and roll icon makes a resounding impression as an emotional testament to the life of one of country music’s most unique and influential stars.

When first stepping into the role of Johnny Cash, Phoenix had some serious preparation ahead of him. "Honestly, I knew so little about John's life so it was amazing to get into the research." Joaquin dedicated himself entirely to becoming the man, and doing justice to his character. This of course meant many sleepless nights of practice and rehearsal and research. The likeness of Phoenix to Cash in the final product of the film is remarkable. But being the kind of actor he is, Joaquin always thought he could improve or do something that would allow him to embody the character even more. "It's really hard to tell when you get there. I never really have had the experience in acting where I’m like 'yes I’m there, I got this nailed.' I feel like every day you're constantly striving to work on it." Well folks if you want my opinion, I think he got it, particularly with his ability to successfully recreate that distinctive Johnny Cash sound.

What it all boils down to for Joaquin as he researched and sang and acted and sang some more, was that the root of Johnny cash was his music and his lyrics. "That to me was the gateway into discovering John. I feel like I found the speaking voice through the singing voice and really learned about him through his music." As he listened to old albums and old recordings that Johnny made, he was able to see his growth as a singer and as a man. In the film this growth, his gradual ascension to stardom, is depicted and becomes a very pivotal aspect in telling the story. "It’s interesting to see the development of his music and from the beginning how truthful he was. And while he hadn’t developed the man in black persona [yet], there was still something very unique about his music and about his lyrics…he really spoke from the heart."

Heart was something that Cash was never short on. In fact, the heart holds a major part in telling the story. And if you’re wondering what I mean by heart, I mean the love shared between John and June. Before the Walk the Line project was put into the works, and before Johnny gave the project his blessing, Joaquin had chance to meet the Cash family. After they had eaten a hearty meal, everyone sat around as Johnny began to strum his guitar with that one of a kind "twang" associated with his style. Johnny then turned to June and asked her to sing with him, On the River Jordan as Joaquin recalls. "I’m cynical about duets, and married people singing songs, cause think of Sonny and Cher. And there was such truth and honesty and beauty and you really got the sense that this is what they’re really like." The spirituality of their relationship, the purity of it was something that Joaquin took away from their time spent together and was later able to use in preparing for the role of Cash. "It was amazing meeting him. What I really took from it, what really helped me with the film was seeing John and June together and this very special dynamic they had… For me what I was most surprised about was their relationship and their enduring love and their romance which I knew so little about, which was unbelievably inspirational and beautiful and true." This love provided the foundation for the film and gave it strength and passion from beginning to end.

So, where to next for Joaquin Phoenix? Only time will tell. As for now, Walk the Line will be playing to audiences throughout the nation, and the music and the story of Johnny Cash will be the topic of conversation for years to come. "Whenever I listen to John’s music, I feel like I’m right there with him." And I have a feeling that from this point on when people think of the life and music of Johnny Cash, they’ll not only see Johnny, they’ll see Joaquin Phoenix as well.

7:11 PM

I will never be with you.



Interview 3

Seattlepi.com
By Betsy Pickle
November 19, 2005

Joaquin Phoenix isn't sure how far back he goes with Johnny Cash. "I think I have a memory of driving in a car and hearing 'Folsom Prison Blues,' and I'm not exactly sure whether I made that up or not," says Phoenix, who plays Cash in "Walk the Line."

The film portrays Cash from his childhood through his landmark performance at Folsom Prison in 1968. The film is a tribute both to Cash's trailblazing work and to his great love for second wife June Carter Cash, played by Reese Witherspoon.

While Phoenix didn't begin the project as a devoted Cash fan, he quickly connected with the legend's songs."There's a real honesty and simplicity to John's music that I respond to," he says. He compares Cash's work to that of one of his "all-time favorites," John Lennon."John's music for me is a visceral experience," says Phoenix, 31. "I right away was impressed with him as a lyricist. He manages to convey so much with so little."

"Walk the Line" had been in development for several years before Phoenix came on board, with Cash's approval. Cash was a fan of the actor's Oscar-nominated work in "Gladiator" and through a mutual friend invited Phoenix to dinner in Los Angeles once, nearly four years ago. Cash died in September 2003, four months after his wife passed away.

