Walk The Line Censored
03.08.06As a huge John Cash fan, I knew that he was a Christian. And as much as I’d have liked to see his Christianity show up in the movie, I pretty much knew that it woulden’t.
I watched “the making of” and found out that the movie had been in production for the last ten years. And that Johnny Cash had been in on it in the beginning. But when he died in 2003, I guess thats when they figgered they woulden’t have to show his faith in this movie.
Just got this, courtesy of Newsmax.
Johnny Cash’s Faith Censored
“Walk the Line,” the Johnny Cash biopic that landed Reese Witherspoon a Best Actress trophy, curiously left out a gigantic aspect of the legendary singer’s life, that being Cash’s Christian faith.Cash himself actually claimed that it was his faith that saved his life. He even took the stage at many of Rev. Billy Graham’s crusades.
Although the flick did show Cash auditioning by playing a gospel song for Sam Phillips at Sun Records, even here it omitted a momentous detail.
Cash split from Sun Records in the 1950s because he was not allowed to record a gospel album.
Also left out of the film was the dramatic moment when Cash entered a cave in Tennessee to die because of his drug addiction. According to the singer’s autobiography, God stopped him from killing himself.
The Left Coast Report points out that an Oscar can go to a song about a pimp but a faith scene cannot be tolerated.
My parents were huge Johnny Cash fans, and I became one myself. I remember watching him talk about his faith on TV several times. Johnny Cash wasn’t just a singer I liked; he became one of my Christian heroes.
While “Walk The Line” didn’t show a lot about his faith, it didn’t upset me too much… I don’t really care to have godless lefties from Hollywood try to portray the strong faith of one of my heroes.
In spite of avoiding faith, I thought the script was pretty good. Joaquin (sp?) Phoenix did a good job portraying Johnny.
# March 8th, 2006 at 12:40 pmJust watched it the other night. Pretty good flick except what Chad just mentioned regarding Johnny’s faith.
I actually just read in an article where Johnny and June’s son (who produced the movie) said that Johnny’s freedom from a life of sin and drug use came from his Mother, June. I think God may have used June to help facilitate Johnny’s rehabilitation but it was truly the Lord Jesus Christ who saved him.
I also read where Johnny’s daughter was very distressed that her half brother portrayed Johnny’s first wife (her mom) as a very shrewed, unloving woman. She said it was really the opposite.
# March 8th, 2006 at 1:00 pmIts hollywierd, cant expect too much from them.
# March 8th, 2006 at 1:16 pmHi bros.
Also check this quote from Human Events Book Service:
“…In an Oscar season where the most honored films are those that celebrate homosexuality (Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica, Capote) or preach liberal platitudes (Syriana, Good Night and Good Luck, Crash, Munich), it’s no wonder that a movie honoring self-sacrifice, faith and family has been all but ignored by the Motion Picture Academy. But don’t be fooled by Hollywood’s colossal snub: Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zelweger, is not only, in our humble judgment, the best film of 2005, but one of the moving, thrilling and uplifting films to come out of Hollywood in decades…”
# March 8th, 2006 at 9:36 pmDon’t be ridiculous Chad. First of all, the movie was not “censored”; it was not radically changed after Cash died as you (and NewsMax) are inferring. The movie you see is the movie Cash himself helped make for 7 years before he died. Dude, it’s based on his autobiography.
Keep in mind that both the beginning and end demonstrate Cash’s faith—first as a child singing hymns, and at the end attending church services with June after his recovery. His faith bookends the period of Cash’s life that the movie is about—his quick rise to fame and the crash that soon followed—the period of his life where he drifted from the path of God. It showed what happens when you embrace promiscuity and drugs, when you allow your ego to take over. The movie was about a profoundly UN-Christian time in Cash’s life.
And remember that it was not Gospel that made Cash famous, and not until after his rise to fame, his decline and his recovery did he really start to once again sing about God, having once again found him.
The movie is not supposed to be about happily attending church and living a clean and pure life, it’s about a lengthy struggle with drugs and alcohol, when he was pushing God away and basically destroying himself. And most importantly, it’s about REDEMPTION, a fundamentally Christian theme.
It’s sad that NewsMax has ignored the underlying message of the movie just so they can politicize a very un-political movie. And sad that you’re so eager to repeat that nonsense.
# March 17th, 2006 at 4:39 pmMy name is Guav and I hate Newsmax. I love the New York Times and the Village Voice. I have lots of guns so don’t call me a liberal because I will get very upset and I might even sob uncontrollably. I am an Independant damnit! I voted Kerry though. I also am the intellectual authority on everything you dumb hicks could ever write about. Go ahead and try to post something without me finding some relative article with shady statistics that I can quote which will ultimately prove how smarter I am than you guys. Was that a run-on sentence? Nevertheless, I have tattoo which makes me a tough liberal. Wait, I am not a liberal…what am I saying? I hate you all. But you guys are pretty cool. Wait. What was I talking about?
