![]() They forget - or didn’t know - that Buddy was initially opposed to recording with strings. There’s no way to predict what Buddy would have done. Norman Petty, for one, feels that’s an unreasonable assumption: “Certain liberties were taken there. That orchestra is dramatic license, said Bauer, because that’s the direction the producers of the film thought Holly would have taken had he lived. On Holly’s last tour, though, he recruited Waylon Jennings on bass, Tommy Allsup on guitar and drummer Charlie Bunch to tour with him - not a full orchestra with strings as the movie depicts. They and Holly split up in October 1958, about three months before his death, but had planned to get back together. Rhythm guitarist Sullivan left the group in December 1957, but during most of Holly’s career, drummer Allison and bassist Mauldin were partners with Holly, cowriting many songs with him and performing on all the tours but the last one. “I saw a thing,” he continued, “about how they portrayed two Crickets from the twelve Crickets and, hell, there weren’t twelve Crickets during Buddy’s career - there was Niki Sullivan, Joe B. “Freddy Bauer did call me during the Not Fade Away deal,” said Allison, “and I said, ‘I’m not interested in your deal I have this movie.’ That’s the last time he ever talked to me about it. If the situation changes, here are my phone numbers, please call me.’ I never heard from him.” ![]() “I called Jerry Allison during Not Fade Away and I said, ‘You signed your rights exclusively to Fox?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘I’m sorry for you because you’ll regret it. “I think they were fools,” recalled Bauer. “I think the first footage showed a lot of hassles with blacks - but we did get in a lot of hassles with the black guys on the bus.” “I sure wish Fox hadn’t backed down on it,” said Allison. The script was called fiction but it’s very close to fact. “ Not Fade Away would’ve been a damn right-on movie about rock & roll.”Īccording to Friedman, Fox shut the project down because the script mainly concerned itself with a bus tour the Crickets did with black groups (historically, that’s accurate: bookers thought Holly and the Crickets were black). “ The Buddy Holly Story isn’t a rock & roll movie,” said the film’s director Jerry Friedman. At the same time, 20-Century Fox actually did two weeks of filming of a script called Not Fade Away, from a story by Cricket Jerry Allison. Meanwhile, MCA-Universal, with Petty’s help, considered a Holly movie-for-TV which never materialized. Three years ago, independent producers Freddy Bauer and Ed Cohen bought movie rights to Goldrosen’s book as source material. There have been numerous attempts to adapt Holly’s life story to the screen. The three major complaints concern the portrayal of Holly’s family, the treatment of the Crickets and the omission of Norman Petty, Holly’s producer. But a tight budget does not explain away the flaws in the story. What the movie portrays in between - and what it leave out - has been criticized by those who knew Holly and those who feel it misrepresents the historical role of one of America’s major rock & rollers.Īs Ed Cohen pointed out, you can only do so much with 114 minutes of film and $2 million - a very low film budget: Sgt. But what The Buddy Holly Story suggests is that Holly invented himself at a roller-rink show in Lubbock, Texas, and then was perfected by a woman he married five and one-half months before his death at age twenty-two on February 3rd, 1959. he’s right, there’s no way to refute the reality that is invented by a movie. ![]() They’ll tell you that Don Ameche did.” Don Ameche…. “Ask moviegoers who invented the telephone. I asked Bauer about a statement he had made: “Whatever we put up there on the screen will be the truth.” “I’ll tell you what I meant by that,” he said. ![]() As I pointed out inaccuracy after inaccuracy to Cohen, Bauer and Rash, they agreed, but cited “dramatic license” in defense of their film. I sat with Ed Cohen, executive producer of The Buddy Holly Story, in his New York office, along with the film’s director, Steve Rash, and its producer, Freddy Bauer, and asked them about all the liberties their film had taken with the reality of Holly’s life, liberties that Holly’s family and friends are indignant about.
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