it is RARE i go to the movies at the cine-one-too-manys

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash with Reese Witherspoon as June Carter in "Walk the Line," a film that tells about their lives together.


but if this opens in one, i WILL go. if you've read my blog before you will know i am a johnny cash (and june carter cash) fan. i always liked him but never became a die-hard admirer until i heard american iii; solitary man on the juke at the half door (thanks shawn). i listened to it over and over. then they put american iv; the man comes around, in the juke. i was in heaven.

i didn't pay much attention to the love story aspect of johnny and june or his early on drug problems. what fascinated me was his relationship with rick rubin and the way he and june reached out to other artists from all musical styles.

The Secrets That Lie Beyond the Ring of Fire By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: October 16, 2005
IT was late at night in May 2003, and Johnny Cash, the legendary country singer, was bedridden and ill at his home in Hendersonville, Tenn.
James Mangold, a film director visiting the singer that night, felt desperate. For four years he had struggled to make a movie that told the story of Mr. Cash and his wife, the singer June Carter Cash. And as he watched Mr. Cash grow thin and weak, Mr. Mangold felt it all slipping through his fingers.

That night in Mr. Cash's bedroom, as June looked on, he put it to them straight.
"I don't believe you never touched each other in all those years," he told them, referring to their courtship. "I don't believe you never kissed."
Mr. Mangold saw the couple - devout Christians who had fallen in love while Mr. Cash was married to another woman - exchange a look. June finally said: "Vegas. The Mint."
Then, as Mr. Mangold recently recalled, "she told us about doing a show, and that one night they got together. How afterward she put an end to it, and John went downhill from there, with the drugs. And she gave up on him."
The director sighed, recalling the relief of unlocking that final door. "They'd told that story 100 times, without the part of their sleeping together," he said.
The film that has emerged from the Cashes' hard-won revelations, "Walk the Line," may surprise even their long-time fans. Starring Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as the lead characters, the movie burrows deep into painful territory that Mr. Cash barely explored in two autobiographies, "Man in Black," and "Cash: The Autobiography," which were both optioned for Mr. Mangold's screenplay...........