BEFORE: This makes 15 docs so far this year (16 if you count "Will & Harper", viewed outside of the Doc Block) and this means I'm only 1/3 of the way through, I'm just hitting my stride, with the actors and athlete out of the way, there's more room for musicians and some big summertime concerts. Now that I watched "A Complete Unknown", and I know that Bob Dylan was friends with Johnny Cash back in the 1960's, this transition makes a lot more sense. Bob Dylan carries over from "Joan Baez: I Am a Noise". See, I'm learning something new every day!
THE PLOT: The untold story of how "The Man in Black" saw the light.
AFTER: I also learned that Johnny Cash had a variety show on ABC, I guess I should have known that, it was the golden age for variety shows. It was recorded at the Ryman Auditorium, which I know was the host of the Grand Ol' Opry for many years - the Ryman was a stop on our bus tour of Nashville back in 2017, but we didn't go inside. By then the G.O.O. had re-located to a new home outside the city limits, and I think they have their own deal now, like it's a theme park and a bunch of restaurants and I'm guessing a few souvenir shops, and the Ryman's used for other things now. But this doc has a montage of some of the acts that guested on Cash's show, and it's like a who's who of rock and country and gospel - and this was back in the day when those were three SEPARATE divisions of music, and artists tended to not cross over.
This doc follows the "splash page" theory, start at the most interesting moment in your subject's life and then flash back to when they were a kid and build back up to that climax. For this, the movie chose the experience Cash had when he was trying to break his addiction and get himself off of drugs, and he apparently went down in to a cave in Tennessee and crawled through it, not sure if he'd come out alive on the other side. Really, I thought this was probably just a metaphor for getting clean, but the story is that he really spent time in this cave and thought that God led him out of the darkness and his faith was restored. Good story, I guess, but I think I preferred it as metaphor.
They go back to Johnny Cash's childhood, when he knew he wanted to be a singer and his little brother wanted to be a preacher, and later this is kind of an explanation for why Johnny felt he needed to be both. He became an ordained minister of some kind, and I guess there were some country fans who thought he should have stuck to just music, and they didn't like the Reese's peanut butter cup-like combination of country music and strong faith. But then again, so much of the U.S. is filled with Evangelicals and also country fans, so you've got to figure there's probably some crossover there, so maybe he gained as many fans as he lost? Or maybe not.
On the whole, this documentary was way too "churchy" for me - how do you know when a celebrity has "found Jesus" and is turning their life around? Don't worry, they'll tell you. Then later on a bunch of their family and friends will be interviewed about how strong his faith was, but still, spending half a million to record an album and make films set in Israel, instead of, you know, just taking a vacation there.
Commercially, at that point, what a terrible decision - I mean, I'm glad it saved his life and all that, and he got off the pills, but he devoted so much money to making films about Jesus and walking in his footsteps in the Holy Land that absolutely nobody wanted to see. This was before "The Passion of the Christ" and all that, there was no market for religion-based movies of any kind, Hollywood was still a bunch of heathens who hadn't learned how to tap into that market. Still, church attendance has been declining steadily and agnostics and athiests far outnumber the righteous, but the faithful are way more organized, plus they have Kirk Cameron on their side.
And I guess we're all going to just overlook how Cash abandoned his first family, he just didn't go home after a tour and sure, I'm happy he found love and happiness with June Carter, but still, there were kids from that first marriage who probably saw things differently. How "American" is it to have a second family later in life, after spending years out on tour, addicted to speed, drinking too much and getting into car accidents all the time? Actually, that sounds very American.
I want to touch on the hypocrisy of recording the Folsom prison album, too - I think it was great if he wanted to do a concert in a prison, entertain the inmates and talk to them straight about how he once was lost and now is found, or whatever. But then to record that and release it as an album that made a lot of money, well I now see that as a bit of exploitation. Cash must have known that a prison full of inmates that had very little entertainment would have been like the most receptive audience EVER, and then to profit from their enthusiasm on the recording? There's a belief in some religions that if you do a good deed but then tell people about it, then you've negated the good deed. Well, Johnny Cash kind of told everybody about how he entertained the Folsom inmates, so good deed negated I guess.
