Reilly and Kasdan, Having Fun with 'Walk Hard'

DATE December 25, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: John C. Reilly, actor, and Jake Kasdan, director and
co-writer, on their film "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story"
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Merry Christmas.

If you're looking for a really entertaining new movie over the holidays, I'd
recommend "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." It's a really funny send up of
music biopics: movies that purport to tell the life story of a musician but
are usually fictionalized and kind of formulaic. "Walk Hard" is inspired in
part by recent moves like "Walk the Line" about Johnny Cash and "Ray" about
Ray Charles, as well as early rock 'n' roll films. My guests are John C.
Reilly, who plays Dewey Cox, and Jake Kasdan, who directed the film. Kasdan
co-wrote and produced "Walk Hard" with Judd Apatow, with whom he'd previously
collaborated on "Freaks and Geeks" and the film "The TV Set."

John C. Reilly gets to do a lot of singing in the role of Dewey Cox. The
songs were all written for the film to evoke iconic performers like Buddy
Holly, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. Here's John C. Reilly singing the title
track "Walk Hard," which was written for the film by Marshall Crenshaw.

(Soundbite of "Walk Hard")

Mr. JOHN C. REILLY: (Singing) Walk hard
Hard down life's rocky road
Walk bold
Hard at my creed, my code
I've been scorned and slandered and ridiculed, too
Had to struggle every day my whole life through
Seen my share of the worst that this world can give
But I still got a dream and a burning rage to live

Walk hard
Hard...

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: John C. Reilly and co-writer Jake Kasdan wanted to be faithful to the
music biopic form. Kasdan told me some of the conventions they wanted to
follow.

Mr. JAKE KASDAN: For example, we knew that from his very humble beginnings
this genius would emerge, and that it would--his genius would be fueled by the
tragic loss of a relative as a child in combination with the disdain from his
father that naturally follows the tragedy. And that there would be a, you
know, ghost that continues to visit him throughout this life, that, you know,
there would be a certain pattern by which he is discovered and because of his
genius brought into a recording studio where he would appear to drop the ball,
but then would miraculously pull it together and sing a single perfect take of
the song that would change his life and the world...

GROSS: And the world, yeah.

Mr. REILLY: That would alter...

Mr. KASDAN: We knew...

Mr. REILLY: ...the history of music forever.

Mr. KASDAN: Certain patterns we knew we could expect.

GROSS: John, describe the character of Dewey Cox.

Mr. REILLY: Well, yeah, Dewey Cox is kind of an amalgamation of a lot of
different musicians and their stories, and we start out in kind of the Roy
Orbison/Elvis Presley/Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, early '50s kind of guys, and
then we segue into a lot of different people like Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson
and on into the '70s, Mac Davis and those kinds of guys who had their own TV
shows. And it's really kind of--we just sat around and tried to think of
every crazy rock story or legendary story about rock musicians that we could
come up with.

GROSS: You know, in these kinds of movies, things are always like telegraphed
in advance, and there's this great moment before, as a child, Dewey accidently
kills his more talented older brother, and the talented older brother, who's a
child, too, just before he's killed, he's saying things like, `Oh, I know I
have a great, long life ahead of me, and there's so much I will accomplish'...

Mr. KASDAN: `Nothing terrible's going to happen today.'

GROSS: ..`in this long, long life.' Yes.

Mr. KASDAN: Yes.

GROSS: Yeah. `Nothing terrible's going to happen today.' And it's so funny.

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah.

GROSS: I mean, because so many movies, like, you just see it coming.

Mr. KASDAN: Well, that was...

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

Mr. KASDAN: ...the other thing we thought was really funny thing from the
very beginning was that a dialogue style where there's absolutely no subtext,
and people are constantly announcing the significance of the moment that
they're depicting. They say, like, `You got to understand, Dewey. It's the
'60s. Things are changing.'

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

Mr. KASDAN: `This is a different--it's a different time in America.' Then
you cut to footage of a march and everyone who enters the movie is a
significant, life-changing character so it, you know, and always has a line
that sums up their character. Like, for example, `I don't know what to make
of it. Is it rock `n' roll? Is it gospel? I'm not sure.' You know, there's
this pattern of sort of people explaining themselves as clearly as they could
possibly explain themselves.

Mr. REILLY: `Look, the music business is changing. Kids are looking for
something different in their music. (Unintelligible)...that song.'

Mr. KASDAN: `You've got to change with it, Dewey.'

