Another Man in Black Visits Folsom Prison
Article By SHARON WAXMAN
Published: January 5, 2006
REPRESA, Calif., Jan. 3
From the back he might have been Johnny Cash. Clad in black, the man clutching a brown Gibson guitar case walked with a half-stride, half-shuffle up to the gray steel gate at the hard stone entrance to Folsom State Prison.
But it was Joaquin Phoenix, the 31-year-old actor who plays Cash in the film "Walk the Line." At the invitation of a Folsom chaplain, he came on Tuesday to the medieval-style prison that Johnny Cash memorialized in song, to revive the country star's legacy and offer modern-day inspiration to the inmates. He even sang.
It was nearly four decades ago, in January 1968, that Cash recorded a live concert for the inmates at Folsom, with his signature song "Folsom Prison Blues" cementing his reputation as an outlaw who might well have "shot a man in Reno/ just to watch him die," as the song went. (Cash was never behind bars for more than a few days, for minor offenses.) Recreated in the opening scene of "Walk the Line," the prison concert became a best-selling album despite the skepticism of Cash's record company, Columbia, and reignited the singer's career after years of decline into drug addiction and commercial obscurity.
On Tuesday, Mr. Phoenix was joined by his friend Shooter Jennings (who plays his father, Waylon, in the film) and an entourage of executives from 20th Century Fox who flew up on a private jet to screen the film for a select group of inmates, while most of the prison's 4,000 other residents were able to watch it in their cells on closed-circuit television. A studio camera crew, a photographer friend of Mr. Phoenix and a reporter were there to document the day, along with a few local journalists, who were allowed into the screening.
Mr. Phoenix was not in character. Slight where Cash was tall, shy where Cash was gruff, the actor still seemed at ease among the men he met at Folsom, a medium-security facility.
On a tour of the grounds - where guards with rifles patrolled in roof-level cages - he sought out prisoners as he walked through the cellblocks and the cafeteria where Cash had performed. He paused to sign forearms or sweatshirts, or just wave at men who shouted "Joaquin!" from their exercise yard.
Much of the prison has been on "lockdown," segregated by race and with strictly limited movement, since racial rioting broke out last October. Since the days when Cash sang here, Folsom has become more of a racial stew, with tension among black, Latino and white gang members. One yard had only black prisoners, who clamored to see Reese Witherspoon.
"What do you do here?" Mr. Phoenix asked Cory McClintic, a blond, blue-eyed 21-year-old, behind bars in a five-tiered cellblock. The closetlike cells each house two men and are barely wider by an arm's length than the bunk bed's frame.
"Landscaping," replied Mr. McClintic, who is serving 101/2 years for armed robbery. "It's the only place that looks like the outside."
Mr. McClintic said he was unaware of Folsom's history either as the subject of Johnny Cash's 1956 song, or as a place where the singer performed his legendary concert.
Older inmates said they were aware but were more interested in talking about themselves. "I will not stab you in the back," said Clopher Dotson, 54, shaking Mr. Phoenix's hands warmly from behind the bars of his cell. "We deserve to be treated like human beings."
Tuesday's event might have looked like a Hollywood publicity stunt, but it actually began with an invitation from a religious outreach group called the Prison Fellowship, whose leaders felt that "Walk the Line" might inspire inmates with its story of redemption. The group was founded by Chuck Colson, a Watergate felon who became religious while incarcerated.
"I felt this was a good example to these guys and an encouragement to them," said Chaplain Larry West, who approached the studio with the idea. "Here was a guy who was an alcoholic, a drug addict, he had instances of trying to commit suicide - I thought it would be a good example of how you can put your life together."
Only about 70 inmates were chosen to watch the film together in the prison chapel, all of whom were members of the Prison Fellowship or chosen for good behavior. Up on screen in the chapel, as Ms. Witherspoon, playing June Carter Cash, accepted a marriage proposal from Mr. Phoenix-as-Cash, the men in denim prison outfits sat quietly. One young man with a shaved head had "Compton" tattooed in large letters on his scalp.
After the film, Mr. Phoenix and Mr. Jennings played four songs, with Mr. Phoenix laughing his way through the performance, which he said was rusty. He ended with "Folsom Prison Blues," one of the songs most closely identified with Mr. Cash and one, oddly enough, that the singer largely plagiarized from a 1953 song by Gordon Jenkins, "Crescent City Blues." (Mr. Cash had to pay Mr. Jenkins once his song became a hit, according to Michael Streissguth's 2004 book "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison: The Making of a Masterpiece.")
Regardless, at Folsom and in other prison performances such as at San Quentin, Mr. Cash forged a spiritual bond with convicts whom he considered fellow social outcasts and individuals worthy of his respect.
On Tuesday there were inmates who remembered that. The 66-year-old E. C. Breland, known as Buddy, was at Folsom in the 1970's, when Cash played another concert for the inmates. He was there again for the screening on Tuesday, where he met and spoke with Mr. Phoenix.
Mr. Breland, a Louisiana native who has spent more of his life in jail than out, remembered the 1970's concert as a raucous affair, a party atmosphere where the inmates were kept at a distance from the singer. The movie was different, he said, quiet and unexpectedly moving. Cash's story reminded him of his own life.
"It's about a Southern boy who grows up and does good," said Mr. Breland, who is serving a life sentence for murder. "I'm a Southern boy who grew up and didn't do good."
Sitting in the back of the chapel at the end of the day, Mr. Phoenix rested his head on the end." of his guitar case, spent. He met Cash just once, months before he ever knew he would play him on screen. He learned to play the guitar and submerged himself in becoming the Man in Black. Now he found himself singing Cash's songs about a prison, in the prison.
"Full circle," Mr. Phoenix murmured. "More than anything, it feels like the completion of a journey.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/05/movies/05fols.html?_r=0