In playing Cash, Phoenix says, he tried not to be cowed by the larger-than-life image. "Initially I, like ... most people, just (got) caught up in the idea of the legend ... of Johnny Cash," he says by phone from Los Angeles. "Everybody on the set had an idea of what Johnny Cash should be. So you begin sifting. Everyone that you meet that knew him will want to put their 2 cents in, and say, 'John used to always do this ...' That can be difficult because you have to own it at some point."

Phoenix didn't just act the part of Cash, he learned to play guitar, sing and write songs because director James Mangold thought it was crucial for all the actors to be believable as musicians and for their performances to be heard in the film. Phoenix and Witherspoon trained with music producer T-Bone Burnett to learn to use their voices and their instruments.

Music helped him to bond with Witherspoon, he says, but they still did most of their acting preparation on their own. "We went through the exact same process together in terms of working with T-Bone in the studio," he says. Approaching the music was a starting point."I'm not really sure what her (acting) process is -- I don't think she knows mine -- because usually it's such a personal thing. Most of my work is done alone. That's where I do all of my rehearsals. "While you get together and you rehearse with another actor and the director, you're just stumbling through stuff, talking about ideas, theorizing. But the actual practice of things I do alone."

Eager to follow older brother River (who died in 1993) into acting, Phoenix made his film debut at 12 in "SpaceCamp" in 1986. The more adult phase of his career began with "To Die For" in 1995. He has worked steadily for the past decade in a mix of independent and studio films such as "Inventing the Abbotts," "Clay Pigeons," "The Yards," "Gladiator," "Quills," "Buffalo Soldiers," "Signs," "The Village" and "Ladder 49." Phoenix doesn't like to watch his own movies, and he doesn't spend much time watching anyone else's, either."I like the medium a lot," he says. "But I don't like going with groups of people to watch a movie. I don't like the collective energy of viewing a film. I think it's probably the appeal for most people, but I don't like my emotions to be swayed by a crowd."I have a DVD player, but I don't watch that many contemporary movies. I think I keep watching the movies that I've always watched. I'm a big Woody Allen fan. I watch Woody Allen movies all the time."

5:27 PM

I will never be with you.



Interview 2

Entertainment Weekly
by Chris Willman
November 18, 2005

Telling the story of Johnny and June Carter Cash -- In ''Walk the Line,'' Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon revive the harmony of the songbird legends On a sweltering summer day in Mississippi, the cast and crew of Walk the Line are on location inside one of the Tunica area's large-scale barge casinos, tricked out to resemble the Mint in Las Vegas in the 1960s. It's a performance scene in which Joaquin Phoenix is playing Johnny Cash the way America loves and remembers him best: as a pill-popping, flop-sweating, emaciated, unhinged rock & roll wreck.

Well, maybe it's only a small cadre of rockabilly cultists who prefer to think of him as the hopped-up maniac who'd knock down doors and kick out Opry footlights. More fans will hold to comforting memories of Cash as a genial father figure, stoic balladeer, champion of the American Indian, defender of the flag, even frequent Billy Graham Crusade guest. But most of that came after the hell-raising years, and it wasn't from nothing that June Carter saved him.''He'll be out any second, folks!'' Reese Witherspoon, as Carter, chirps at an audience of extras. The band marks time: boom-chicka-boom. Eventually, Phoenix runs limping onto the stage, launching into ''I Got Stripes'' like a man with a train full of amphetamines to catch. Witherspoon looks alarmed, and she isn't necessarily pretending: In take after take, Phoenix has insisted on bumping his leg on an amplifier as he trots on stage, to appear all the more believably stoned. He's injured his leg badly enough that earlier I glimpsed him backstage pressing an ice pack to his knee. On top of that, each take has him falling unconscious midverse, and Phoenix isn't the kind of actor to pass out gingerly.

''I got chains, chains around my feet...'' he sings, ''and them chains, them chains, they're about to drag me down....'' And he is down — oof! — this time falling onto the acoustic guitar strapped Cash-style to his back. Curtains close and a voice comes over the PA saying that it is now a ''closed set.'' Meaning that if Phoenix is going to impale himself on a guitar or develop a fatal clot in his leg today, someone figures it'd be better to not have any note-taking witnesses.