Mr. REILLY: Yeah. You know, that said, Terry, there's so many meta-jokes in
the movie, if you will, like, playing with these cliches of biopics and doing
these famous, legendary rock stories and all that, I mean, I still had to play
a real character.

GROSS: Right.

Mr. REILLY: And so the job for me on this one was to like take all these
kind of meta-jokes and play it as honestly as I could, and the cool thing that
ends up happening, I think, in the movie is that the character of Dewey Cox
becomes more than just an amalgamation of all these famous stories and famous
people, he becomes his own creation and his own kind of character, and, you
know, as a result of all his experiences of his life.

Mr. KASDAN: With a very complete body of work.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah, yeah. So by the end of the movie, you end up, I don't
know, the biopic effect ends up kicking in. Like, you spend enough time with
any one person from the time they're 14 to the time they're 72, and you start
to feel something for that character, that person, and you want them to, you
know, survive or whatever, find their happiness.

GROSS: Well, we have to hear some more music, and there's a scene from early
in the film, it's kind of like the Buddy Holly moment where, like, you know,
you're singing a song, and I forget if it's like a prom or a talent show.

Mr. KASDAN: It's a talent show, yeah.

Mr. REILLY: Exactly.

GROSS: The girls are going crazy and the parents are up in arms, like, `What
is this rock 'n' roll thing? It's Satan.'

Mr. KASDAN: This was one of the very first ideas Judd and I ever had about
this movie, was...

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. KASDAN: ...that there would be a sequence early on, you know, as a
teenager where he sings the world's most innocuous pop song and it causes a
riot, the proportions of which just seem impossible and does so impossibly
quickly, and the song would be called "Take My Hand" and it would be about,
like, holding hands with a girl and going for a walk.

GROSS: Mm-hmm.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

GROSS: And...

Mr. REILLY: Which seems to happen with that rock 'n' roll in these biopic
movies.

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah, it's devil's music.

Mr. REILLY: Once the kids get that rock 'n' roll in them.

GROSS: And it...

Mr. REILLY: You know, it's a gateway music to other kinds of bad behavior.

GROSS: John, you want to say something about singing this and getting in the
moment to do this very 1950s song?

Mr. REILLY: Yeah. Like Jake said, this was an early idea for the movie, one
of the earliest songs that we conceived of, and I just remember, like, almost
like, picturing myself just in a room filled with corn syrup. It's so sweet,
and I was singing it, just trying to take out any trace of, you know, sexual
innuendo or anything, just literally like, taking a walk in the park and
holding hands and, like, going back to that kind of almost pre-teen idea of
love and, you know, the romantic puppy love, and that romantic kind of Ricky
Nelson kind of attitude.

GROSS: OK, so here's "Take My Hand," and singing it is John C. Reilly, and
this is from the soundtrack of "Walk Hard."

(Soundbite of "Take My Hand")

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Take...

Unidentified Singers: (Singing) Take, take...

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Take my hand...

Singers: (Singing) Take my hand...

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) We're going to walk to the park,
I promise to have you home before dark.

Singers: (Singing) Home before dark.

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Oh, life would be so sweet
Walking with you down the street
Oh, baby, come on and take my hand

Singers: (Singing) Come on and take my hand

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Don't you know I like you
You're pretty and nice
Walking with you would be paradise
Sharing the moment, me and you
Walking down the avenue

So, please

Singers: (Singing) Ooh, please, ooh, please

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Take my hand

Singers: (Singing) Take my hand

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) You know I know you can
So please take my hand

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's John C. Reilly in his Buddy Holly moment from the new biopic
satire "Walk Hard," and with me is John C. Reilly and Jake Kasdan, who
co-wrote, he conceived and he directed the film.

See, the great thing about the music is, first of all, John, you sound great
singing it, and also, these are...

Mr. REILLY: Thank you.

GROSS: ...these are really good songs. I mean, they're catchy. They work.
So, Jake, what did you tell the songwriters for the movie? What did you tell
them to guide them for what you wanted them to write for you?

Mr. KASDAN: We were sort of starting with half dozen songs in the movie. We
would have titles, like "Take My Hand" or "Guilty As Charged" and sort of
sequences that, you know, comic sequences that they would fit into. And we
would throw them to the guys and say, `Sort of try to describe the song as we
imagined it,' and give them sort of the hints from the script in terms of what
it was meant to do, and sort of see what they would come back with. And in
many cases, you know, we were dealing with, by the end of it, hundreds and
hundreds of songs. And John was involved in that whole process of developing
the music with us and then recording it. So we would get these demos, we'd
get, say, you know, a dozen songs called "Guilty As Charged" and we'd zero in
on one or two.

