Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story : John C Reilly Interview





Q – Can you tell us a bit about the film for anyone who has not yet heard about it?

Well the film is called Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and it tells the life story of the musical legend Dewey Cox – and i think that by watching this movie, you will come to love Cox – if you didn’t already.

Q – Can you tell us a bit more about the character of Dewey Cox?

Dewey Cox starts out as this guy in Springberry Alabama, a country boy who’s interested in music and has had a somewhat troubled past. He gets involved in music and writes a song called Walk Hard, which becomes a huge hit, and like in so many music biopics, the road to fame is a rocky one and has its ups and downs. We have a lot of fun with musicians stories in general and we try and incorporate a lot of the rock stories that we have heard over the years, and pour them all in to this one character, Ironically, by the end of the movie, you end up feeling for this guy – you spend that much time with a person from 14 – 72, you end up caring for the guy, despite us taking the piss along the way, you can’t help but feel for the guy who has been through so much!

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) - Movie PosterQ – How did you prepare for the role – do you have a musical background?

I have been playing music and performing music since I was a child – I did a lot of musicals as a kid – those were the kind of plays that were going on in my neighbourhood. In my 20s I learnt to play the guitar – I always had music around me – it was something I always did as a hobby. I would always bring a guitar with me on location or when I was travelling, and slowly but surely music came into my acting life, going back to Boogie Nights and Chicago so it started to crop up – if you have any ability – like if you could tap dance, eventually someone will find out and need you to tap-dance in a movie – I guess the word is out that I can play guitar and sing!

Q – What initially attracted you to the project?

Well Judd Apatow asked me to do it – Judd and I had worked on Talladega Nights together, and I knew he was a brilliant comedic mind. It’s not every day that someone says ‘hey we’ve written a movie for you – would you like to star in it?’, so it was not exactly a touch decision to make!

Q – What was your favourite scene to shoot?

All the musical performances were great as we had a real audience there and so I would get to play other cover songs in between set ups, so that was fun – getting to film the real performance scenes was great.

Q – Can you tell is about the cameos in the film?

We’re loaded with cameos in this film – we have some amazing people from Ghost Face Killa to Jack White of The White Stripes – and a lot of people in between. A lot of great comedy actors are in the film – I mean our four Beatles are Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Jason Schwartzman and Justin Long – so those guys had a lot of fun – that seems to be a scene people are identifying with a lot – taking the mickey out of The Beatles!