Crazy Heart (2009) on Netflix
At 57, Otis Blake plays small bars under the name Bad Blake, a country singer who was once a star. In Santa Fe, a journalist, Jean Craddock, interviews him.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb7.2/1099,748 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
Bad Blake, once a country music star, is 57, drinks heavily and has been through several failed marriages. He earns a modest living now playing small bars and bowling alleys across the Southwest. In Santa Fe he meets Jean Craddock, a divorced newspaper journalist with a four-year-old son named Buddy, who wants to write a piece about him. The two become close, and Jean and Buddy become the closest thing to a family Blake has had in years. His career also shifts when Tommy Sweet, a popular singer he once mentored, asks him to write songs for him. A doctor has warned Blake that his drinking will kill him.
Cast
- J. Michael Olivaas Bear (as J. Michael 'Yak' Oliva)
- Brian Gleasonas Steven Reynolds
- Anna Felixas Barmaid
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Crazy Heart (2009)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Thomas Cobb based "Bad" Blake on country entertainer Hank Thompson, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and his own doctoral advisor Donald Barthelme, whom he studied with at the University of Houston. When Cobb was torn between an upbeat and a downbeat ending, Barthelme told him to use the downbeat one.
SPOILER
A sequence depicting the novel's ending, in which Bad falls off the wagon and dies of a heart attack, was actually shot. Director Scott Cooper wanted to use it as the ending but did not get final authority to do so.- Jeff Bridges initially passed on the role, telling Vanity Fair that he liked the script but knew the songs would make or break it and the film had no musical attachments. A year later he talked with T Bone Burnett and the two agreed to work on it together.
- The film received three nominations at the 82nd Academy Awards and won two of them: Best Actor for Bridges and Best Original Song for "The Weary Kind", written by Bingham and Burnett.
- The original music was composed by T Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton and Ryan Bingham, and the film was dedicated to Bruton, who died the same year it was made.
