The Buddy Holly Story (1978) on Netflix
PG19781h 54mBiographyDramaMusic
Buddy Holly and the Crickets play rock 'n' roll at a Lubbock roller rink, on a local radio broadcast. A Nashville recording invitation puts Holly against producers who want country music.
- Netflix4.3/5
- IMDb7.2/1011,009 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1956, Buddy Holly, drummer Jesse Charles and bass player Ray Bob Simmons make up the Crickets, playing rock 'n' roll at a Lubbock, Texas, roller rink on a show a local radio station broadcasts. Station manager Riley tells Holly that a vice president at Coral Records wants the band to record in Nashville, where the producers insist on country music and Holly walks out. Riley has sent a tape of the roller rink set to the New York producer Ross Turner, who puts it out as a record thinking it is a master, and the hit lets Holly play music full time. Turner then agrees Holly can work as he wants. Sol Gittler books the Crickets at the Apollo Theater in the belief that they are a black band.
Cast
- Amy Johnstonas Cindy Lou
- Fred Travalenaas Madman Mancuso
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Buddy Holly Story (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Gary Busey and the rest of the cast did their own singing and played their own instruments, with guitarist Jerry Zaremba overdubbing the guitar parts. Busey recorded the soundtrack music live and lost 32 pounds to look like the skinny Holly, who weighed 146 pounds when he died.
- Gary Busey drew on knowledge from a previous attempt to film Holly's life. He had played Crickets drummer Jerry Allison in the ill-fated Three-Sided Coin, which 20th Century Fox canceled under pressure from Fred Bauer, whose company had deals with the Holly estate.
- Charles Martin Smith auditioned for the part of Buddy Holly, but Gary Busey already had the role, so the producers cast Smith as Ray Bob Simmons instead because they liked his audition.
- The production scouted Buddy Holly's hometown of Lubbock, Texas, but found the city had changed too much since the 1950s. Most of the film was shot in Los Angeles and Atlanta, with locations doubling for period-era Texas and New York City.
- A scene in which a Buffalo disc jockey locks himself in a studio and plays the same record over and over was drawn from real stunts by disc jockeys Tom Clay, Danny Neaverth and Joey Reynolds, though none of those incidents had any link to Buddy Holly or his music.
