Alright, Judd Apatow’s “Walk Hard: The Story Of Dewey Cox” trailer is up (click the image). The film is a faux-o-pic of Johnny Cash-like figure named Dewey Cox played by John C. Reilly and acts as a send-up of recent biopics like “Walk the Line” (which is seems to expressly mock) and “Ray.”
Another version of the trailer that is distinctly different and features a look at Jewel and Lyle Lovett is here.
Best Lines: “The Beatles wanna hang out so I’m gonna do that,” Reilly says to his wife while Jason Schwartzman‘s cameos as Ringo Starr.
“With Meditation there’s no limit to what we can… imagine.” Get it? Paul Rudd plays a pretentious John Lennon.
“What do you think George Harrison?” Reilly queries to a dumbfounded looking Justin Long.
“There’s two things you need to know: I’m the King, and number two, LOOK OUT MAN! See how close I came to your head? I can chop a man in half,” brags Jack White as Elvis Presley.
“Give him a minute son, Dewey Cox needs to think about his whole life before he plays,” says a graying and balding Tim Meadows.
“Thank you Eddie Veeeder,” Reilly to Vedder’s introduction at the R&R Hall of Fame. Frankie Muniz, the star of “Malcolm In the Middle” also has a brief cameo as Buddy Holly.
The Soundtrack
“Walk Hard” director Jake Kasdan (who directed many episodes of “Freaks & Geeks” for Apatow) said of the Cox character to the L.A. Times in late 2006, “He’s addicted to pretty much everything you could possibly get addicted to, in and out of rehab, many, many children, and several wives…. It’s an American epic.”
Apparently Kasdan and Apatow wrote a 15-song soundtrack for the film for Cox’s character to sing over the course of his long and varied career.
The brainstorming has resulted in songs like Cox’s first huge hit, “Walk Hard”; a tune from his “dangerous period” called “Guilty as Charged” and songs from a protest album he turns out during his socially conscious political phase named “These Are My Issues.”
And yes, Kasdan actually has songwriting skills that he showed off in his first feature, “Zero Effect,” which included star Bill Pullman performing two songs they had co-written. “We both play really mediocre adolescent Jewish-boy-who-loved-Bob-Dylan, campfire-type guitar,” Kasdan told the LA Times.. “We both know the same six chords.”
Though contradictorily, according to an article not online from Rolling Stone that we cribbed and rewrote, “Songwriters Dan Bern and Candy Butchers frontman Mike Viola apparently wrote much of the film’s songs and even the renowned producer/musician/lyricist Van Dyke Parks was enlisted to help with some of the fake protest songs.”
Other songs include “Ladies First,” “Hey, Hey, Who Wants to Party?,” “Mulatto” “and “There’s a Hole In My Pants.” According to RS, Marshall Crenshaw wrote the title track. Perhaps Kasdan and Apatow overstated their songwriting skills and presented ideas and themes for people like Crenshaw and Bern to actually write? This would make sense.