Blaze Foley: How a Forgotten Texas Songwriter Became the Years Best Biopic

Even Blaze Foleys closest friends didnt know much about him. The eccentric, burly Texas songwriter who wrote country classics such as If I Could Only Fly and Clay Pigeons before he was shot dead at 39 years old in 1989 was known to embellish the story of his background, and his death was clouded in mystery. I heard he got shot at the unemployment office taking a bullet for another homeless guy, says Ethan Hawke. I remember waxing poetic about that one night....Then we found out thats actually not true.

Those mysteries set the actor-director off on a major research project and the result, Blaze (opening in Austin, Texas on August 17th and begins rolling out everywhere else starting September 7th)recounts the heartbreaking story of Foleys descent from promising songwriter into homelessness, drugs and despair. The film, which Hawke directed, has received festival praise for using real musicians singer-songwriter Ben Dickey plays Foley and Bob Dylan sideman Charlie Sexton plays Townes Van Zandt and live performances with no studio trickery. We could have cheated, says Hawke. But people can smell that.

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Before writing the film, Hawke, 47, discovered Living in the Woods in a Tree, a book by Foleys ex-wife, Sybil Rosen, about how they met at an artist community in Georgia in their mid-twenties and spent an idyllic year living in a treehouse. Foley eventually ended the relationship to focus on his growing career. But fame never happened the master tapes to his first album were stolen, and he started using crystal meth. I wanted to make a movie about the two wells of creativity, Hawke says. The one with that Whitmanesque Americana: pregnancy, life. And theres this one with narcissism, self-hatred. Why, when things are good, do we fuck them up?

Hawke used Rosens book to write a 40-page treatment that he sent to Arrested Developments Alia Shawkat, whod play Foleys wife (It was like watching a saner version of myself, or a more healed version of myself, says Rosen, who would end up co-writing the screenplay). He also gave it to Dickey, an Arkansas-born musician; he had been paying the bills as a chef in Philadelphia when Hawke invited him to stay with him around New Years Eve 2015. At one point, Dickey picked up a guitar and began mimicking banter from Foleys album Live at the Austin Outhouse. The next morning, his host asked him if hed play Foley. I said, Itd be a lot of work....Would you do it? Hawke says. He replied, Fuck, yeah. The electricity went through my back Im really supposed to do this.

Dude, I was so nervous, it was ridiculous, says Dickey. He learned most of Foleys 60-song catalog and immersed himself in his story, which ended when the drunk Blaze drove to the home of an elderly friend and confronted the mans son, whom Foley believed was stealing from his father. He was found bleeding outside their residence; the son was later acquitted of murder. (Hawke recounts a moment when he lent Dickey his stepfathers acoustic guitar, which was sitting in his basement. We look at the inception date on the guitar and it was February 1st, 1989: the day Blaze died.)

For Rosen, who was on set, watching scenes from her relationship with Foley play out again in front of her was surreal. There was a sense of reliving the experiences and at the same time wondering if Im really just seeing them for the first time, she says. I also learned that grieving is bottomless.Dickeys performance won him a Special Jury award at the Sundance Film Festival. While he was at the Utah fest, Hawke was approached by Gurf Morlix (whose musical partner Lucinda Williams wrote Drunken Angel about Blaze), an old friend of Foleys whod been hostile to the idea of a biopic; Hawke had been terrified to show him the movie. He said, Well, its the best music movie ever made, says Hawke, and thats a very low bar.