The Buddy Holly Story

I'm a huge fan of Gary Busey, who may not be a "star" but is nevertheless a great actor. This is by far his best performance, & I feel he deserved the best actor oscar more than Jon Voight (who won for Coming Home). Few people know that Busey was a musician before he was an actor, so in this awesome musical biography of Buddy Holly we get to see just how talented he is. The film is mostly factual, although some screen characters are actually composites of two or more people. The energy in Busey's performance is what makes this a winner. Not only did he sing, he did it while being filmed live! That's what gives this such a realistic look to it & it's why this stands out among the other musical biographies as one of the best. There was also a lot of unscripted dialogue that makes this even more entertaining. The best thing about the dvd is the hilarious & very informative commentary from the director Steve Rash & Gary Busey, which is almost as good as the film itself! This is an excellent tribute to a lengendary rock & roll icon & it won an oscar for best score adaptation. Do yourself a favor, add this great film to your collection!

This is not a huge hollywood production with slick lighting and camera work but rather a small production that almost has the feel of a cross between a home movie and a TV movie (in a good way). What this movie does so well is celebrate life, and simply follows a character with passion and drive. It's inspiring to see someone follow their dreams relentlessly and that is what the filmmakers have tapped into here. We all know how Buddy Holly's life ends (so if you don't know don't read on), but the movie never even shows a shot of the plane because that is not what it's about. Top this movie off with Gary Busy's performance which is even more impressive when one learns he did all the singing in this film live (he did not lip sync any of it!).

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I think this is a fantastic movie. Gary Busey did an excellent job portraying Buddy Holly. Though I am aware that not every detail of this movie is 100% factual, it still makes the audience love and care about Buddy and his music. This movie is truly a must for any music fan.

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I think the most important thing about "The Buddy Holly Story" is it captures the essence of it's subject, the time it is depicting, and the burgeoning rock'n'roll movement. The most glaring innacuracy is the names of the other Crickets, Jerry Allison and Joe Mauldin, being changed. That quibble aside, this film is simultaneously important, yet thrilling, because it celebrates the artistry of rock's premiere pioneer(sorry, Elvis). Gary Busey doesn't merely portray Buddy Holly, he is possessed by the spirit of the man. Though he doesn't necessarily duplicate the vocals of Holly, he has the essence of them down pat. Credit too has to go to Don Stroud and Charles Martin Smith as the other Crickets. This trio actually feels like a working band. I read some of the other reviews that take issue with the film for it's inaccuracies. The truth of the matter is alot of the fabrications in the film were the result of legal wrangling and not a deliberate attempt to falsify the facts. The most important thing here is the film celebrates the man, his creative processes, and the music. If this film moves the uninitiated they can seek out the true story. In conclusion,"Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll!"(Oh, that's Chuck Berry.)

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You become accustomed to Hollywood taking too many liberties with the actual stories of the famed and infamous alike; in music, you could ask Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and the Dorsey brothers, all of whom had their life stories sentimentalised and bowdlerised to the quick once Hollywood got its mitts on them. Likewise with Buddy Holly. The liberties taken with the Texas rock pioneer's actual story may have made for audience-gripping moviemaking, but history has its claims as well and there was no need whatsoever to gussy up the Holly story, unless someone figured that because he was one of the few early rock stars who could claim a background of reasonable stability and, for the most part, parental support and empathy, Buddy Holly as a film subject would have been as boring as Buddy Holly the musician was exciting.

But there remains one reason to indulge "The Buddy Holly Story" after just over two decades Gary Busey's performance as the long tall Texan with the thick-rimmed glasses, the toothy smile, and the deceptively gripping songs and rippling guitar style remains one of the most unpretentiously electrifying you will ever see given of an actual music star. Busey made a very credible Holly, both when cranking out his versions of Holly's signature music and in portraying the shyly confident young man offstage, and it remains the most earnest and thorough performance of Busey's career; it garnered him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor and he deserved the nomination. He played every facet of Holly the musical confidence, the unprejudiced amiability, the striking romantic (slightly twisted though the scripting is, it is nevertheless true that Buddy Holly really did ask his girl friend's aunt, who'd raised her, for her hand in marriage), the enthusiastic performer with a surety and a thoroughness he's been hard pressed ever since to equal.

Holly himself might have been spinning in his grave over the telling of the story and it only begins with the point that even the uninitiated knew (and know) that the Crickets were a quarter for most of the time they worked with Holly. But Holly might yet have said of Busey that he'd done him justice in spite of what he had to work with, even if he'd wished Busey could have delivered that justice in a more appropriate presentation.

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