Production
The actors did their own singing and played their own instruments live during the filming, with guitarist Jerry Zaremba overdubbing the guitar parts. Busey, in particular, was admired by critics for recording the soundtrack music for the film live and losing a considerable amount of weight in order to portray the skinny Holly. According to Busey's biography, he lost 32 pounds to look more like Holly, who weighed 146 lbs at the time of his death. His accurate portrayal was aided by knowledge gained from a previous attempt to film part of the Holly life story, the ill-fated Three-Sided Coin, in which he played Crickets drummer Jerry Allison (the film was cancelled by 20th Century Fox due to pressure from Fred Bauer and his company, who had made deals with the Holly estate). The screenplay of Three-Sided Coin (by Allison and Tom Drake) revealed many personal details about Holly, and Busey picked up more during off-set conversations with Allison.
The film follows Buddy Holly from age 19 to 22 (1955 to early 1959). Gary Busey was actually 33 when he played the role. Charles Martin Smith, who played Ray Bob Simmons, auditioned for the role of Buddy, but since Busey had been cast, the producers cast him as Simmons because they liked his audition.
Read more about this topic: The Buddy Holly Story
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)
“The problem of culture is seldom grasped correctly. The goal of a culture is not the greatest possible happiness of a people, nor is it the unhindered development of all their talents; instead, culture shows itself in the correct proportion of these developments. Its aim points beyond earthly happiness: the production of great works is the aim of culture.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)