Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart

I have just returned from the world premier of Crazy Heart, held this evening at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

The Jeff Bridges vehicle is a laudable debut for writer/director Scott Cooper.   Dispite having seen hours of footage around the Searchlight offices, I have not until now seen the final cut of the film.  And I was satisfied.  In the audience were notables the likes of Paul McCartney, Jake Gyllenhaal (surprise) and Gary Busey, as well as filmmakers and cast including Jeff Bridges, Maggie G and Robert Duvall.

The film played very well, drawing many early laughs at the richly comic but deeply flawed country singer Bad Blake (as played in a career-defining performance by Jeff Bridges).  The film plays like a Texas river: somtimes rushing, somtimes winding, sometimes eddying, but always moving.  The music guides it, and the music is good.  No true lover of films will miss the echo of Tender Mercies, along with themes from The Wrestler and Walk the Line.

Now, where the rubber meets the road: early Oscars buzz has pegged Bridges as a lead contender for  Best Actor, putting him shoulder-to-shoulder with George Clooney who has garnered similar speculation (photos from the LA premiere here) for his role as frequent flier Ryan Bingham in Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air (Paramount).  Apparently the Rob Marshall film Nine (Miramax) has failed to give Daniel Day-Lewis whatever it is he needs to make magic happen.  He is generally considered the lame duck of this year’s race.

Crazy Heart trailer:

But the real contest, of course, is between John and me; John was at the world premier of Up in the Air (at Telluride) to witness Clooney’s performance, while I was at the world premier of Crazy Heart to witness Bridges.

May the best man’s man win!

“Strict Joy” poem by James Stephens

I discovered a poem today that I must share, thanks to the ever-earnest Glen Hansard who came out with a much-buzzed and twittered album with the talented Marketa Irglova. Though the couple are no longer romantically involved, they are touring together. My brother picked up a pre-release CD at Fox Searchlight today (the company that marketed their surprise hit film, Once). I was swept up in the brooding poetry of it all. The title of Swell Season’s latest album is “Strict Joy,” from poem by James Stephens (early 20th century Irish writer). The last line is savory. As is the word “plash.”

Strict Joy

by James Stephens

To-day i felt as poor O’Brien did
When, turning from all else that was not his,
He took himself to that which was his own
— He took him to his verse — for other all he had not,
And (tho’ man will crave and seek)
Another all than this he did not need

So, pen in hand he tried to tell the whole tale of his woe
In rhyming; lodge the full weight of his grief in versing: and so did:
Then — when his poem had been conned and cared,
And all put in that should not be left out — did he not find and with astonishment,

That grief had been translated, or was come
Other and better than it first looked to be:
And that this happened, because all things transfer
From what they seem to what they truly are
When they are innocently brooded on
— And, so, The poet makes grief beautiful.

“Behold me now, with my back to the wall,
Playing music to empty pockets!”
So, Raferty, tuning a blind mans plight,
Could sing the cark of misery away:
And know, in blindness and in poverty,
That woe was not of him, nor kind to him.

And Egan Rahilly begins a verse —
“My heart is broken, and my mind is sad …”
‘Twas surely true when he began his song,
And was less true when he had finished it:
— Be sure, his heart was buoyant, and his grief
Drummed and trumpeted as grief was sung!

For, as he meditated misery
And cared it into song — Strict Care, Strict Joy!
Caring for grief he cared his grief away:
And those sad songs, tho’ woe be all the theme,
Do not make us grieve who read them now —
Because the poet makes grief beautiful.

And I, myself, conning a lonely heart
— Full lonely ’twas, and ’tis as lonely now
Turned me, by proper, to my natural,
And, now too long her vagrant, wooed my muse:
Then to her — let us look more close to these,
And, seeing, know; and, knowing, be at ease.

Seeing the sky o’ercast, and that the rain had
Plashed the window, and would plash again:
Seeing the summer lost, and the winter nigh:
Seeing inapt, and sad, and fallen from good:
Seeing how will was weak, and wish o’erbearing:
Seeing inconstant, seeing timidity:
Seeing too small, too poor in this and yon:
Seeing life, daily, grow more difficult:
Seeing all that moves away — moving away
… And that all seeing is a blind-mans treat,
And that all getting is a beggars dole,
And that all having is bankruptcy …

All these, sad all! I told to my good friend,
Told Raferty, O’Brien, Rahilly,
Told rain, and frosted blossom, and the summer gone,
Told poets dead, and captains dead, and kings!
— And we cared naught that these were mournful things,
For, caring them, we made them beautiful.