As we were sort of doing that and zeroing in on who the handful of guys were
that were really kind of nailing them, we started to introduce other ideas, or
they would introduce ideas. For example, Dan Bern out of nowhere one day sent
me a little MP3 of a song called "Hey, Have You Heard the News? Dewey Cox
Died" that was a song that Dewey theoretically wrote in anticipation of his
own death, sort of contemplating his mortality and remembering to celebrate
himself almost as though there were a danger that others might forget to after
he was gone.

Mr. REILLY: You know, Judd Apatow was saying to me the other day, he was
like, `I almost wish the lyrics weren't so funny because it's such a beautiful
song.' It opens up with this mandolin music and you think, `Oh man, this is
going to be a real tear-jerker,' and then you realize it's about a guy
imagining how sad everyone will be when he's dead.

Mr. KASDAN: That's right.

GROSS: Well, why don't we hear "Have You Heard the News? Dewey Cox Died"?

Mr. KASDAN: Sure.

Mr. REILLY: All right.

GROSS: And this is John C. Reilly singing.

(Soundbite of "(Have You Heard the News) Dewey Cox Died")

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Long black hearse,
Clear blue sky
Preacher says his words
Grown men cry
Women start to faint
Dark gray sky
Simple wooden box
Preacher asks, "Why?"

Hey! Have you heard the news? Dewey Cox died

Put him in the ground
Start to shovel dirt
Grown men turn away
Cannot bear the hurt
He fell out of a tree
Fell upon his head
Rushed him to a hospital
There pronounced dead

Hey! Have you heard the news? Dewey Cox died

No, say it isn't so
Dewey Cox died

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's John C. Reilly from the soundtrack of the new movie "Walk
Hard," which is a kind of send up of music biopics, and my guests are John C.
Reilly, who stars in the film as Dewey Cox; and Jake Kasdan, who conceived,
co-wrote and directed the film.

John, all the songs had to be written for you, for your voice, so what did you
do to convey to all the songwriters who were writing for this movie what you
were capable of? Because you were able to hit like really low notes when
singing a Johnny Cash kind of song...

Mr. REILLY: Right.

GROSS: ...and really high notes when singing a Roy Orbison kind of song.

Mr. REILLY: Well, it was more like they were hitting their marks in terms of
the type of song or the type of genre that we were in, and so then I would
push myself to try to hit it, and if something was just way too high for me
I'd say, you know, I would say, `Guys, I can do this but you got to transpose
it down at least, you know, one octave or something.' But that was very rarely
the case. And for the most part, it was this sort of happy...

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah. I mean, there was...

Mr. REILLY: ...you know, medium in the middle.

Mr. KASDAN: I can honestly say having sat there the whole time, there was
never really anything that John couldn't do. What was more an issue and that
I felt was--what was so great about the fact that we were all really in there
doing this together and that John was there for every minute of this and not
just showing up to sing but actually sort of authoring this process with
us--was that it made it so that--there was never anything about the songs that
was technically unachievable for John or really for any of them, anybody
playing or Mike or anything.

What happened occasionally is, you know, John and I would have conversations
about, like, just, `Is this the right sort of tone for the character and for
the movie?' And so the process of sort of figuring out the music ended up
being the first kind of really comprehensive work on building the character
and...

Mr. REILLY: Yeah, it was almost like we found the character. By the time we
shot the movie...

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah.

Mr. REILLY: ...we'd already had long conversations about what the guy was
thinking or what he was going through or, you know, because we had to decide
those things as we made the songs, you know, as we decided what the lyrical
content would be or what the attitude up to a certain song would be. We had
to be walking through the story at the same time.

GROSS: My guests are John C. Reilly, the star of "Walk Hard," and Jake
Kasdan, the film's director and co-writer. More after a break. This is FRESH
AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: We're talking about the film "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," a send
up of music biopics. My guests are the film's star, John C. Reilly, and its
director and co-writer Jake Kasdan.

John, I remember when we were talking about making "Boogie Nights," which is
set in the porn industry, you talked about how you had to watch a lot of porn
movies.

Mr. REILLY: Did I?

GROSS: Yes. You didn't talk a lot about it, but you did mention it.

Mr. REILLY: I'm still doing research on that one, Terry.

GROSS: Well, in fact, you said you thought you'd never watch a porn movie
again.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah. Well, that's true.

Mr. KASDAN: It turned out not to be the case.

Mr. REILLY: Certainly not in the same way, yeah.

