It was a couple of years ago we first heard of various movie projects on the life of Hank Williams. At least 2 of those were to deal with the final days of Hank Williams life as he was driven from Montgomery to Ohio for a New Years Day show in 1953.
Then early in 2010 things started to get serious as I was lucky enough to some great reports from the Benton Courier newspaper and various people in Benton Arkansas on the shooting of the new movie under the direction of Harry Thomason of Mozark Productions. They sent me some great pictures of the filming.
In the past few days there was a rather bizarre turn of events when the Arkansas Times newspaper reported that the trailer for the movie had been released. Trailers are live action advertisements for a movie showing highlights. They are used in theaters to promote upcoming attractions.
In this case just as I was getting ready to write a little story on it and provide a link to the video, it was taken down from the internet. The Arkansas Times had to take it off their site and it was also removed from the source site called Trailer Addict.
The Arkansas Times says the trailer was released by mistake and some of the songs still need to be cleared from copyright. But the paper has been told the movie is 95 per cent finished.
I watched the trailer before it was pulled. The production values are of course very good and professional. It doesn’t look like some cheap home movie or documentary; it looks Hollywood. But from the trailer you can’t get much of an idea of the story line. There will be a lot of emphasis on the driver played by Jesse James.
But as I think I said earlier when we saw still pictures of the shoot, Henry Thomas looks far stronger and healthier than we imagine Hank Williams was at the time. We know from other sources that Hank was horribly thin and gaunt and not well as he made his way north. Whether Henry Thomas can capture the sadness and despair which gripped Hank Williams life in the last few months remains to be seen.
