Walk Hard

It was around the third day of shooting when director Jake Kasdan decided that Walk Hard — a satirical biopic about fictional music legend Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) — was probably going to work out okay. ”We shot this elaborate scene in a recording studio,” says Kasdan. ”Dewey’s meeting his band for the first time: Chris Parnell, [Tim] Meadows, and [Asssscat‘s] Matt Besser. And everybody’s in perfect 1955 period clothes…and we’ve got the songs, which we’d been working on for months…and in between, they’re improvising in this incredibly loose style. When you see really great improvisationalists, it’s like watching a magic trick.”

If you’re a fan of modern comedy and you’re not highlighting Dec. 21 on your calendar right now, there might be something wrong with you. With apologies to Johnny Cash, Walk Hard traces the story of Dewey Cox, spanning more than six decades, countless musical genres, tons of sex, and every drug known to man. It could be one of winter’s most outrageous films, but for Reilly, the film had another thing going for it. ”They say all rock stars want to be actors, and all actors want to be rock stars,” he says. ”I fit strongly in that category.” Reilly has recorded more than 30 songs in character — which the team hopes to collect onto a CD set titled, naturally, A Box of Cox.