Mr. KASDAN: That's how he prepared for "Walk Hard" also.

GROSS: Did you go back and watch a lot of the rock and country biopics before
making this?

Mr. REILLY: You know, the truth is I'd seen a lot of these biopics already,
so that's why I so sparked to the idea when Jake and Judd came to me. Because
I was already thinking the same thing, like, `Gosh, isn't it crazy how even
though Ray Charles and Johnny Cash are two very different people with very
different lives, how much their movies about them are so similar?' I mean,
certain things match up almost like Xerox, you know, it's bizarre. So I was
already in a place of thinking like, `Oh, you know, this would be fun to have
some fun with this type of movie.

But, yeah, the research I did mostly while getting ready for the movie was
looking at documentaries. Like, I looked at a great documentary about Roy
Orbison and, you know, some stuff about Johnny Cash. I watched an amazing
sort of outtake film called "Eat the Document" that was about Bob--you know,
it was footage from "Don't Look Back" that was not used in the film. And then
I even got more bootlegs from that same era. I had an amazing video of Bob
Dylan and John Lennon in the back of like an English taxi. It was about 20
minutes long, and you just, you can't believe you're watching these two people
talk to each other in a candid way. I mean, number one, you don't see that
kind of footage normally from the '60s period, and then to see those--it's
like watching Superman and Batman have a conversation.

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah.

Mr. REILLY: It's kind of incredible.

GROSS: Yeah...

Mr. REILLY: So I focused mainly on documentary stuff because I kind of had
to forget the whole `we're making fun a little bit of the biopic thing' a
little bit because I had a character to play, you know? And I realized that,
you know, you can't just do a meta-performance. You have to have something to
play there emotionally and you have to have something for the audience to get
involved in.

GROSS: Can you talk about a specific moment or specific like posture or
attitude that you got from watching the documentaries?

Mr. REILLY: Well, this idea--you know, what struck me was--because going in,
I'm very modest person. I come from very modest background. My family has
nothing to do with the entertainment business at all, for generations. I
mean, I think I had an uncle who was a vaudeville singer at one point, but--so
coming into this, I didn't feel like, `Wow, a rock star. I'm just the guy for
the part,' you know? It's just, I just think like `Oh, God. Man, are people
really going to believe this?'

And then I realized from watching some of these documentaries and just from
the way people would behave around me when I was dressed as Dewey that it's
almost like a self-generating process. People start to mythologize you, so
you become a myth. People start to treat you like a rock star, and you start
to feel like, `Well, that's an appropriate way to treat me,' you know, like
people scream in adulation and you start to get used to it, you know? And so
that was an interesting process for me, like, getting into the character that
way, accepting that I could be this, you know, Elvis-like figure, even though
I'm a very modest person personally. Like, it became clear to me slowly how
it happens to someone. Because, you know, all these guys come from somewhat
humble beginnings, you know? And then they find themselves one day in a white
leather jumpsuit surrounded by people that to have sex with them and give them
anything they want and never say `no.' You know, it's a pretty slippery slope.

GROSS: John C. Reilly stars in the new film "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox
Story." Jake Kasdan directed and co-wrote the film. They'll be back in the
second half of the show. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. We're talking about the new
movie "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." It's a send up of music biopics. My
guests are John C. Reilly, who stars as music legend Dewey Cox, and Jake
Kasdan, who directed and co-wrote the film. All the songs were written for
the film and are in the manner of iconic performers like Roy Orbison, Johnny
Cash, The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

Well, let's talk about Roy Orbison for a second. There's a great like Roy
Orbison-ish song in here that you do, and it's one of my favorite moments in
the movie because like your first marriage is completely falling apart...

Mr. REILLY: Right.

GROSS: ...your wife is like really bitter because you're never home and she
has like 1,000 babies of yours to take care of.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

Mr. KASDAN: As is her role as the first wife. That's her obligatory...

GROSS: That's right.

Mr. REILLY: A lot of tears and a lot of closed bathroom doors.

GROSS: So like the marriage is kaput and then you're on stage singing about
how you have the perfect life and the perfect wife...

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

GROSS: ...and it's this really like very Roy Orbison-ish kind of song. And I
was just really amazed at how well you pulled it off. I think it's a very
demanding song, and a really catchy one, too.

Mr. REILLY: Well, thanks.

Mr. KASDAN: It's a very demanding song.

Mr. REILLY: It is one of the more demanding ones that we did. Yeah, I'll
have to agree there.

