BFOZ: Were there any particular source materials, songs or phrases that you would rely on to help you snap back into that Johnny Cash mindset (or way of acting)?
Boyd: Yeah, a couple of films ago on Bikeriders, I had audio files of the character that played recordings from the ’60s and that. So, I did the same kind of process for Cash.
I found two interviews that he has, and I learned them inside and out, and just did those so many times where I end up not just knowing that song, but I could have conversations, because I figured out, oh, that’s his rhythm. He speaks in this rhythm, it’s very hard to verbalise how subtly those changes are.
And that’s why we didn’t have a lot of conversations on set about stuff that didn’t really matter . . . like, ‘How’s your wife doing? How’s her pregnancy going?’. It just wasn’t in the tone [of the film].
And so . . . at lunch or whatever you go to, you just go back into these monologues that you’ve memorised. It just puts you back in a pocket, like, how a song is in E or a song is in D, you kind of know the ‘out of bounds’. You can just hear it. So, you just try to train your ear.
