Remembering: Honeysuckle Rose

Honeysuckle Rose

American dramady directed by Jerry Schatzberg

starring Willie Nelson, Dyan Cannon,

Slim Pickens, Amy Irving

Released July 1980

by Live Music Head

“For twenty years he’s been singing to the country.

But he never figured he’d be living his own love songs."

On the road again -
just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is making music with my friends
and I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again -
goin' places that I've never been.
Seein' things that I may never see again
and I can't wait to get on the road again.
On the road again -
like a band of gypsies we go down the highway.
We're the best of friends,
insisting that the world keep turning our way,
and our way

is on the road again.
Just can't wait to get on the road again.
The life I love is makin' music with my friends,
and I can't wait to get on the road again.

~ Willie Nelson

The country music outlaw

who’s written some of the most beloved songs,

and released something like 
three hundred albums to date,

made his big screen acting debut supporting

Robert Redford and Jane Fonda 
in 1979’s The Electric Horseman.

Willie Nelson also contributed to 
the film’s soundtrack.

His second time appearing on the big screen

was in a starring role as Buck Bonham,

a 20-year road warrior

fronting a country and western band 
still trying to go large.

It was 1980’s Honeysuckle Rose,

a film I saw on the big screen way back then,

on the edge of 17;

the age that my love affair with Willie Nelson began.

Looking back at photos of myself in 1980,

I was reminded that I wore my hair bleached blonde,
and running down my right shoulder in one single braid,
just like Willie...

LMH's bleached-blonde Willie Nelson phase, circa 1980

The first time I heard his music was as a sixties child

when my dad played his records 
on the family’s hi-fi console.

When I finally saw Willie perform live 
at Hookahville in 2001,

I cried my face off when he sang 
Always On My Mind,

and laughed out loud when 
he changed the words and sang:
“Mama, don’t let your cowboys grow up to be babies!”

Darn tootin’, mister, darn tootin’!
At the twenty-third annual Grammy Awards,

Nelson was presented the statuette for Best Country Song

for On The Road Again,

a song he wrote specifically for Honeysuckle Rose,

and the song title that really should’ve been used 
to name the film.

As it is, Honeysuckle Rose is Buck Bonham’s Texas ranch,

the name clearing painted on the box

from which Buck is seen retrieving his mail.

Nelson also wrote for the movie
Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground 

which was an instant hit,

and covered by Bob Dylan.

Jerry Schatzberg directed the film

and he’s the same fella responsible for 
Panic In Needle Park,

a 1971 film about heroin addicts starring 
Al Pacino and Kitty Winn.

And The Seduction of Joe Tynan,

a political drama released in ‘79

written by and starring one of my other favourite people,

Alan Alda.

Schatzberg is also a photographer 
who shot the album cover of Dylan’s 
Blonde on Blonde.

Dyan Cannon was cast to play Buck’s wife, Viv.

And Cannon, as everyone prob’ly knows,

was once married to the ever-charming Cary Grant.

The lovely Ms Cannon was also one of four actors 
who had us

“considering the possibilities”

when she co-starred in the 1969 dramady, 

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice.

She played the sickly wife of Michael Caine too,

in Death Trap,

one helluva great thriller.

But who knew she could sing?

And sing in Honeysuckle Rose,

Dyan Cannon does.

We first get to see her do this as Viv

when she duets with Buck

on the Kris Kristofferson-penned tune,

Loving Her Was Easier
(Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again).

They sang it together at the community gathering,

the hoe-down,

the family re-union,

or rather... the picnic,

which looked like the kind I always imagined
the Fourth of July picnics looked in the early days,

hosted by Willie and Family every year in Texas

now going on forty years strong.

Yee-haw!

I do love a line dance!

It’s also at this picnic we’re introduced to Lily,

played by Amy Irving.

Many will remember that it was Irving’s arm

that Sissy Spacek reached for from the grave

causing everyone in the theatre to scream,

watching the 1976 supernatural horror,

Carrie.

Irving was also once married to film maker 
Steven Spielberg

and was paid an insane amount of settlement dollars

to divorce him.

She’s the daughter of actress Priscilla Pointer

who played her mom in Carrie,

and also plays her mom in Honeysuckle Rose.

Lily,

the young female guitar player who was away at school

and came back still sayin’ “ain’t”,

is the daughter of Garland Ramsey,

Buck’s guitar player and best friend

(played by the late-and truly great Slim Pickens).

Lily is also very attractive 
and after Ramsey reluctantly retires,

she takes over her daddy’s position in the band,

inevitably leading Buck down the road to infidelity,

happily.

Well, at least until Cotton Roberts showed up.

Movie reviewers weren’t kind to Irving for this role.

Many didn’t find her believable as a musician.

I don’t happen to agree with them,

and I think Irving had one of the best ever lines:

“Oh daddy, I’m 22 now, 
all growed up and haired over.”

Nonetheless,

she received the Golden Raspberry 
for Worst Supporting Actress.

Singer-songstress Emmylou Harris
appears in the film as herself;

a surprise guest who comes out on stage 
during the band’s cover of  Rodney Crowell’s 
If I Can Gain Control Again,

and causes Lily to forget she’s playing guitar.

Harris, as everyone knows, is definitely a real musician

and she delights with Buck on a duet of

So You Think You’re A Cowboy.

Paul English,
who’s been Willie Nelson’s drummer since 1955,

is also his drummer in the movie,

alongside Rex Ludwick (Tex), 
his second drummer.

Ludwick has since passed away

apparently from years of fast living and hard drinking.

And he’s shown doing lots of that in Honeysuckle Rose.

In fact, I don’t think anyone in this film 
ever stops drinking.