GROSS: Do you want to say anything about the preparing for this, and also in
the manner of Roy Orbison, there's this like--they have a orchestra behind you
with like horns and strings and lots of drama.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah. Well, that was always our idea for the song was, you
know, somehow this is the moment in his life when his--the reality of his life
starts to separate slowly from the illusion of his life and he starts to
believe more in the illusion than he's interested in accepting the reality.
So, yeah, getting ready for the song I just, you know, the usual vocal tricks.
You just warm up as much as you can and try not to do it too many times in a
row, and...

Mr. KASDAN: The original concept for this song--it's a little bit different
than how it appears in the movie, although only slightly--was that we see
Dewey on stage singing this song about his wife called "A Life Without You (Is
No Life At All)," and it's this big Orbison-esque sort of, you know, soaring
ballad, like all the Roy Orbison songs that we love so much. Unlike Roy
Orbison, it was too--it conceived to be cut against a montage of Dewey on
stage singing this, you know, announcing his love for his wife and intercut it
with a montage of him...

Mr. REILLY: Depravity.

Mr. KASDAN: ...yeah, very quickly sliding down that slippery slope and
bedding everyone he sees, everyone in the band, everyone on the tour, all the
groupies. It's just that for Dewey on his first tour, drugs instantly equal
outrageous infidelity and depravity, and that that would be the montage.

And the way it worked out in the movie, the song was so pretty, and watching
John sing the song was so sort of enjoyable to us that we didn't want to cut
away to all of this horrible stuff. So instead what happens is the song ends
and we immediately see that what he was doing--what happened immediately after
it, the aftermath, we see, is him sort of like sitting around the aftermath of
an orgy with a bunch of strangers who are all naked.

Mr. REILLY: This was the first song that we recorded that I--when I played
it back in the final, you know, polished version back at home, it was really
stunning, like, wait a minute, like, this song almost could work in the top
40. Like, my mom would really just like this song, like, we're so in--it was
in this kind of music from the '50s would just--it just fits right in there.
It was a really kind of bizarre art imitating life moment for me, like, wait a
minute...

GROSS: No, it's a good song.

Mr. REILLY: ...this is a good song. Yeah.

GROSS: It's a good song. It's a great arrangement and production and I think
we should hear it.

Mr. REILLY: We didn't mean to make a good song, but we did. Like, what
happened?

Mr. KASDAN: And this was also again, Mike Viola wrote this song, and it was
one of those--this was sort of a lightning bolt moment for all of us, which
was we heard his original demo that was just Mike singing into a tape recorder
and we all kind of went, well, that's just undeniably great. We just have
to--we've got to do that quick.

GROSS: So let's hear it. So this is "A Life Without You (Is No Life At
All)," John C. Reilly singing, and it's from the soundtrack of the new film
"Walk Hard."

(Soundbite of "A Life Without You (Is No Life At All)")

Unidentified Singer: (Singing) Oh, my darling
Oh, my darling
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) I have a perfect life
You are the perfect wife
I don't know why
I sit and cry

And now I miss you so
Please don't let me go
I make mistakes and that is true
At least I learn each time I do

Darling, you must believe
I could never leave you if I tried
A life without you is no life at all

Singer: (Singing) Oh, my darling
Oh, my darling...

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's John C. Reilly from the soundtrack of "Walk Hard," which is a
send up of musical biography movies, musical biopics. And my guests are John
C. Reilly, the star of the film, and Jake Kasdan, who conceived, co-wrote and
directed the film.

Now, I want to play some more music from the soundtrack. And this time around
I thought we could play the Bob Dylan homage, which had the most twisted,
ridiculous lyrics, a perfect tribute to Dylan.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

GROSS: So, Jake, what did you tell the songwriters for this that you wanted?

Mr. KASDAN: Well, these Dylan-esque songs were a really simple process,
which was we had this idea that it would be fun to do a sequence like this. I
called up Dan Bern, who is one of the main guys who was writing with us, a
really good friend of mine, one of the world's funniest songwriters, and I
said, `We're thinking about doing a sequence where he sounds really a lot like
Dylan.' And...

GROSS: Because he's gotten politicized.

Mr. REILLY: He's gotten politicized, but the way that his politics are
showing up in his music are in incomprehensible metaphors and, you know, long,
wordy songs. And Dan showed up at my house literally the next day with four
brilliantly conceived fake Dylan songs built on incomprehensible metaphors.
And this one is called "Royal Jelly."

GROSS: So this is John C. Reilly singing "Royal Jelly," from the soundtrack
of "Walk Hard."

