In Contention

Tag: Ryan Bingham

  • Ryan Bingham performs ‘The Weary Kind’ on Letterman

  • Talking ‘The Weary Kind’

    Speaking of original song contenders, we featured Ryan Bingham’s “The Weary Kind” a few weeks ago, but the New Mexico-bred crooner sat down with music consultant T Bone Burnett and “Crazy Heart” writer/director Scott Cooper at the film’s press day two weekends back to discuss the process of writing the soulful track.  Much of this you probably already know from reading my interview with Bigham and Burnett, but it’s nice to hear the two discussing it with Cooper.  Fox Searchlight recently made this video of the chat available, so take a look:

  • TECH SUPPORT: Best Original Song

    Jeff Bridges in Crazy HeartOver the last five months, Gerard has diligently canvassed and re-canvassed the various crafts categories here at In Contention.  The one category we have held back on all this time, as contenders have slowly fallen into place, was Best Original Song.  Today, it’s time to dig into the field.

    This has turned into something of a banner year for original songs in feature films.  We’ve had the great pleasure of bringing a number of hopefuls to you via our “listen to” posts, and look forward to continuing that into the new year.  But inevitably, frontrunners are bound to show up, and I think we can successfully narrow the field now.

    Before diving in, it’s worth reiterating the voting process in this category.  I’ll simply let the Academy’s rule book speak for itself:

    “An original song consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture. There must be a clearly audible, intelligible, substantive rendition (not necessarily visually presented) of both lyric and melody, used in the body of the motion picture or as the first music cue in the end credits.

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  • TECH SUPPORT INTERVIEW: The music of ‘Crazy Heart’

    T Bone BurnettThis marks the first of this year’s Tech Support interviews series with below-the-line crafts personnel, an annual feature at In Contention.

    When Scott Cooper’s adapted screenplay “Crazy Heart” was making the rounds a few years ago, it had the kind of soul a guy like T Bone Burnett wants out of a country-western film. But as far as musical accompaniment was concerned, it was a blank canvas.

    A close friend of actor Jeff Bridges dating back to their time together on Michael Cimino’s “Heaven’s Gate,” Burnett was the selling point when the actor began toying around with the idea of playing Bad Blake in the film. With Burnett came longtime friend and musician Stephen Bruton. With Bridges came his own longtime friend, John Goodwin. With a modest writers’ table assembled (including, of course, Cooper himself), the task then became searching for a voice with an array of original songs for the film.

    “There’s a Nashville voice that comes really from Lefty Frizelle,” Burnett says. “And then Merle Haggard was the next, and there’ve been hundreds of people who’ve learned to sing from Merle Haggard and Lefty. Most of the country singers are essentially in that tambour. Jeff is a whole different thing. So we began looking for prototypes, so to speak, and the first prototype to me was Leonard Cohen, who’s a great writer and sang with a deep chest voice like Jeff did. Don Williams as well, who was a big country star in the 70s, big and good, too, and very much an individual. So we started looking for those kinds of voices that could be country music.”

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  • Ryan Bingham’s first live performance of ‘The Weary Kind’

    From yesterday’s press day for “Crazy Heart” in Beverly Hills, courtesy of Steve Pond at The Odds (who has an interview with the youngster up now).  Watch for our Tech Support interview with Bingham and T Bone Burnett later this afternoon.

  • Do the Coens have their eyes set on a singing cowboy?

    singing cowboyA few hours ago I sat down with T Bone Burnett and Ryan Bingham to talk about the songs from “Crazy Heart.” I’ll be cooking up that piece as the introductory installment of our Tech Support interview series with below-the-line and craft personnel tomorrow, but Burnett mentioned something that totally caught my attention about a potential Coen brothers film..

    Of course, the Coens have had a number of projects stall out over the years, or more to the point, they’ve managed to leave some things on the back burner.  Everyone is still waiting for stuff like “To the White Sea” and “Hail Caesar,” after all.  But Burnett told me that it was actually the Coens who told him about Ryan Bingham, the singer/co-writer of “The Weary Kind,” who they were exposed to while filming “No Country for Old Men” in Marfa, Texas a few years back.

    “One of the things they have on the horizon includes a singing cowboy and they were thinking Ryan Bingham would be good,” Burnett said.

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