<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"When Ray Star Jamie Foxx accepted the Best Actor prize at this year&amp;apos;s Oscars, he thanked Ray Charles &amp;quot;for living.&amp;quot; Now, in the wake of Ray&amp;apos;s awards triumphs and $76 million gross, Hollywood is turning its attention to the equally tumultuous lives of Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin, all of whom serve as the subjects of upcoming films.\r\n&amp;quot;Every single production entity turned Ray down &amp;#x2013; they said these movies don&amp;apos;t work,&amp;quot; says the film&amp;apos;s producer and director, Taylor Hackford. &amp;quot;Ray&amp;apos;s success should open doors.&amp;quot; Wayne&amp;apos;s World director Penelope Spheeris, who has been trying to push a Joplin movie onto the screen for fifteen years, says that Ray brought in new investors: &amp;quot;They&amp;apos;re seeing dollars in the bank.&amp;quot;\r\nThe Artwork of Bob Dylan\r\nThe biggest of the many post-Ray films is Walk the Line, due out November 18th, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the late Johnny Cash. The film captures Cash&amp;apos;s early years in Memphis Sun Studios and his late love affair with wife-to-be June Carter (Reese Witherspoon). &amp;quot;I didn&amp;apos;t want to take a whole life and squeeze it into two hours,&amp;quot; says director and co-screenwriter James Mangold. &amp;quot;I thought the thing to explore was using John as a window into the birth of rock &amp;amp; roll, and into one of the great true-life romances of the last century.&amp;quot;\r\nWhile Foxx lip-synced to vocals performed by Charles, Phoenix does his own singing in the film &amp;#x2013; and learned to play guitar from scratch. Witherspoon and the rest of the cast &amp;#x2013; including the relative unknowns who play Cash&amp;apos;s buddies Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis &amp;#x2013; did the same. To prepare the actors, music director T Bone Burnett led them through a three-month singing-and-playing boot camp.\r\nFilmmaker Todd Haynes, who&amp;apos;s directing the Dylan-themed I&amp;apos;m Not There, solved his casting conundrum by splitting Dylan into seven different characters, played by multiple actors &amp;#x2013; among them a woman and an African-American boy. &amp;quot;It kind of explodes the idea that anybody could be depicted in a single self,&amp;quot; Haynes says of the experimental film, due by early next year.\r\nAlso set for &amp;apos;06 is Spheeris&amp;apos; The Gospel According to Janis, with singer Pink cast in the lead role (another Joplin movie, starring Ren&amp;#xE9;e Zellweger, is apparently mired in development). But Pink&amp;apos;s plans to tour and record a new album this year could keep her out of the film. &amp;quot;When people see Pink doing Janis in our screen test, inevitably the reaction is &amp;apos;Oh, I just got chills,&amp;apos; &amp;quot; says Spheeris. &amp;quot;I just pray that this works out with her.&amp;quot;\r\nThis story is from the March 24, 2005 issue of Rolling Stone."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/dylan-joplin-and-cash-movies-set-to-hit-the-big-screen-20050324>