So it's really no surprise to me that he got to a point in his life where he didn't know if he was still useful, if he could still make a record or sell records or put on concerts, as the attendance at his shows on the state fair circuit was dwindling. (Well, he did want to talk about Jesus a lot, and maybe not everybody was receptive to that...). That's when he got in touch with Rick Rubin, the record producer who revitalized his career with some compilation albums that had old country, new country, standards and cover songs of Nine Inch Nails and U2 and Tom Petty and Neil Young. This is when I discovered Johnny Cash, and it's the first time I ever found him interesting. They still regard his cover of "Hurt" as one of the saddest, most meaningful and bestest covers ever, and this year's Super Bowl had an ad for Christianity that used Cash's cover of "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode, although I'm willing to bet he didn't know that the song was meant to be ironic.
But that's who Johnny Cash was, I think - a straight shooter who probably couldn't be ironic or sarcastic if he tried. Well, lying is a sin after all, and then once he got old he just seemed like he was way too serious about everything. Maybe a lot of people get that way when they're closer to the end than to the beginning, and they've seen a lot of people they cared about pass away, I don't know. I hesitate to use the word "redemption" because it carries so much weight with it, it implies that there is a moral certainty to the world and that you can make up for your misdeeds just by praying them away, and I don't think I believe that. Better to not have effed up in the first place, I think, but some people believe in a life after this one, and that guides their hand. I don't pretend to know what Cash's politics were like, but he strikes me as someone who would have supported Jimmy Carter during the 1970's and then would have switched over to the Bush family during the early 2000s, meaning he probably would have fallen for Trump's MAGA B.S. if he'd lived longer. You can work in cotton fields as a kid, and serve in the military in your 20's, but I think if you make millions in the music industry later in life, you probably have to re-register as a Republican.
I'll also quibble with the whole "Man in Black" thing - I guess he had a song about it, that wearing black was on behalf of the poor and the hunger, and that he was more accepting of the other sinners in the world, but the much more likely explanation is that black clothing was easier to keep looking clean on long tours. It's also easier to get matching outfits for band members on the fly. And then during Wynonna Judd's interview, she says she always wears black in tribute to Cash - sure, and the fact that black clothes have a slimming effect has NOTHING to do with that.
As for the drugs, well during the mid 1960's, doctors were prescribing amphetamines at a pretty good clip, not just to famous people like Judy Garland and the Beatles but also regular people like housewives, who needed that extra energy to clean up and take care of their kids and also make dinner. So there was addiction all over the place, and thousands of people were using uppers to stay awake and then found they needed sleeping pills to go to bed, and meanwhile building up their tolerance, so they needed stronger doses of both as time wore on. Well, we've seen this already in a few docs this year, so we know it's a prescription for disaster. Cash got in trouble for smuggling both Dexadrine and sedatives in his guitar case after visiting Mexico in 1965. But those pills weren't even illegal at the time. Cash reportedly stayed clean for seven years at a stretch, but notoriously relapsed after receiving painkillers for an abdominal injury in 1983 caused by being kicked by an ostrich on his farm. No joke.
Directed by Ben Smallbone
Also starring Duane Allen, Jimmie Allen, John Carter Cash (last seen in "Glen Campbell: I'll Be Me"), Jessi Colter, Alice Cooper (last seen in "Jim Henson: Idea Man"), Sheryl Crow (last seen in "The Minus Man"), Franklin Graham, Wynonna Judd, Greg Laurie, Ken Mansfield, Tim McGraw (last seen in "The Blind Side"), Don Reid (last seen in "Smokey and the Bandit II"), John Schneider, Rick Scott, Elvie Shane, Jimmie Snow, Mark Stielper, Marty Stuart, Reggie Vinson, Johnny Western, Harry Yates, Joanne Cash Yates,
with archive footage of Johnny Cash (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), June Carter Cash (last seen in "Jimmy Carter: Rock & Roll President"), Vivian Liberto Cash, Louis Armstrong (last seen in "Billie"), Ray Charles (last seen in "The Greatest Night in Pop"), Eric Clapton (last seen in "Buddy Guy: The Blues Chase the Blues Away"), Billy Graham (last seen in "Mr. Warmth: The Don Rickles Project"), Marshall Grant, Larry King (last seen in "Call My Kate"), Kurt Loder (last seen in "Personality Crisis: One Night Only"), Joni Mitchell (last seen in "The Beach Boys"), Luther Perkins, Linda Ronstadt (also seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Rick Rubin (last seen in "Sound City"), James Taylor (last seen in "Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love"), Stevie Wonder (last seen in "Ali & Cavett: The Tale of the Tapes"), Neil Young (last seen in "Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind")
RATING: 5 out of 10 ill-advised gospel & Christmas albums
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