March 3, 2006

BY MIRIAM DI NUNZIO Weekend Editor

It was one of the most lauded films of 2005. Its subject matter -- the love story between one legendary country music singer and the woman who stood by him through thick and thin -- turned out to be a winning formula on so many levels.

After garnering best actor and best actress Golden Globe Awards for Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, as well as best picture comedy/musical, it came as a huge surprise to many that "Walk the Line" was left out of the best picture category in the Academy Awards race.

No one was perhaps more surprised than the film's executive producer James Keach, who was also a very close friend of the late Johnny Cash and June Carter, and instrumental in bringing the film to light.

"Award shows are great, you can go meet people you haven't met, see people you haven't seen in a while," Keach says with a polite chuckle.

"I was really surprised we didn't get the best picture nomination, but I've often said it's not about what other people think of me. Philosophically, a year from now nobody will remember what the nominees for best picture were."

The movie, directed by James Mangold and nominated for five Oscars (the awards will be handed out Sunday night), has just been released in a special two-disc collector's set on DVD ($29.98, Fox Home Entertainment), in addition to single-disc widescreen and full-screen versions. The two-disc has a host of bonus material, including some wonderful deleted scenes, three extended musical performances ("Jackson," "Rock and Roll Ruby" and "Cocaine Blues") by Phoenix and Witherspoon that will knock your socks off, and three poignant featurettes about Cash and Carter.

There is admiration and affection in Keach's voice as he talks about the two people who came to mean so much in his life. Their friendship began in the early 1990s, when Cash and Carter starred in several episodes of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," the hit CBS family drama that starred Keach's wife, actress Jane Seymour.

Soon afterward, Keach says Cash was anxious that he take on a film project about the singer's life.

"June was best friends with Robert Duvall, and I was directing a movie with Duvall and they were constantly talking about me among themselves," Keach says. "Soon John and June kept calling me to do a movie about John's life. When we started the whole project it really was more about John, but as we got going, we all realized there was no way this film could not be about the two of them. A lot of people knew who June was, but I'll bet you very, very few of them knew what a big influence she was on his career and his life."

That sentiment is echoed by Cash and Carter's only son, John Carter Cash, a musician, actor and executive producer of "Walk the Line."

"The truth is that my mother and father became involved in this project long before their passing," Cash says. "They were very good friend with James and Jane and they had all knocked around this idea of doing a Johnny Cash movie. But it very soon became a Johnny Cash-June Carter love story movie. They just never felt comfortable with anyone doing the film until they met James Keach. So I guess it was all meant to be."

Cash served as the film's executive producer and also its moral compass. "It was left to me to come in their [his parents'] stead to make sure the film progressed along their desires. I came in to make sure their dream and their vision of what a movie about their lives would be, how it would come full circle."

Cash also worked on his parents' final music projects -- June's "Wildwood" CD, and his father's last recording sessions, sessions the senior Cash finished soon after June's death in 2003.

"My dad pretty much recorded up until the day he died," Cash recalls. "He just went back in the studio. That was his way, his therapy I guess, of dealing with mom's passing."

That no-quit spirit is the life lesson Cash says was the most important one passed on to him from his famous parents.

"Just keep on, don't stop in the face of diversity or struggle. That's the greatest lesson my father and mother taught me," he says. "I saw my parents do that many times, I saw them face serious pain -- emotionally and physically -- and they just kept on moving on in the face of it."

So how was that moment when Cash heard Phoenix and Witherspoon first sing the songs of his parents?

"Well, to me, it wasn't exactly like hearing [my parents]. They can't sound exactly like them, there's no one who could," he says. "But they took it on as actors, capturing the spirit of my parents at a particular time in their lives. They learned to play the musical instruments. Nobody could play Johnny Cash in his later years, but Joaquin captured him perfectly as the young, angst-ridden Johnny Cash."

Cash describes his parents as "very loving, very caring, honest and down-to-earth, and "softies when it came to disciplining the kids." Above all, he says they were loyal. Keach echoes the sentiment about his "best friends."

"I loved their honesty, their humility and their graciousness," Keach says. "They were fiercely loyal, especially to me. Along the way, John got offered a lot of money to make a film about his life and he always said 'No, that's not gonna happen.' He knew I'd protect the story, make the film he wanted made. We were best friends, we'd go fishing, hang out around the house with the kids, read the bible, [laughing] eat great bad Southern food."

Was there a memento that Cash gave his best friend to always remember him by?

"He gave me his guitar," Keach says softly. "I have [one of] his Black Martin. And June gave Jane [Seymour] lots of her coats. She'd always tell her, "Jane, you're the same size I was when I was a little girl, but you're not a little girl and you're still the same size.' And we'd all just laugh so hard."

John Carter Cash treasures the laughter his family shared. That is the greatest dichotomy about his father, he says, the hardest thing for people to understand about him.

"Truth is there was a lot of joy," Cash says. "They were the most loving parents, and through all the problems that me and my sisters went through, they were there for us."

So, how should we ultimately remember the Man in Black, define his persona?

"It's hard to define who Johnny Cash was. He's an enigma still," the son says proudly of the father. "If you define him too much you lose the magic."

©Chicago Sun Times