What inspired you to write and direct this film?
I think it stemmed from my love of country music. I lived in Austin while going to grad school and I was dating a country singer and I kind of fell in love with the world and that genre of music. It’s one of the few genres of music that still emphasises storytelling. As a writer that hits home for me.
Can you talk about casting actors who could sing rather than the other way around?
That was the most important thing. Coming from the South, I wanted this to feel authentic and there was talk in the beginning about re-voicing actors. You know, ‘Put other actors on the list. Even if you don’t think they can sing, it won’t make a difference.’ And you’re thinking, ‘Oh God, that seems like a disaster.’ You’re making a movie about country music and you’re re-voicing your actors? This, like, cheesy Disney voice comes on? I can always tell when actors are re-voiced in films.
I worked off a list of actors I knew could sing, except for Garrett. Garrett was actually the first person I cast. When I met him he could not sing or play the guitar and I had never seen him in a dramatic performance. With Garrett, I had a really honest conversation and I said, ‘You know, you’re not ready to play this role tomorrow. You know that. I think you will be ready to play this role but I need you to be mine for the next few months. You can’t take another job. I need to work with you.’ He gave everything up. He didn’t take another job. For four months he would come to my house and he’d do monologues and we’d do scene studies. He worked with a vocal coach and he worked with a guitar teacher. Then he moved to Nashville about two months early and stayed at Tim’s [McGraw] guesthouse on a ranch and started going into the recording studio. I started seeing progress every week and it was something that was really exciting.
Did you try to get Tim to sing?
I wanted Tim to sing and he would sing on set all the time but then it kind of started to blur the lines. Is it Tim McGraw? Or is it James Canter? I didn’t want to blur those lines.
I’m really glad that I did not go to a Tim McGraw concert until after I started shooting the movie. After it wrapped my producer and I went to a Tim McGraw concert and I was like, ‘I think I have a crush on Tim McGraw.’
It seems like it takes one set of skills to direct a feature film and another to direct a concert film. Is it a markedly different thing?
Yeah. It definitely was. My favourite concert film is The Last Waltz and I watched that a lot. Directing musical performances is also very different from directing two actors having an intimate conversation in a room. When they get on stage it’s all about confidence and that’s something that’s very hard to direct. What I found most valuable was using the extras in Nashville. I could not have directed those performances without those extras. Gwyneth was so nervous back stage, just shaking when she was about to play for thousands of extras in Dallas. When she came out and started singing, they stood up on their feet and started applauding and cheering for her. I saw how that impacted her performance. There’s a direct correlation between how loud they yelled and how much confidence she exuded in the performance.
Even though we only see snippets of certain musical performances in the film, did you actually film complete sequences for them?
We did. My first cut came in at three hours because I just wanted to keep every single song. That was really tough in the editing room. Deciding how much to show of each song and when to cut and go back to the scenes. If I had my way, I could have made a true musical out of this film and just held onto these songs.
Do you know what your next project is going to be?
It’s something very different. Something I have not done before. It’s called The Outlaws and it’s about father and son bank robbers so it’s a genre film. It’s definitely a dramatic genre film with strong character roles but it has a lot of action, which I’ve robbers so it’s a genre film. It’s definitely a dramatic genre film never done before so I’m excited.
