Crazy About "Crazy" , or Here Come The Judge

By now we are all aware of the "face in the crowd" movie format - kid comes out of nowhere with unbelievable talent, soars to the top and sinks down dramatically in a sea of drugs and booze, ultimately ending up penniless and pointless. The story of guitarist Hank Garland doesn't follow that pattern exactly in the feature film "Crazy" (One of the entries in this year's Rhode Island International Film Festival) but the elements seem all too familiar.


From the moment the story unfolds as Garland gets advice from Hank Williams seconds before Garland's first Grand Old Opry performance, the film is speckled with legendary performers who relied on Garland's "session" playing - Roy Orbison, Elvis Presley, Patsy Cline. The detail is remarkable, from the clothes to the cars to the old-fashioned recording studios and clubs, but the soundtrack stands out in relation to the story, as it makes the transition from the emerging country and western sound of the late 1940s to the brash rock and roll of the mid-1950s to the legendary jazzmen beginning to make their mark during the same era. One of the film's pivotal moments occurs when Garland goes to a "black" club in New York to hear a rising star named Wes Montgomery. The seasoned country picker abruptly shifts his focus to jazz, a monumental transformation in an era when desegregation was alive and well.


Ironically, Hank Garland doesn't sink into a morass of booze, drugs and one night stands - he actually marries the girl of his dreams, moves to the "suburbs" and stays faithful, even on the road. But his flirtation with African-American performers drives an unexpected wedge in their relationship, a gap that widens even further when Garland decides one day to claim his share of the royalties from "Jingle Bell Rock", a song that he co-wrote, setting up a confrontation with the so-called Nashville Mob . His career goes rapidly down the tubes, compounded by the fact that Garland's skittish wife takes up with his chief rival. Hank ends up in a mental institution, his will broken by shock treatments that render him helpless, left to spend endless hours mindlessly picking at the instrument that defined his life, relegated to one last performance at the place where it all began - The Grand Old Opry.


"Crazy" is just about perfect, between the reverence for the different genres of music it presents so well , and the film's uncompromising portrayal of Hank Garland's unique life. In a way, the film elevates the unsung heroes of the music biz, the studio players that provide the backbone riffs and hooks that help define a "hit" record.