CONVERSATION WITH BEST ACTOR WINNER JEFF BRIDGES

MakingOf: Now, you knew you could sing before you took on this role, but did you have any idea that it was gonna be such a big element? It’s almost a separate character, the music.

(Jeff Bridges): Oh yeah! Well that’s what I was sayin’, that central element wasn’t there when I first read it, so it was thrilling, exciting and kind of provoking, the fact that uh, yeah let’s go but there’s still no music! So we had to create that music and write it and having T Bone at the helm gave me a certain degree of faith that this was gonna go down well, but…and T Bone said that we were either gonna look for songs that fitted perfectly or we were gonna write them, tailor made for it. So you know, that was the way that happened.

MO: Looking back on the production, what was your favorite part of the process?

(JB): I think working on the music, you know? T Bone, we go back 30 years to “Heaven’s Gate” and Kris Kristofferson, who was in that and is kind of a role model for me in this one, he assembled all of his musician friends to work on “Heaven’s Gate” and so we had these great jam sessions here for six months, every night we were playin’. And one of the guys he brought to “Heaven’s Gate” was a fella named Stephen Bruton who is one of T Bone’s oldest friends, they grew up in Texas together and he also worked on “Crazy Heart” and wrote a lot of the songs and he was with me every day, every step of the way, he was my touchstone and really the source and the soul of the movie was Stephen Bruton.

MO: How much of your role was improv vs. what was on the page, how much do you think of the characterization…

(JB): Well, the script, I always go back to the script and what people say about your character, what you say about yourself, that’s the kind of basis of it and then some directors don’t mind if you improvise, they encourage it if you have any impulse to do something that’s not necessarily in the script, go for it, you know? And Scott Cooper, the director and the writer of “Crazy Heart” was one of those guys, he uh, first time director! And he was wonderful, and he was an actor himself and that helped a lot and he created a great environment for us to, you know, create in and he was very encouraging.

MO: When you saw it for the first time, were you kind of taken aback by it, seeing it in its entirety or did you expect it to…

(JB): Well, Scott was, as I was saying, so great to work with. The reason I enjoyed working with him so much was that he was very inclusive. He invited me to come and watch the film being edited and give my ideas about that and so I kind of watched it from the beginning, being assembled and now that it’s sort of polished up, I think he did a great job with it.