(Soundbite of "Royal Jelly")

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth
canal of the coliseum
Rim job ferret, teapots mask the temper tantrum, oh, say can you see them?
Stuffed cabbage is the darling of the laundromat
And the sorority mascot sat with the lumberjack,
Prescient passion stinging, half-synthetic fabrications of his time
The mouse with the overbite explained how the rabbits were ensnared
And the skinny, skinny self rash, the apothecary diplomat,
Inside the three-eyed monkey within inches of his toaster oven life

In my mind I'm half-blind
My inner ref is mostly deaf
I'm smell impaired
If you care

My sense of taste is wasted on the phosphorescent orange peels of San
Francisco axe-encrusted frenzy
So let me touch you
Let me touch you
Let me touch you
Let me touch you
Where the royal jelly gets made

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: And that's "Royal Jelly," John C. Reilly singing from the soundtrack
of "Walk Hard." And my guests are John C. Reilly and Jake Kasdan, who
conceived, co-wrote and directed the film.

Do you have any favorite moments from biopics that inspired either of you?
Inspired you because they were either so good or so ridiculous, and maybe
you'd even want to choose like one of each because there are some like
wonderful like rock 'n' roll movies from the '50s and '60s.

Mr. KASDAN: You know, it sounds like a sort of phony thing to say when
you've made a movie that's kind of a clear parody in many ways, though not
always. But, you know, the truth is we never would have done this if we
weren't all kind of serious suckers for the movies that we're riffing on,
because there is something irresistible about those stories. And the truth is
I go to every one of those movies the week it comes out and will continue to
even after having made that movie. There's something about the format and
movies about rock music that are irresistible to me.

In terms of a favorite moment, John, does one pop to mind?

Mr. REILLY: Yeah, from "Walk the Line," that little romantic moment when
Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash finally are able to love each other and it's
OK for their love to be a romantic love that--I don't remember exactly where
it happens in the movie, but they're on stage and there's...

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah, right at the end.

Mr. REILLY: ...this big spotlight from the front.

Mr. KASDAN: He proposes to her on stage. It was beautiful.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah.

Mr. KASDAN: Absurd stuff in biopics.

Mr. REILLY: Well, there was that thing from "Ray" which we kind of rip on a
little bit in the movie where it's like, you know he's going to get addicted
to a drug.

Mr. KASDAN: Right.

Mr. REILLY: He comes in the bathroom, you know this is going to be the
moment. And the character, `You don't want no part of this.'

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah.

Mr. REILLY: `You know, stuff.' I can't say what he really says on the radio,
but, `You don't want no part of this stuff, Ray. Get out of here.'

Mr. KASDAN: Yeah.

Mr. REILLY: You know, when, the fact is, you're, you know, wait. He did
infamously, you know, get involved in drugs. So this is going to happen.

GROSS: Let's end with one more song. And, John, let me ask you if there's a
favorite of yours that we haven't yet played?

Mr. REILLY: Gosh. "Beautiful Ride" would be a great wrap-up tune.

GROSS: OK.

Mr. REILLY: Because it's the rare moment when an artist is able to sum up
his entire life's experience in one song.

Mr. KASDAN: Right at the end of his movie.

Mr. REILLY: Yeah, right before he goes home to Jesus.

GROSS: Thank you both so much for talking with us.

Mr. REILLY: Thank you, Terry.

Mr. KASDAN: Thanks so much, Terry, for having us.

GROSS: John C. Reilly stars in the new film "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox
Story." Jake Kasdan directed and co-wrote the film. Our interview was
recorded last month. Here's the song we were just talking about, "Beautiful
Ride."

(Soundbite of "Beautiful Ride")

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) Now that I have lived
A lifetime's worth of days
Finally I see the folly of my ways
So listen when I sing of the temptations of this world,
Fancy cars and needles, whiskey, flesh and girls
And then in the end it's family and friends
Loving yourself but not only yourself
It's about the good walk and the hard walk and the young girls you make cry
It's about make a little music every day till you die
It's a beautiful ride

Singer: (Singing) Beautiful ride

Mr. REILLY: (Singing) A beautiful ride

(End of soundbite)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Songwriter Hugh Martin discusses song "Have Yourself
a Merry Little Christmas"
TERRY GROSS, host:

There's one Christmas song I just never get tired of. It was written by Hugh
Martin, and in a moment we'll hear from him. He wrote the song for Judy
Garland to sing in the 1944 movie, "Meet Me in St. Louis."

