Major Hollywood motion picture on Hank’s life announced

You can’t be anything but excited to hear that a major motion picture on Hank Williams  with significant funding and the involvement of Universal Studios is in the works.

Two companies, 821 Entertainment Group and Striker Entertainment will produce the biopic which will be offered to Universal for actual production.

This sounds like the kind of financial heft and depth which could see Hank Williams get the same treatment recently offered to Ray Charles and Johnny Cash.

The key to putting the deal together appears to be the support of the Hank Williams’ estate represented by Hank Williams Jr and Jett Williams. Of course the two came together to bring the ‘Unreleased Recordings’ based on the Mother’s Best radio shows to the public for the first time last fall, and that was a respectful, classy, impressive 3 CD release.

Personally, I’m disappointed that the intellectual and artistic control of the picture will be under handed over to  Colin Escott. Escott is doubtless the number one scholar and author  on the life and works of Hank Williams.  He’s written the most comprehensive biography: ‘Hank Williams: The Biography’ on which the movie will be based. Escott has also written liner notes for numerous Hank Albums includingt the recent ‘Unreleased’ and other articles, books, and TV shows including the PBS special.  Escott will be associate producer of the new film.

My problem is that, in my opinion, Escott has greatly overplayed the negative aspects of Hank Williams’ life. Everybody and their uncle was apparently more than willing to tell an unsavory, salacious story about Hank. Every single one seems to have made it into Escott’s books. I prefer the statement from Don Helms who said he did not recognize the Hank Williams he knew for so many years, in any of the Hank Williams biographies he read.

Hank Jr has also stated that he doesn’t believe it was all gloom and doom portrayed in the Hank Biographies. I like this quote from, ironically, Colin Escott’s book ‘Snapshots from the Lost Highway’:

Some people had the misconception that Daddy was rolling and lolling in sorrow, or lived with the whiskey bottle in his hand 24 hours a day, and that’s not the way it was. . . . You can hear anything, you can read anything, but if you sit down and listen to his albums, you will know him and you can make own analysis. Just listen, you don’t need anyone to explain anything to you.

To me the tide is starting to turn: The debauchery trumps artistry portrayal is diminishing. I hope Hank’s status as an artist will triumph over  the endless stories in this new movie.

I am hopeful that the involvement  and cooperaton of the Hank Williams’ estate willl bring to the project the professionalism and style and class we saw in the ’The Unreleased Recordings’. The involvement of the Hank Williams’ estate also means the original Hank Williams recordings can be used in the production.

That being said, I like the quotes from one of the producers, Marc Abraham:

“It is hard to measure the excitement I feel and. . . the sense of responsibility,” he said. He added, “I have loved Hank Williams’ music from the time I was a small kid growing up in Kentucky. I truly believe that a story based on the pain and glory of Hank Williams’ life – one of America’s greatest artists – can be a thrilling motion picture and at the same time, it can examine the power and influence of art and music in our lives.

The offical press release quotes Colin Escott but it’s hard to make much from his quote:

Hank Williams’ life and career almost demand to be made into a movie, and I feel that the team associated with this production can deliver the Hank Williams movie we’ve always wanted to see.”

As I reported earlier a film maker from Alabama is also planning Hank Williams movie.

And of course I recall watching a film called ‘Your Cheatin Heart’ way back in 1964 starring George Hamilton which soon disappeared from sight due to legal wrangling within the Hank Williams’ estate. I see the movie is apparently for sale on the internet in DVD format.

The tell the  truth  at the time I thought George did a pretty good job of portraying Hank. No accounting for taste I guess.

But seriously,  this is all good, and will do wonders for Hank Williams’ place in musical history if it is done well. But I  still wish they werre using the late Paul Hemphill biography ‘Lovesick Blues’ plus some of the memoirs left by Don Helms and others to portray the real Hank Williams.

Oh well, now we can settle back and speculate who among the current crop of Hollywood stars would make the best Hank Williams. And how will Audrey, Billy Jean,  and Hank’s mother be treated in the latest version of Hank’s life, and the one that will, for better or worse, become the official version of Hank’s life for millions of people  and will endure for years  into the future?

Read Full Post »

Paul Hemphill features Hank at funeral

Thanks so much to Tom Baxter for sending a comment in the previous post on Paul Hemphill’s funeral. I’m sure Hemphill  wanted Hank at his funeral and his wishes were followed.

I will repeat the comment from Baxter here for those who didn’t see it below:

I attended Paul’s funeral here in Atlanta. As his friend Angelo Fuster announced it would be, it was a very unconventional affair, beginning with the Hank Williams recording of “I Saw the Light,” and ending with “Lovesick Blues.” The program also included a reading, by four old friends, of the section from “Lovesick Blues” in which he recounted a weeklong trip in 1949 with his trucker father. It’s a great passage and perhaps the best I know on the subject of what Hank Williams’ music meant to working class Southerners in those years.

 Hemphill spent a lifetime as a professional writer. He wrote numerous books of both fiction and non-fiction. Included were ‘The Nashville Sound’ and ‘Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams’. As I said earlier, he treated country music artists with respect, not ridicule. A book I haven’t read, ‘Leaving Birmingham’ is considered a seminal work on southern culture.

I thought in ‘Lovesick Blues’ Hemphill tried to improve the previously skewered balance between Hank’s personal life and his achievement as an artist toward the artistic side.

The passage mentioned by Baxter above is only matched by Rick Bragg’s wonderful essay in the liner notes of  ‘Hank Williams Live at the Grand Old Opry’.

Thanks once again for the contribution from Tom Baxter.

Read Full Post »

Paul Hemphill, Hank Williams biographer and fan, dies

I was saddened to hear of the death of Paul Hemphill. His biography of Hank Williams published in 2005, helped revise the standard view of Hank as a man who was  consumed by booze, drugs, and debauchery and nothing else.  Hemphill made a sustained effort to bring more balance to the story of Hank Williams, in his book ‘Lovesick Blues, The Life of Hank Williams’.

The biography did not focus on revealing a lot of new sensational stories about Hank, although there are some, instead it focused on creating  a new appreciation for Hank Williams’ achievement as an artist, let’s look at the works of Hank Williams as well as the story.

In his acknowledgements, Hemphill gives special thanks to Don Helms, Marty Stuart, and Tom Robinson.

I liked his great love of the song ‘Your CheatinHeart’. He quotes the lines,

You’ll cry and cry,
And try to sleep,

several times. He seems to think the poetic simplicity, directness, and beauty of Williams’ language in this song, rivals the work of other legendary poets in the history of English writing.

Before his beautifully written and I think ground breaking book on Hank, Hemphill who was born in Birmingham, wrote a landmark book on country music in the early 70′s called ‘The Nashville Sound’. This book also treated country music and its stars  seriously as artists deserving of respect not ridicule. In ‘Lovesick Blues’ Hemphill explores is southern roots, and recalls first hearing Hank Williams on his father’s long distance trucker radio   as a young boy in 1949. 

In all Hemphill wrote nine non fiction books,and four works of fiction. He spent his life as a professional writer working as a newspaper columnist in Atlanta and writing for most of the major US magazines.

He was able to bring a wide range of experience, intelligence, artistic knowledge and sensibility, to the Hank Williams story. He made a valuable contribution to the Hank Williams legacy.

Read Full Post »