You might figure that someone is Phoenix. Word is that he only wants to be called ''J.R.'' (Cash's actual given legal name) on set, so maybe it follows that he doesn't want anyone in nonperiod clothes in his sight lines while he bangs his body to kingdom come. But on the drive back up to Memphis, the cell phone rings. ''Joaquin just wants you to know that he enjoyed having you on the set,'' a publicist relays, ''and didn't have any problem with you being there.''

There's something positively Cashlike in Phoenix's commitment to living — or at least performing — on the edge. (The actor recently completed a stint in rehab for alcohol abuse.) But like Cash, he's also mortified that this intensity might put anyone out or make him seem like a diva. ''Ah, geez,'' he moans, 15 months later, when the issues of getting into character come up. As for being called ''J.R.,'' ''I'm embarrassed about it now. But when I heard 'Joaquin,' it just didn't feel right. It's not a brilliant method. It's simply that I don't know what I'm doing, and I use all the help I can get. It's an act of desperation.''

Phoenix winces at the memory of a photo shoot he did in Memphis, in character, with a photographer who'd often shot the real J.R. back in the day. ''And he was shooting me outside Sun Studio, and these people drove by and yelled out, 'Hey, Mr. Cash!' And this photographer was like: Oh, Jesus, this f---ing idiot, this acting punk, being called Mr. Cash... He wanted to kill me.'' A pause. ''I understood.''

Think about it: in the 20th Century, there was arguably no other performing duo so publicly in love — for so long — as Johnny and June, who wed in 1968 after a decade of yearning and forestalling, and were inseparable until their deaths just four months apart 35 years later. You'd assume Walk the Line would have been a movie studio's dream — particularly with a director, Girl, Interrupted's James Mangold, who'd overseen Oscar-caliber performances; a tight $28 million budget; and the commitment of Phoenix and Witherspoon, who'd signed on for a fraction of their usual fees. Yet ''the studios viewed it as nostalgia,'' says producer Cathy Konrad, recalling the reaction when she and Mangold first made the rounds. ''A lot of people in Hollywood view John as 'country,' and then ask, 'Does country sell?''' In other words, great idea for a Cracker Barrel DVD exclusive, but we'll pass.

Mangold tried to play down the country and instead ''pitch the movie to studios as 'the birth of rock & roll.' Then you realize they don't know what the f--- that means,'' he says, ''because to them, [early] rock & roll is Aerosmith.'' Mangold also tried to explain what he saw as parallels to East of Eden, which ''helped us visualize how young the movie would be: not [latter-day] John Cash, the strapping, barrel-chested priest in black, but a young guy with James Dean's energy.'' Which went over as well as that ''birth of rock'' angle.

Getting Walk the Line made had been an obsession for Mangold and Konrad — who are husband and wife — ever since they first worked together on Cop Land, when the director got geeky and lent his bride-to-be Cash's voluminous Bear Family boxed sets. They envisioned something that was less about musical ambition and more a love story, full of father-son shame and romantic redemption. But producer James Keach owned the movie rights to Cash's life story — having befriended the family after the singer appeared on Dr. Quinn with Keach's wife, Jane Seymour — and had spent years trying to get his own film made. In 1999, the two parties effected a merger, and Sony bought into their idea — only to opt out, Konrad speculates, after Michael Mann's high-profile 2001 biopic, Ali, failed to live up to hyped expectations.

Fox finally took it on in 2003, though it remained a low-budget picture that Konrad calls ''the little engine that could.'' Elizabeth Gabler, the head of Fox 2000, doesn't gloat too much at having seen what the other majors missed. ''I can only assume they thought a country music icon might give the picture a domestic profile, as opposed to an international one. They may not have realized that people love Johnny Cash all over the world.''

The delays gave the filmmakers a few extra years to befriend Cash and Carter and prod them for previously unchronicled personal details they could use in the script, down to the first time they slept together. Son (and exec producer) John Carter Cash admits there's stuff in the screenplay he hadn't heard. ''My parents never told me that my mother threw beer bottles at my father and his friends one morning,'' he says, surmising, ''If my mother threw beer bottles, she had a pretty good reason.''

