Okanagan audiences have embraced the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Next month, so will Academy Award voters as Timothee Chalamet is the favourite to win best actor.
But is A Complete Unknown the best rock biopic ever that was based on a true-to-life character?
No. That honour belongs to Coal Miners Daughter, a forgotten gem from 1980 which earned seven Academy Award nominations including best picture.
Sissy Spacek won her only Oscar as Loretta Lynn, beginning the movie -- believe it or not -- playing a teenager. Spacek looked young and pulled off the part of a child bride, never mind it was later discovered that Lynn created this myth herself -- she was closer to 16 when she married Mooney.
But don’t let myths and historical inaccuracies get in the way of good storytelling.
Spacek was brilliant in Coal MinerB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· Daughter, unfortunately costing Mary Tyler Moore the Oscar as the distant mother in Ordinary People. (Mary would have won in almost any other year.)
Also along for the ride, a pre-Fugitive Tommy Lee Jones, Beverly D’Angelo as Patsy Cline and Levon Helm from The Band in his film debut as LorettaB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· father.
(In real life, Helm was only nine years older than Spacek.)
Loretta LynnB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· life was once described as a country song.
Getting the biopic treatment long before music biopics were the big thing was monumental.
LynnB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· story had to be told.
Spacek and D’Angelo did their own singing -- they could have been dubbed and it wouldn’t have mattered. It was a true test of acting... Spacek playing age 13 and 40 in the same movie.
Helm contributed one song to the soundtrack -- Blue Moon of Kentucky. Another highlight, Spacek and D’Angelo duetting to Back in My BabyB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· Arms. Although sheB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· killed off early in the story, this is also a Cline biopic with D’Angelo contributing several classics to the soundtrack including Crazy.
Sissy Spacek and Beverly D’Angelo will forever be remembered as Carrie White and Ellen Griswold, but Coal MinerB´ÎÔª¹ÙÍøÍøÖ· Daughter was their finest hour.
