After seeing Willie Nelson at his 4th of July Picnic this year I put his 1980 movie, Honeysuckle Rose, on our Netflix list. It arrived a few weeks ago so I've watched it a few times, during which, coincidentally, Leslie and I attended a public memorial service for its screenwriter, Austin legend Bill Wittliff, who also wrote the screenplay for Lonesome Dove.
I hadn't seen the movie since I saw it in 1980 when I was in grad school in San Diego. It brought back much about my love for Willie and my mental state at the time (trying to figure out a way to get to Texas). More on that later.
While trying to find a temporary replacement for Garland, Viv suggests Lily, who jumps at the chance and joins the band. From there all hell breaks loose. Buck of course falls for Lily (who wouldn't?) and they make a mess of things until Buck's eventual reconciliation with Viv. Lily is the one left with a broken heart but at least has the guts to come home and apologize to Viv.
All of this happens with the soundtrack of late-70s Willie and Family front and center. The live performances from the tour are used to advance the plot and then expertly cut into scenes of life on the bus, etc. All of those great Willie songs are here: Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground, On the Road Again, Uncloudy Day as well as covers of Kris Kristofferson's Loving You Was Easier Than Anything I'll Ever Do Again, Rodney Crowell's 'Til I Gain Control Again, Leon Russell's A Song For You, and of course Johnny Bush's Whiskey River.
Willie does a fine job acting, especially in the scenes with Dyan Cannon (presumably relying on his personal history - he's on his 4th marriage). Conversely, Dyan Cannon and Amy Irving do a fine job singing and Amy Irving learned at least enough guitar to make it look good.
Emmylou Harris joins Buck on one of the tour stops to sing 'Til I Gain Control Again and So You Think You're a Cowboy. At one point Lily is so awestruck watching her she forgets to play her guitar and has to be prodded by the drummer. Aside from the great duet it's a poignant reminder of how Emmylou started out as Gram Parsons' protege. (Emmylou won't talk about the personal side of her relationship with Gram but anybody who has seen video of that tour will tell you it doesn't look that different from Buck and Lily).
I first watched the film recently before the Wittliff memorial and didn't realize he wrote the screenplay. Upon viewing it afterward I noticed how tight the dialog was and how well the scenes work together. As a non-filmmaker, I'm thinking, how hard could it be? Just get the basic plot, and Willie and his band and the other actors, and throw it together. It practically writes itself! But of course I'm not a filmmaker or screenwriter but Bill Wittliff was, as the quality of the script shows.
In several of the scenes Willie's sister and piano player, Bobbie, looks suspiciously at Buck and Lily as their relationship evolved. I couldn't help but thinking how many times she gave him the same look in real life!
One scene is shot at the Soap Creek Saloon, which I visited with my brothers in 1976, and was located about a half mile from here in Austin, behind the middle school our kids went to. A great nod to a now long-gone Austin landmark!
One of my favorite parts is a long depiction of a Bonham Family Reunion, a large all-day Texas party with music, dancing, barbecue, horses, kids skinny dipping, games, and some hanky panky going on with some of the band members and some of the other band members's girlfriends. The music and dancing goes all day, with other Texas legends Kenneth Threadgill and Johnny Gimble playing.
Which brings me back to me. I started buying Willie Nelson records in college in New Haven, Connecticut, in the early 70s, and devoured Chet Flippo's Rolling Stone articles about the burgeoning Progressive Country scene in Austin, after Willie gave up on Nashville, grew his hair long, and moved back to Texas. I finally visited here in 1976 and my experiences at the Soap Creek and other places only cemented my desire to move here.
In grad school my roommates and I played a ton of Jerry Jeff and Willie and caught several Willie shows. Once on a hike through the Sierras my buddy George and I laid out a whole movie based on Willie's epic Red Headed Stranger. (Bill Wittliff's was probably better than ours but that movie seems to have disappeared).
Seeing Honeysuckle Rose in 1980 confirmed everything I felt about Willie and Texas but it was several years before I could figure out how to get here. First I had to have a job upon graduating in 1982 and that job turned out to be at IBM's Watson Lab, next to my hometown of Ossining, New York. I finally had my chance in 1988 when IBM was looking for volunteers for temporary assignments in Austin. Based on the fact it was only two years, Leslie reluctantly agreed to move (our kids were only 6 months and 2 years at the time). I kept my mouth shut and, within a year, Leslie was asking me if we had to move back. That was 31 years ago and we're still here, and still loving Austin and Texas and Willie Nelson!
Postscript
It turns out Willie and Amy weren't acting! According to Wikipedia:
Irving dated American film director Steven Spielberg from 1976 to 1980. She then had a brief relationship with Willie Nelson, her co-star in the film Honeysuckle Rose. The breakup with Spielberg cost her the role of Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark, which he had offered to her at the time,but they reunited and were married from 1985 to 1989. She received an estimated $100 million divorce settlement after a judge controversially vacated a prenuptial agreement that had been written on a napkin.
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