It's a fluke of timing that suddenly musical biopics are back in: Last year, of course, everybody loved Ray. Walk the Line bears many structural similarities (both subjects suffer lasting guilt over a brother's childhood death; both movies climax with detox scenes in the late '60s). But while brother Ray loved his women, Johnny was deeply in love with a woman, and some think that romantic arc is why Cash's story might have even broader cinematic appeal. Also, where the capable Jamie Foxx lip-synched to Charles' classic tracks, the actors in Walk the Line did their own singing, blending prerecordings and live-on-set vocals. ''Otherwise,'' says Mangold, ''we'd be making this kind of effects movie, where any time a musical thing is about to happen, 19 buttons and wheels and pulleys have to be pulled. That seemed antithetical to everything John and June were.'' Mangold and Konrad enlisted music producer T Bone Burnett (a Grammy winner for O Brother, Where Art Thou?) to lead Phoenix and Witherspoon through three and a half months of daily lessons, rehearsals, and recording.

''I took this project on defensively,'' Burnett explains, ''because Johnny Cash is such a pure, Walt Whitmanesque American figure that to have a cleaned-up or slick movie representation of him out there for all time was a horrible thought.'' (Burnett has worked on some messy movies himself, like the Jerry Lee Lewis story Great Balls of Fire!, ''a horrible experience'' from which he had his name removed.)

Mangold and Konrad had long imagined Phoenix (for his James Dean appeal) and Witherspoon (the Southern connection) in these roles. But there was a certain degree of bluffing going on with the studios, since they'd never screen-tested or, more important, soundbooth-tested their leads. ''Jim and I played a good game, because we didn't know if Reese and Joaquin could sing,'' says Konrad. ''The studio asked us, and we said, 'Yeah, they're great!' Because they had to be.

'' Hello, I'm not Johnny Cash. Phoenix walks into the Chateau Marmont absent the ramrod posture he carried back on the set. The baritone is history too. His speech has always been a bit nasal — it wouldn't have been nearly as amusing if his Gladiator villain had used a deeper, more confident voice to express his ''vexed''-ness — but today his chops are really up in his head and not down in his chest. ''Sorry, I shouldn't shake,'' he explains, keeping his hands to himself. ''I've got a cold.'' Needless to say, there's no trusty Martin strapped across his back. Fifteen months ago, Phoenix said, ''I almost feel more comfortable now with a guitar than not.'' Today? ''It's like everything that I do,'' he says. ''When I did Gladiator, I thought that I would carry a sword with me everywhere. When I did Ladder 49, I didn't want to let go of my turnout gear, and I didn't believe that I could go through life without smelling smoke. With this, I played the guitar all the time, and then left it. I picked it up a couple weeks ago and realized I'd forgotten how to make an A-minor.''

Same with Witherspoon's autoharp? ''Oh yes, honey, it's been collectin' dust for about 18 months,'' she says. Nor does she desire to keep crooning, even though ''people have started calling, apparently, from Nashville, about do I want to do [a record]? But I'd be embarrassed to do that to people.'' (Hey, if Sissy Spacek could cut a well-regarded country album a few years after getting her Coal Miner's Daughter Oscar, maybe Witherspoon shouldn't rule it out.) Witherspoon at least had a slight musical leg up on her costar: While Phoenix knew little about Cash prior to getting the script, she'd played Mother Maybelle Carter in her fourth-grade play and, as an ex-Nashvillian, knew her country music. Then again, she had some trauma to overcome. ''My only other singing experience was in summer camp. They told me how awful I was, and that I should never try to sing but just be an actor. I'd really taken that to heart,'' she says. ''Jim said, 'Just try, and we'll see where it goes from there.' And I'm such a sucker for 'just give it a try,' because I'm a mom. I make my kids try everything.'' Still, she says, ''we did this for four months, trying to look natural doing what they did for 40 years. We'd just go backstage after a [concert] scene and shake.'' Witherspoon describes her offscreen dialogue with Phoenix going like this: '''I'm nervous.' 'I'm more nervous.' 'No, I'm more nervous.' 'Shut up, I'm nervous.''

