'Peter would have liked this,' Q said.
'Paper Moon?'
'No - well, yes. I meant the Nashville one.'
'Yes... what's that called... The Thing Called Love. With a touch of Chekhov.'
So went our conversation about this unexpectedly wonderful and criminally underrated C&W Depression fable, in which TB-ridden singer enlists his nephew to take him to Nashville (with the boy's grandfather) - a road movie, to be sure.
Clint's son Kyle plays the boy. 'He [Clint] asked Sondra Locke to handle the coaching, and working with the boy on camera he was, Verna Bloom recalls, sterner than usual. He wanted a straight performance and he got it - that cautious alertness, that slight air of tension'. (Clint Eastwood, Richard Schickel 1996). And he's very good, as is his Dad. There's a wonderful scene between the two in a car at night, just two cameras, action - reaction, when Clint talks about a woman he thinks he might have loved. The source is a novel by Clancy Carlile, adapted by he.
It's very funny as well, for example the scene in which the boy breaks his uncle out of jail, and all the other convicts that escape first. And it can perhaps be viewed as autobiographical, in the storyline that Clint may have impregnated a woman but doesn't care. Also Clint's love of music, and black music particularly, is well caught.
And it's refreshing, apart from Verna Bloom, to see a large and expert cast consisting of people you don't know, including John McIntire ('Grandpa'), Alexa Kenin, Matt Clark, Barry Corbin.
It's two hours and not a moment too long. Edited by Ferris Webster, Michael Kelly and Joel Cox, gorgeously lit by Bruce Surtees, production design Edward Carfagno.
And in terms of the Malpaso family, there's Jack Green as camera operator and Tom Stern as gaffer.
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