For actor Jeff Bridges, whose career has already spanned five decades, Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart” was something of a homecoming and, the actor says, “a dream come true.”
Bridges stars in the film as Bad Blake, a ramblin’ country-western singer who travels the Southwest playing dive after dive, cut from the same cloth as Hank Williams Jr., maybe, or Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, etc. A guitarist in his own right, Bridges was eager to take on a film so concerned with music, but was wary of underwhelming after the example set by another music-themed film from his past, Steve Kloves’s “The Fabulous Baker Boys” from 1989.
“What they did with that movie I thought was so wonderful that to do another music movie and not match that, it’s a pretty high bar there, so I was concerned about that,” Bridges says over lunch in Beverly Hills one November afternoon. “There were several music scripts that came down the pike, and sometimes it would have lyrics or little samples and it wouldn’t be right. And this one had no music. Then I thought maybe I could write the music, or my friend, but then, you know, I was busy, so I didn’t focus on it.”
Indeed, Bridges is quick to admit that he spends a great deal of his energy steering clear of new projects. It might be a phobia of commitment on one hand, but on the other, he’s a man who likes to keep his options open. Signing onto a new film means missing the chance to work on any number of other projects that might ultimately interest him more.
But “Crazy Heart” was a different story, especially once his good friend T Bone Burnett got involved as producer, music consultant and composer.