“I Saw the Light,” the new biopic about Hank Williams, begins with three disjointed moments. A snippet of a faux-archival interview with the country western singer’s publisher, Fred Rose (Bradley Whitford), shifts to Williams (Tom Hiddleston), bathed in dusty light and singing a cappella on an empty stage, and then lurches to his quickie wedding to freshly divorced single mother Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen) at an Alabama gas station.
It’s an opening sequence that doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts, which, alas, can be said across the board of this much-anticipated adaptation of Hank Williams: The Biography by Colin Escott with George Merritt and William MacEwen. Focusing on the singer’s struggles with alcoholism and promiscuity (whiskey and women, who are we kidding?), it takes up his story when he’s a local radio station singer whose bride is chomping at the bit to join him at the microphone. Since her voice is not exactly of June Carter Cash caliber, this causes as much tension in their young marriage as his heavy boozing does. Continue Reading →
I can’t shake the feeling that these last lunar eclipses took no prisoners. I could not reel myself in and no one around me seemed able to curtail their worst impulses, either. Not to mention all the losses over the last few 
I woke up early for the first time in months, wrote for two hours, and then bounced down to the coffee shop to fetch a laaarge americano. The winter sun was bright if distant (like so many of my lovers; like me, arguably), the Brand New Heavies were blasting in my ears–“I like it!”–and I felt positively ecstatic that all I had to do was duck back home, throw open the windows, and write some more on a topic I genuinely find interesting. It’s amazing what a difference a day makes. Having finally fixed the