For most of his Hollywood career, Scott Cooper has been known as an actor. He thought he was dreaming when he decided he wanted to direct his first film about the life of a down and out country singer with such stars as Jeff Bridges, Robert Duvall, and the famous composer T Bone Burnett. But his ambition paid off. Crazy Heart, stars Bridges, Duvall, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Colin Farrell as well as music by T Bone Burnett. Bridges and Farrell even sing their own ballads. Based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Cobb, Crazy Heart follows the life of alcoholic, country western has-been Bad Blake. After meeting a journalist who makes him see what he has become, he attempts to reform. The movie, which had been made for about $7 million by Country Music Television, a unit of Viacom, very nearly did not find a distributor after Paramount Vantage (also within the Viacom family) folded. After some quick negotiating by Cooper's agent, the film was bought by Fox Searchlight. It is now garnering buzz for an Oscar nod. Cooper says he can't believe what is happening and all he wanted was to make an honest film that paid tribute to all the bluegrass and country legends from his youth growing up in Virginia.

 By Lorenza Muñoz

This is your directorial debut. How did you pick the material?

My first inspiration was to tell Merle Haggard's story. But the rights issues were difficult to overcome. And then I came across Crazy Heart, and it let me tell Merle's story and Kris Kristofferson's and Waylon Jennings'. As Bad Blake, Jeff moves like Waylon, he has Merle Haggard's songwriting ability and Kris Kristofferson's charisma. We invited Kris to see the movie and he was very moved by it. He thought he saw his life on the screen. It was really all three of those that helped me most inform the character.

But what was the attraction to those guys?

I am from the south and I was raised traveling to the Bluegrass festivals in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I grew up on Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley and Doc Watson. As I got older I was drawn to Merle and Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings because they wrote about their complicated lives and put them into song. As much as I was drawn to William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy, I was drawn to these guys for their music. I am from Abingdon, Virginia, a small town near the Blue Ridge Mountains. It is not far from Bristol, Tennessee where country music was born.

You got your start in acting. Did you always want to direct?

It felt like a natural progression to me. I have had big support from Robert Duvall. We have worked on three movies together and he has become a great friend. I took a page from his book. He is a complete filmmaker. He is among the best American actors, an excellent director, and a writer. I wanted to be a complete filmmaker like him. This is a darker version than Tender Mercies and it is more musical. But Crazy Heart has Duvall's DNA is all over it. 

Would you consider him a mentor?

Oh yeah. And he is a very close friend. My wife and I were married on his farm in Virginia. He mentored me as an actor and certainly as a writer and director. He was the first person to read Crazy Heart. I was frightened to send him the screenplay even though I believed in it strongly. But he said ‘I love it, lets make it.' He said, ‘who do you see in the film?' And I said, ‘I need T Bone Burnett and Jeff Bridges.'  

How did you come up with Jeff Bridges?

He is such a diverse actor. I think he is right there with Duvall as among our very best actors. I knew that he played the guitar and he sings. He is such a private person you can believe him in these roles-Jeff Bridges just disappears. I thought he could embody Kris and Waylon and more.

And how about Colin Farrel?

If you look at Keith Urban he is from Australia. The South has a Scots-Irish heritage. And Colin is from Ireland. It was a natural progression for him. Colin may be a star but he is an actor at heart. And that is what it takes to do a supporting role. This is a movie that is as authentic as you can possibly paint for this kind of portrait. As an actor, you just want to tell the truth. I wanted to do this as a filmmaker too.

What did you want to capture from the book to the screen?

You have to find the essence to the character. What is the story that you want to tell? In a novel there is far too much material to make a cohesive three-act, two-hour movie. I used my life experience to fill in the gaps as well. Then, there was the collaboration between Jeff and me and Maggie and Robert Duvall. Everyone was doing it for the right reasons.

I imagine they were paid scale?

It was a real labor of love. In this climate that is what actors have to do. Studios are not making these types of films.

So, Paramount Vantage fell apart just as you had finished this film? How did Searchlight come into the picture?

I felt like I got into Harvard when I heard they were going to buy it. For a while, we were very precariously perched. I had just finished the film and we were going to Telluride and Toronto. But we were in the process of selling it as Vantage was disintegrating. It was a very trying time.

You capture beautiful vistas of the desert...

It is the last frontier and I have always been drawn by the stark beauty of the Southwest.

I felt like I could create, through photography, this image that Bad Blake is this small piece of this larger landscape. It required getting up very early in the morning to capture the vistas. I wanted it to show that a man can be very, very lonely in the most beautiful of circumstances. I was inspired by photographers Stephen Shore and Dorothea Lange. 

Searchlight was originally going to release the film in 2010 but moved it up for Oscar season...how does that feel for your first feature?

It's caught fire and created a buzz that I am surprised by. But I don't want the film's worth or merits to be based on whether it gets an Oscar nomination. When you start out making a film that is this small, and this happens, it's heady stuff. I try not to think about it. I want people to respond to the picture from a visceral standpoint. These types of films are the ones that need word of mouth. We don't have the marketing budgets that some of the bigger studio movies have.

What is next for you?

My agent is fielding lots of calls and interest, but I want to see this through and get it released and have it reach the largest audience possible. I never dreamed this would happen.

Before joining Film Independent, Lorenza Muñoz was a staff writer with the Los Angeles Times. For 14 years at the paper she covered news, politics, business, and entertainment. She recently completed her first novel, The Weight of Flight.