Rehearsing to the point that the musicianship felt second nature was key, because nearly all the stage scenes are also pivotal dramatic sequences, ripe with telling looks. Says Mangold, ''I wanted viewers to feel what it was like to be on stage, as opposed to out in the audience. For the 10 years that these two really couldn't be together'' — because one or both were married to others at the time, and then because of his addictions — ''the only place they were together was in front of thousands of people. Being a stage duo gave them permission to have their greatest intimacy there. People imagined they were a real couple for a long time before they were.''

Walk the Line toes the line between being a singular biopic and a true two-character piece. The filmmakers admit that zeroing in on the romance provided narrative focus for Cash when, otherwise, they would have had too sprawling a personality to contend with — a persona that seemed to have managed to be all things to all people, beloved by conservatives and liberals, secularists and saints, hicks and slickers. Says Burnett, ''Johnny Cash really became his own version of America, full of all the things America's full of: destructive...violent...drug-addicted...kind...generous...stupid...brilliant.'' He laughs. ''If you use that, maybe leave off stupid.''

The famously candid Cash, who inducted himself into the ''Fool's Hall of Fame'' in an early song, probably wouldn't object. And these risk-taking actors can relate to his audacity. ''When you don't have control of your voice,'' says Witherspoon, ''anything can come out. You can really make a fool of yourself.'' Or, as she and Phoenix prove, you may just manage to walk the line.

5:18 PM

I will never be with you.



Saturday, May 13, 2006

projects

RUMOURED PROJECTS

Reese's name has been attached to tens of different projects in the past few years, both as an actress and producer. She is next to take on Penelope but what is to come after is yet unknown. Below is information on projects that has been mentioned in the press recently and are assumed to be more or less active. If you have further information about the status of these projects, please feel free to contact us.

Our Family Troubles
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2005
Universal Pictures has acquired Don Winston's script Our Family Troubles and will develop the drama as a starring vehicle for Reese Witherspoon and her Type A Films. Witherspoon and her Type A Films partner Jennifer Simpson will produce. The drama, which will get a new title, casts Witherspoon as a first-time mother so plagued by unexplained phenomena that she doubts her own sanity. When she returns to her Tennessee home, she fixates on the legend of the Bell Witch and becomes convinced the evil spirit is intent on harming her son. U senior veep Holly Bario will oversee the film.
Source Variety, December 2005
Links IMDb

The Reckoning
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2003, 2005
Originally announced in 2003 and brought back to headlines in 2005. Witherspoon is developing the dramatic thriller The Reckoning through her Type A Films as a possible starring vehicle. The story centers on a photojournalist who arrives in Cambodia to cover the U.S. military search for the remains of an American pilot shot down during the Vietnam War. The book, written by Jeff Long, was published in 2004. Ted Tally wrote the screenplay, which is currently out to directors. There is a movie I am working on for Paramount called The Reckoning about a New York Times photojournalist that goes to Cambodia to look for MIA soldiers from the Vietnam War. We are trying to get it going now. I have no idea about the logistics yet, Reese said in November 2005.
Source Hollywood Reporter, November 2005
Links IMDb

Sports Widow
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2002, 2004
Originally announced in 2002 and brought back to headlines in 2004. Witherspoon to produce and play the lead. A woman has lost her husband to televised sports events. Reese plays one such wife who decides to take back her life and ends up one-upping her football-obsessed husband by becoming an expert on the sport.
Source Hollywood Reporter, April 2004
Links IMDb

Around the World in 80 Dates
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2005
Universal Pictures has optioned the film rights to Jennifer Cox's memoir and Jeff Rake has signed on to write the adaptation says. The book is part travel guide and part relationship primer, combining dating realities with romantic settings. A bestseller in England, it tells the story of a British travel writer's attempt to find her soulmate. She sent her profile and her specs for a soulmate to contacts around the world and traveled the globe, going on dates with the top 80 candidates in 16 countries. Reese Witherspoon's Type A production company is producing and she will have first crack to star in the film if the script is to her liking.
Source Hollywood Reporter, May 2005
Links IMDb