Just this past June,

I saw Willie and Family live in concert at 
Toronto’s Massey Hall,

and thought of Rex as I looked up at a much older English,

still sportin’ that ol’ familiar black cowboy hat,

standing alongside Mickey Raphael,

the band’s long-time harmonica player.

Raphael is also in the film

playing the same role he does in the band.

Well,

when he wasn’t playing Kelly,

the one who messed around

with Tex’s girlfriend.

Lots of drinkin’ yes,

and lots of messin’ around with the wrong women.

Willie Nelson’s sister Bobbie appears,

as the band’s piano player,

just as she is in real life.

Bobbie to the boys:

“If it weren’t for bad taste, you’d have no taste at all.”

Cotton Roberts was the guitarist slated to replace Garland

(before Lily became Buck’s road squeeze)

who arrived as scheduled,

but dressed in a shiny attitude that didn’t quite fit

the profile of The Buck Bonham Band.

This led to the prank that sees

the tour of the band come to a halt,

rather than go large.

Played by the son of actor Mickey Rooney,

Cotton concluded it wasn’t that his star shone too bright

that got in the way of him fitting in with the band,

but that he couldn’t be the guitarist with benefits 
that Lily was,

setting in motion the affair being found out.

Not like Buck and Lily were doing a very good job 
at preventing exposure,

but Brag guaran-damn-teed it!

Brag (played by Lane Smith) was all about exposure,

the opportunistic manager of Roberts

who tried to capitalize on everything.

Now,

Buck may be a lyin’ cheat,

but I have to say,

I sure liked how he stood up for Lily

and socked it to Cotton

when he referred to her as a whore backstage.

And this brings me to what I took away from this film

first and foremost.

No,

not what makes a whore,

but what it means to stand up and confront a wrong.

Anybody can lie and cheat,

and as we all know, many men do,

particularly if they’re musicians.

But it’s the women who stand up to them,

and the men who don’t run away,

but face up and admit their lies

that wins me over in this film.

After all,

how else can friends ever go back to being friends?

How else can a band ever stay together as a band?

How else can a family ever stay together as a family?

How else can you keep bitterness at bay,

if you don’t stand up like a man,

and at least try and work it out

with the people you claim to care about...

face to face?

Note: one large difference between 1980 and 2013,

there were no computer keypads available

for cowards to hide behind.

LMH holding the Honeysuckle Rose soundtrack, 2011

The confronting of the bullshit started with Viv.

After learning of the very indiscreet affair

her husband was having on the road 
with their best friend’s daughter,

Viv surprised Buck by appearing at a show,

and proceeded to publicly humiliate him,

and Lily,

in return for publicly humiliating her.

It’s my favourite part.

I stood up, saluted, and applauded!

Then Lily returned home to face Garland.

He was pissed,

but glad that she had the guts to come home at least.

And then Garland,

intent on getting to the bottom of it

with a bottle of tequila and a pistol,

chases Buck down to Mexico

(for the lyin’ cheat was still playing the coward,

not yet ready to face the music).

Go get him Garland!
Go get that lyin’, cheatin’ god-damned sorry sum-bitch!

Yee-haw!!

The scene that saw a few bullets get lodged 
in the sides of the show bus by an enraged papa

definitely rivals the favourite part I just mentioned above.

For it’s like what Juli Thanki says:

"Slim Pickens

(Blazing Saddles, Dr. Strangelove)

is a blast to watch as Garland Ramsey;

he steals every scene he’s in.

Personally, I’d have liked the film a lot more

had they stretched the scene of 
Buck and Garland in Mexico out

for about two more hours

as the two wrestle over a pistol,

drink a few bottles of tequila,

and then drive the Texas bus back to the States.

But I guess Garlandsuckle Rose

just doesn’t have the same ring to it.”

Roger Ebert,

in his review of Honeysuckle Rose 
at the time of its release,

also had great things to say 
about the actor who played Ramsey:

“Slim Pickens should be registered 
a national historical place”.

Temptation and deceit was the order of the day,

but in the end,

the liars and cheats showed courage.

Lily knocked on the door of Viv 
and faced not only her,

but Buck and Viv’s ten-year-old son, Jamie

(Joey Floyd).

And Garland may have been driving for thirty years,

but still grinded the gears of the bus,

(also a character in the film,

painted to look like the Texas flag)

when he cleverly led Buck 
back on the road to home.

Buck apologizes and asks forgiveness from his wife

the only way he knows how:

with a guitar in front of an audience of thousands.

Viv fights back tears,

looking fabulous in one of them satin shirts

that I myself remember wearing back in the day.

(I wore the same satin, but in blue,

when my bleached-blonde hair wasn’t braided,

but Farrah Fawcetted,

which was a very popular style at the time).

Now I’m not saying if I were Viv,

I woulda necessarily taken Buck back,

but the performance of Song For You

is my third favourite part in the film.

After hearing Buck sing the song to Viv in this movie,

not only made it hard to resist him,

but had me immediately go about

finding out who wrote it.

It was how I discovered Leon Russell.

Honeysuckle Rose tells the story on film

of just the kinds of things country songs are all about.

A film that may not go down as the best ever made,

but hell,

it’s a whole lotta fun to watch humans behaving badly,

to a great, great soundtrack;

steeped in the country charm of my favourite outlaw.

Dyan Cannon:“Willie has a basic honesty.

The screen just doesn’t lie. 

It captured that about Willie.” 

I agree.

Prob’ly why I bought the dvd,

and watched it so many times over the years,

it’s now part of my dna.

A video clip from Honeysuckle Rose...

 

The official website of Willie Nelson...

http://willienelson.com/