Movies Features

Interview - Crazy Heart writer and director Scott Cooper

By Anne Brodie Mar 6, 2010, 23:56 GMT

Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall and Scott Cooper attending the "Crazy Heart" Los Angeles Premiere. © Albert L. Ortega / PR Photos

Actor turned director Scott Cooper has rocked the independent film world with his debut effort Crazy Heart. He wrote it specifically for Jeff Bridges, who not only responded to the material but is also a dedicated musician. Bridges started the awards season off with a bang, winning the Critics Choice and Golden Globes Best Actor awards and is gaining momentum for an Oscar nomination. He says the role of Bad Blake is his proudest acting achievement.

Crazy Heart tells the story of a few transformative days in the life of an alcoholic country western singer, in which he plays his gorgeous music, falls in love and comes face to face with himself.

Although Crazy Heart is Cooper’s freshman effort, he managed to land some big fish to help realise his vision. Music giant T. Bone Burnett designed the film’s sound, Colin Farrel plays a fellow country music star, and Maggie Gyllenhaal joined the cast as Bridge’s love interest. But it is empathically Bridges’ film and his finest performance.

M&C - Jeff Bridges is such an artist, and made the part his own, even to the most minute sounds and movements he makes.

Scott Cooper - I can’t tell you what this film means to him. Finally he got something that is just for him. There’s a moment in the film when he’s in yet another hotel in Santa Fe before he goes to meet his new band and he’s polishing his guitar sitting back in the chair. It’s very quiet and you can see in his face, it’s a roadmap of his life and you can also see Jeff Bridges. It’s so pure and simple and subtle and to me it’s very powerful.

M&C - How did you land these big names for your first ever film?

SC - I think I have the two best screen actors in the world involved, Jeff and Mr. Duvall, and look at their body of work. Mr. Duvall is a close friend and frequent collaborator. If you look at those two guys, they do something that few people in the world can do. As an actor, and I’m only moderately successful, I’m sitting next to the camera, and see what the two of them do, you realise there is a huge difference between being moderately talented and gifted.

They are gifted and can illuminate the human experience in a way that four or five million people in this world can’t do. They just understand honesty, being pure and being simple and nuanced and truthful and that’s why I wrote it for Jeff. It means a great deal o him because he was reunited with his friend from Heaven’s Gate, T-Bone Burnet and the late musician Steven Broom who died while we were making the film who was essential to the musical process. Jeff and I showed the film to Steven while he was dying and to Kris Kristofferson when Steven was in Austin, Texas. It was very emotional for all of us.

M&C - And particularly for Jeff.

SC - This is the film Jeff says he’s most proud of. Jeff is beloved. We’ve seen him since we were kids. A lot of people have and now to see him in his crowning acheivement in this role, it is towering. It couldn’t happen to a better guy. As I’ve said before he’s even a better human than he is an actor. To see what he does to know personally how much it means it’s a gift you give. Sean Penn told me that. He told me ‘Scott, you’ve given a gift to him’

M&C - Crazy Heart is a small film, but it seems it wasn’t hurt by a neglible budget and a tight schedule.

SC - For me as a film actor and filmgoer, if a movie sticks with me the next day which the good ones do, I start thinking about the quiet moments, something you don’t expect to be reveltory, its sometimes hard for those movies to get made and they are often the most difficult films to get made, but they’re well worth the effort.

M&C - What about your acting career? Has it taken a back seat to directing after Crazy Heart?

SC - While I was editing I was acting in a movie with Mr. Duvall and Sissy Spacek called Get Low and I had a shaved head and played a heavy and Mr. Duval disposes of me. I like doing both but I now know that film is a director’s medium, so I’m eager and ready to get back to work. Crazy Heart is now a permant record and legacy that we can all be proud of. As a first time writer and director, I just worry that I don’t know if I could do it again, or if I want to. This little gem we love so much.

Steven Soderberg said something recently. He said ‘I never understood why directors take five, six years to do anything. There are stories everywhere. I don’t have enough time to tell all the stories I want to tell.’ And the same with me. There are so many things. I won’t make a film unless it’s personal.

There are novelists who are very important to me that I love, one of whom taught my father English – William Faulkner, at the University of Virginia, William Styron, a Virginian like me, Flannery O’Connor, who write personal stories. There are a lot out there; it’s just getting them made. I want to be able to write what I direct that gives me insight I wouldn’t have otherwise. You won’t soon see me making a movie with robots and flying saucers.