Walking the Line in Tamworth

The Australian Country Music Foundation (ACMF) and Country Music Capital’s Regent Cinema have scored a major coup by gaining the rights to an advance Australian screening of the Johnny Cash movie Walk The Line.

Following negotiations last year by Regent Cinema Manager Grant Lee, distributors of the film have allowed for one screening only of the movie at the Regent apart from the movie’s premier and prior to its opening across the nation in February.

The Regent is supporting the ACMF with the advance screening as a special fundraiser for the proposed new Australian Country Music Hall of Fame to be built in Tamworth.

The screening will take place on Saturday, January 28, at 2pm. Tickets are $20 each and available from the ACMF in Brisbane Street, Tamworth.

Walk The Line is the story of the young Johnny Cash and his incendiary love affair with June Carter Cash from a script based on Cash’s books Man In Black and Cash The Autobiography.

The film, developed for seven years with the close co-operation of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash before their deaths in 2003, stars Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash and Golden Globe nominee Reese Witherspoon as June Carter.

Very popular in the USA since opening last year, the film has also been gaining numerous award nominations. Some, like the People’s Choice Awards, have already been won by Reese for her performance and by the movie for its soundtrack.

The story begins in Depression-era Arkansas, and the film traces the origins of Cash’s sound back to his beginnings as a sharecropper’s son; moves through his wild tours with rock and roll pioneers Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Waylon Jennings; and culminates in his unforgettable 1968 concert in Folsom Prison.

“The Australian Country Music Foundation is also pleased to be able to pay tribute to America’s ‘King’ of country music by highlighting the film in this special advance screening,” said Foundation President Bob Kirchner.

“The Johnny Cash sound crossed borders the world over making him a truly international phenomenon. He is certainly going down in history as one of the most legendary country music stars ever.”