One for the Money
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2004
Reese Witherspoon's Type A Films shingle is developing Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum mystery novel One for the Money as a possible starring vehicle for Witherspoon at Columbia. Wendy Finerman, who's been developing the project for years, will produce along with Type A. Story concerns a down-on-her-luck native of Trenton, N.J., who convinces her bail bondsman cousin to give her a shot as a bounty hunter. Her first assignment is to track down a former cop on the run for murder -- the same man who broke her heart years before. Col is seeking a writer to adapt the novel. Amy Baer is overseeing for the studio.
Source Variety, November 2004
Links IMDb

The Dog Walker
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2004 Universal Pictures has acquired The Dog Walker, the new novel by former Dell editor-in-chief Leslie Schnur. The film will be adapted by How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days' scribes Kristen Buckley and Brian Regan and produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Type A Films partners Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Simpson. Since the project is a romantic comedy revolving around a young woman, Witherspoon will get first crack at the title role of a gal who's laid off from her publishing job and fills in for a pal who walks dogs for the Gotham elite. Gig allows her to snoop through their apartments, observe their lives and figure out what she wants to do with hers.
Source Variety, July 2004
Links IMDb

The Proposal
Reese Witherspoon as Unknown
ANNOUNCED in 2004
Pairing up for the first time, Reese Witherspoon has partnered with Revolution Studios to co-produce romantic comedy The Proposal, in which she will star. Project follows a couple as they plan their wedding. Witherspoon will produce the project through her Type A Films production shingle. Company developed the laffer with Nicole Eastman, who will pen the script. Revolution partner Todd Garner will oversee the project as executive producer with Denise Decker. "Reese and I have been looking to find something to work on together for a long time, and we are excited that we finally have that opportunity," Garner said.
Source Variety, April 2004
Links IMDb

Bunny Lake Is Missing
Reese Witherspoon as Annie Lake
ANNOUNCED in 2003
Witherspoon's Type A Films is developing a remake of the 1965 Otto Preminger film which was based on a novel by Evelyn Piper. Reese would play Annie Lake, an American woman who has just moved to England with her four-year-old daughter Bunny. Dropping her daughter off at a new school, Annie leaves Bunny alone to wait for her teacher. When she returns Bunny is missing and nobody seems to remember her. She calls the police to report her missing, but when she looks for a photograph she's shocked to find that all of Bunny's things have suddenly vanished from their apartment. There's no trace of Bunny Lake and the police begin to wonder if she ever really existed.
Source IGN, October 2003
Links IMDb

Whiteout
Reese Witherspoon as Carrie Stetko
ANNOUNCED in 2002
Witherspoon will star in the pic, which Wolfgang Petersen and producer Gail Katz are developing through Petersen's shingle, Radiant Prods. Reese's Type A Films will also produce the pic, though some of the individual producing credits are still being negotiated. Whiteout is the story of a female U.S. marshal living in self-imposed exile in Antarctica. Her quiet life of relative solitude is dramatically changed when she is called upon to investigate the first murder on that continent.
Source Variety, November 2002
Links IMDb

Other mentions
Manhattan Baby (2004)
Daughter of the Queen of Sheba (2003)
Mother To Mother (2003)

Reese considered for Dallas (2005)
I Dream of Jeannie (2005)

10:09 PM

I will never be with you.



Trouble in Paradise

Oscar winning actress Reese Witherspoon and her husband Ryan Phillipe were recently spotted arguing furiously after a dinner date at The Ivy.

According to PerezeHilton.com, the couple got into a fight during their meal and Phillipe ended up storming out of the restaurant.A witness said: "Ryan and Reese got into a huge fight,"

"We were all shocked,"

"Ryan and Reese were screaming at each other as they left. There were paparazzi there, and yet they were still screaming at each other!"

"I couldn't hear exactly what they were arguing about, but Ryan stormed out of The Ivy at around 9:30 PM and Reese went running after him. She kept calling his name and he kept walking. He turned around once and said "STOP!" It was so sad!"

"They must have had a car waiting,"

"They went storming down the block, turned the corner and then I lost sight of them. Reese was wearing her sunglasses (at night) and I it was hard to tell from far way, but it seemed like tears were streaming down her face."

Oh dear, sounds like the trouble in paradise has finally come to a head…I mean arguing in front of the press, sounds crazy, is crazy.

9:58 PM

I will never be with you.