Jeff Bridges Talks Crazy Heart and Tron: Legacy
Posted 12.04.09 by Ryan
Jeff Bridges has made a career out of playing diverse characters, and two of his upcoming roles — broken-down country singer Bad Blake in Crazy Heart and his reprisal of Flynn in the sequel Tron: Legacy — further showcase his eclectic taste. Bridges told InContention that Crazy Heart was a "dream come true." The movie is already garnering Bridges some Oscar buzz, something Bridges seems relieved never to have won.
The four times I've been nominated, when they call somebody else's name you say, "Wow, I don't have to get up there, man." You would think being an actor for as long as I've been that I could get up in front of people and give a speech, but no, I'm just as nervous as anyone. So it's kind of a relief. I'm excited just to draw attention to this movie that I had such a great time on and I think is so good.
If Bridges ends up being nominated an winning an Oscar, he'll consider himself pretty lucky, considering he almost passed on the movie until he discovered that his friend and musician T. Bone Burnett was hired to produce and write Blake's music.
A year or so passed and I ran into Bone somewhere. He said, "You know this script Crazy Heart? What do you think? It's pretty good. Let's do it." I said, "You're gonna do it?" He said, "Yeah, if you will."
Tron: Legacy allowed Bridges to work with friends, as well as with more advanced technology than the 1982 original.
Wow, it was great. Getting back with my old buddy, Steven Lisberger, and Bruce Boxleitner. I guess the same thing appealed to me about the sequel that appealed to me about the original, which was this idea that there's a kid aspect to what I do, pretending and all that stuff. I used to love to pretend when I was a kid, and here's a movie where I get to play a guy who gets sucked inside a computer and gets to use all the modern technology that's available today.
The same goes with the sequel, except that all the technology that we're using in that makes the old one look like an old black and white TV show or something.
Fans of the original can already see a glimpse of the the way Tron: Legacy will look in the teaser footage shown, something Disney forced them to create.
Disney wanted them to shoot this pretty expensive trailer. I don't know how much it cost, but it was pretty expensive. And, all that technology that we were going to use in the movie itself is used in the trailer. It wasn't as highly polished as the movie is going to be, but it gives you a little peak into what you might find.
Crazy Heart opens December 16 and Tron Legacy on December 17, 2010.