Looking forward to seeing the 'Crazy Heart'. Jeff Bridges has won Best Actor at both the Golden Globes and the SAG awards ceremonies, and appears to be on the fast track to a Best Actor award at the Oscars. Couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Bridge's Bad Blake is one of America's troubled troubadours, a character which is a pastiche of Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan--and so many others. But the closest parallel may be Van Zandt. The soundtrack, a mix of originals and classics, includes perhaps his best song, the shimmering 'If I Needed You'.
Here are two songs that appeared on the tribute album 'Poet', issued after Van Zandt's death at 53. (The singers are Guy Clark and Nancy Griffith.) The first, 'To Live Is To Fly', is resurrected in one of the original songs on the 'Crazy Heart' soundtrack, 'Fallin' and Flyin'', which contains the haunting refrain 'it's funny how fallin' feels like flyin' for a little while'.
And here are two clips; the first is the film's theme song, 'The Weary Kind' (itself garnering awards like Bridges) and the second is Townes Van Zandt himself, explaining the genesis of 'If I Needed You'--it arose from a dream--and then performing the song.