# March 17th, 2006 at 9:14 pmIt’s not about the “theme”, Guav. It’s about the fact that they woulden’t put it in the script because its “not cool” in hollyworld.
# March 18th, 2006 at 3:37 amChad, Kingdom Of Heaven made $20 million in it’s first week, and The Passion of the Christ ended up bringing in $370.3 million. It’s not that Hollywood is scared of Christian themes, it’s that the movie simply was not intended to be about Cash’s faith—and that was as much Cash’s decision as this faceless “Hollyworld” demon that NewsMax blames (even though they give no evidence whatsoever that the movie was “censored” or that the movie was radically changed after Cash’s death).
Guav’s Conscience (JJ), I rarely read the New York Times and I haven’t read the Village Voice in years. I hate NewsMax and WorldNetDaily on the right for the same reason I hate Capitol Hill Blue on the left—they’re like garbage tabloids, the junk food of news sources.
I don’t hate all of you nor do I think you’re all pretty cool—I like Chad and I don’t like you very much. But you don’t like me either so that’s OK.
I voted for Badnarik.
I’m certainly liberal on a lot of social issues, but I’m conservative when it comes to affirmative action, gun rights, illegal immigration and some other issues. I don’t know what makes me, and I don’t really CARE—you can call me whatever makes you happy if you have to pigeonhole everyone into one of two camps.
# March 18th, 2006 at 10:33 amKingdom of heaven? okay, that one doesn’t even count. stupid movie, more about “history”, and we don’t even know how accurate it is.
Passion of the Christ - Was supposed to be about Christ, not our dependancy on him. Another “historical” type of film. And that was made by Mel Gibson, who doesn’t really classify as “hollywood” since he is a regular badass and doesn’t care what they think anyways.
I know that alot of Cash fans will agree with me (and newsmax)… that if the movie producers really wanted to depict Cash’s life accurately… they would of had his faith in the movie.
I do know that Cash had a say on the first half of the movie, while he was living. But that first half of the movie was before Cash was saved.
# March 18th, 2006 at 12:00 pmDont know what yer talking about.
# March 18th, 2006 at 3:22 pmBut for the record I dislike you as well.
# March 18th, 2006 at 3:22 pmBut the movie wasn’t about his “life.” It was about a very short period in his life, a period in which his faith hardly played a dominant role.
It’s like complaining that Cinderella Man didn’t have enough about James Braddock’s childhood, his later life, or his faith. It simply wasn’t about those things—it was about his decline and his rise to stardom. Walk The Line was about Cash’s rise to stardom and his decline.
I just don’t understand what you think should have been in the movie that wasn’t, that’s all.
# March 18th, 2006 at 7:12 pmThat makes a good point. But I still think that they made June out to be his saviour. Which she did have a role in that.
# March 18th, 2006 at 8:39 pmLike every movie about actual people & events, it wasn’t entirely accurate in many ways: His dad wasn’t as much of a jerk as he was made to be in the film, the chronology of the songs is out of order, etc. It’s entertainment, and should be judged as such. That’s why the books are always better.
I’m just glad the movie was made, he deserved his own movie, and I’d have been happy to sit in the theater for another hour and watch more about his life, including his faith. But the movie ends in 1968. What you gonna do?
# March 19th, 2006 at 7:47 amI wonder why they named the movie “Walk the Line.” Wasn’t that song written for his first wife? And wasn’t it about him being a “good boy” while he was on the road? Weird.
Guav, I think that this issue is more sensitive to Christians because they hold Cash up as a hero for Christianity and second chances. His life was a powerful testiment to the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Many of us wish it was more visible than a 3 second shot of him walking into a Babtist Church.
# March 19th, 2006 at 8:07 amOK JJ, I can understand that, now that you’ve put it like that. And I can see why you’d want his faith to play a more prominent role in the movie and be more visible, and it would have presented a more in-depth view of who Johnny Cash was as a person.
I have no disagreement with how you would have liked the movie to have been—I’m just saying that the movie was not “censored,” a charge that NewsMax makes without citing any evidence whatsoever. There was not some nefarious conspiracy to keep his faith out of the movie, it’s just not the movie that they and Cash chose to make (unfortunately).
# March 20th, 2006 at 10:00 amI gotcha.
# March 20th, 2006 at 5:41 pm