(Soundbite of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas")

Ms. JUDY GARLAND: (Singing) Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart by light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

(End of soundbite)

GROSS: That's not the only great song from "Meet Me in St. Louis." Hugh
Martin and his late songwriting partner Ralph Blaine wrote "The Trolley Song"
and "The Boy Next Door" for that film. Martin and Blaine were on our show in
1989. Martin is 93 now. Last year, we called him to thank him again for
writing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and to wish him a merry
Christmas. Here's an excerpt of that conversation.

Hugh Martin, merry Christmas and welcome back to FRESH AIR. I think about you
all the time around Christmas because I hear your song "Have Yourself a Merry
Little Christmas" all the time. What's it like for you at Christmas when your
song is all over?

Mr. HUGH MARTIN: Well, I just received a little demo from my publisher with
about 11 new versions of "Have Yourself." And I tell you, it really had an
emotional impact on me. It made me feel so connected with a generation that's
not my generation. I really was moved to tears by it.

GROSS: What are some of your like all-time favorite versions of the song?

Mr. MARTIN: Well, my all-time favorite versions are from the olden days. It
was Judy Garland, of course, always tops with me. And Mel Torme, who wrote a
beautiful new verse for it, was really out of this world. And Frank Sinatra,
you can't beat "Mr. Blue Eyes."

GROSS: And the strangest versions you've ever heard?

Mr. MARTIN: The strangest version was by a group called Twisted Sister.
Have you ever heard of them?

GROSS: Oh, yes. Uh-huh, I don't think I know their version of "Have Yourself
a Merry Little Christmas," though.

Mr. MARTIN: That was really weird. They sang it.

GROSS: Well, I think, as we speak, our producers are looking for a copy of
that. And by the time this is over, I bet we'll have it.

Mr. MARTIN: Oh, another beautiful one is--have you heard of this group
called Celtic Woman?

GROSS: No. No, I haven't.

Mr. MARTIN: Well, they are a bunch of Irish girls with beautiful voices,
very high. And they are beautiful.

GROSS: Now, you once told the story on our show about how you and your late
partner Ralph Blaine wrote "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Can I ask
you to tell it again?

Mr. MARTIN: Well, first of all, I feel rather self-serving admitting this,
but Ralph didn't really write it, honey. We wrote our songs separately, so
it's words and music by me.

GROSS: Oh, well, good. So now you're really able to tell the complete story
of how you wrote it.

Mr. MARTIN: I can really tell the complete story.

Ralph was working in one room, and I was working in another on "Meet Me in St.
Louis," and I played the first 16 bars of "Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas" over and over and over, and got stuck. I could not get--I couldn't
find a bridge for it. And so I just put it aside and decided not to work on
it. And Ralph, who had heard it through the wall, came to me the next day and
said, `Whatever happened to that little madrigal-sounding melody that you were
playing?' And I said, `Well, I couldn't make it work, Ralph, and so I
discarded it.' And he said, `Well, you find it and finish it because I have a
big feeling about it.'

And so we did find it and I did finish it, but the original version was so
lugubrious that Judy Garland refused to sing it. She said, `If I sing that to
little Margaret O'Brien they'll think I'm a monster.' So I was young then and
kind of arrogant, and I said, `Well, I'm sorry you don't like it, Judy, but
that's the way it is, and I don't really want to write a new lyric.' But Tom
Drake, who played the boy next door, took me aside and said, `Hugh, you've got
to finish it. It's really a great song potentially, and I think you'll be
sorry if you don't do it.' So I went home and I wrote the version that's in
the movie.

GROSS: Now, I should explain that in the 1944 movie musical "Meet Me in St.
Louis," when Judy Garland sings this, you know, she and her younger sister are
very--it's Christmastime but she and her younger sister are very unhappy
because their father's job is taking him from St. Louis to New York, and he's
going to move the whole family to New York, and they don't want to go and
leave their friends behind. So the younger sister, played by Margaret
O'Brien, is crying, and Judy Garland tries to comfort her by singing the song.

Now, you said that the first version was lugubrious. What made the lyrics
lugubrious?

Mr. MARTIN: Well, I'll sing it for you.

(Singing) Have yourself a merry little Christmas, it may be your last. Next
year we may all be living in the past.

Pretty sad.

GROSS: But you changed that lyric, didn't you?

