
Crazy Heart –Screenplay written and directed by Scott Cooper, based on the novel by Thomas Cobb. Starring Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake and Maggie Gyllenhaal as Jean. (Photo by Lorey Sebastian.)
*****
I’m sure you’ve read enough great reviews about CRAZY HEART to know you don’t need another, but I agree the movie and music were terrific. At times, though, this was a tough film to watch. The storyline haunted me for days and stirred a bevy of emotions.
Crazy Heart is no girly romance.
I came to a sad realization during the first kiss scene between 57 year-old broken-down hero Bad Blake and twenty-something heroine Jean. This novel would never have been published, nor this movie made, had the 57 year-old protagonist been a woman.
Though we romance novelists are finding publishers for older women/younger men stories like my award-winning novel DESERT FEVER, I’d bet my next royalty check there’s no publisher willing to print a flip-side version of Crazy Heart.
Bad Blake vomits, sweats, is poorly groomed, overweight, alcoholic, and dead broke. He wheezes, snorts, passes out, and falls on his ass–yet wins the heart of a girl young enough to be his daughter. When Bad kisses Jean for the first time, my reaction was UGH. Doesn’t she know the guy pukes his guts out?
Women can be soft-hearted to a crazy-hearted fault.
I understand why Jean’s character has to be young, and why she needs to have a young son, in order for Bad to find his fresh start. The winter/spring romance is crucial to the plot, and it works. We root for Bad Blake and hope for his redemption.
Yet, even in the age of cougars and their sexual conquests with eager cubs, a fictional 57 year-old burned-out female celebrity who vomits, sweats, has a pot belly and not a penny to her name would be hard-pressed to find a young, virile hero willing to give his heart to lift her up and help her out. For free. Older women usually have to tough things out on their own when their beauty fades.
Will this double standard ever change?
Have you seen the movie? What do you think?
–Adele Dubois