Mr. MARTIN: Yeah, I did. The one in the movie was--let's see, "Have
yourself a merry little Christmas." Oh, "Until then we all will be together if
the fates allow. Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow." That was
the one that was in the movie. Then I got a phone call from Frank Sinatra
saying, `I'm doing an album called "A Jolly Christmas" and I love your song,
but it's just not very jolly. Do you think you could jolly it up a little bit
for me?' So then I wrote the line about "Hang a shining star upon the highest
bough." And Frank liked that and recorded it. And people, they do--sometimes
they do that line and sometimes they do the "muddle through" line somehow.

GROSS: I like the "muddle through" one.

Mr. MARTIN: I like the "muddle through" one better, too.

GROSS: We're listening to a conversation I recorded one year ago with
songwriter Hugh Martin. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

GROSS: Let's get back to the interview I recorded with Hugh Martin, who wrote
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and, with his songwriting partner
Ralph Blaine, wrote other great songs like "The Trolley Song" and "The Boy
Next Door."

Let me ask you to share with us your favorite Christmas memory, since we all
have your song playing in our soundtrack of Christmas.

Mr. MARTIN: Well, my favorite Christmas memory was of being six or seven
years old, and my mother decorating the tree. And she was a very artistic
woman, and she did sensational Christmas trees, so it was a real joy every
year when she would decorate it, and it was a very wonderful moment. That was
my favorite Christmas memory.

GROSS: And what's Christmas like now?

Mr. MARTIN: Oh, do I have to say?

GROSS: You don't.

Mr. MARTIN: I'm really upset by Christmas now. I just hate the Santa Claus
and the jingle bells and reindeer and the wrapped packages and the holiday
push. I hate all of that. I just loved it when it was, well, all my life
ago, 90 years ago.

GROSS: You liked it when it was less commercial.

Mr. MARTIN: Oh, yes. Didn't you? Well, of course, you're not old enough to
remember when it was so beautiful.

GROSS: Yeah, it was always pretty commercial.

Mr. MARTIN: But I loved it when it was old-fashioned. We didn't even have
electric lights on our tree. We'd have candles.

GROSS: That's considered very dangerous now.

Mr. MARTIN: Well, I know it is but we didn't have any problem. It worked
out OK.

GROSS: We're about to hear a version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little
Christmas" that you recorded a year ago...

Mr. MARTIN: That's right.

GROSS: ...and was released earlier this year in a CD that's called "Hugh
Sings Martin."

Mr. MARTIN: Right.

GROSS: And this features recordings that you've made, you know, throughput
your career, particularly like in the, I guess, in the '40s and '50s.

Mr. MARTIN: That's right.

GROSS: But it has this new recording from a year ago. You made this
recording when you were 90.

Mr. MARTIN: I was 90 years old. I don't know how I got through it.

GROSS: And you're at the piano playing and singing. It's quite beautiful.
Do you want to say anything about making this recording before we hear it?

Mr. MARTIN: Well, I just want to say, Terry, that I never would have
continued singing at all if it hadn't been for you, because you did an
interview with Ralph and me in 1989, I think it was, when "Meet Me in St.
Louis" opened on Broadway. And you played a little recording of me singing
"The Trolley Song." And I was just about to stop singing because I wasn't
getting all that much encouragement. But when at the end of the cut you said,
`Ooh, I like your singing. I like it a lot.' And that thrilled me so that I
kept on singing.

GROSS: Well, it thrills me to hear you say that.

Mr. MARTIN: I mean it.

GROSS: And I still really like your singing.

Mr. MARTIN: Thank you.

GROSS: And I want to wish you a merry Christmas, and I want to thank you for
writing such a great Christmas song. Some of those Christmas songs tend to
wear thin...

Mr. MARTIN: Well, God really blessed me.

GROSS: ...and your song is so enduring. It's just one of the most beautiful
and moving, I think, of all the Christmas songs. So thank you so much and
thank you for talking with us again.

Mr. MARTIN: Oh, thank you deeply for saying that.

GROSS: My conversation with Hugh Martin was recorded last year. I e-mailed
him a few days ago to let him know about the re-broadcast and to see how he's
doing. Here's part of his reply:

Quote, "This has not been my merriest little Christmas. 2007 was a banner
year for me until pneumonia caught up with me in November, followed by one of
my infamous falls. I'm banged up but fighting back, and it has not affected
my Christmas spirit. Ask your listeners to pray for me," unquote.

Hugh Martin, we send you our best wishes and hope you are feeling better soon
and that 2008 is a good and healthy year for you.

We'll close with a recording he made a couple of years ago of the classic
"Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Thanks again for writing it.

(Soundbite of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas")

Mr. MARTIN: (Singing) Here we are as in olden days,
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Gather near to us once more
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

(End of soundbite)