Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)

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Wikidata Q2060077, film, IMDb tt0841046, TMDB 6575: matched by corpus:resolve, told apart by the only film by that title; 3 more episodes agree.

Also said as Walk Hard: the same Wikidata item, so listed here.

What a model would be handed about it, for corpus:ask.

In the store as #548, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007).

Who talked about it

Blank Check with Griffin & David

The Big Picture

The Rewatchables

Came from

What the speakers say it drew on. Each is a speaker's account: “the maker said so” when they report the maker's own words, “the host's read” when the read is theirs.

Walk the Line: 2 lines the host's read ×2

  1. unmapped (parody of): Walk the Line ⇒ Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (the host's read). Walk Hard is a beat-for-beat demolition of Walk the Line (and Ray), pairing contempt with affection.
    “it is such a perfect note for note, beat for beat, cliche for cliche, demolition of this kind of movie, with just the right amount of contempt and affection”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:28:10 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)

Ray: 1 line the host's read ×1

  1. unmapped (parody of): Ray ⇒ Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (the host's read). Walk Hard arrived in the wake of Ray and Walk the Line and skewers their clichés.
    “that film coming out in the wake of things like Ray, and especially walk the line”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:27:51 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)

The Doors: 1 line the host's read ×1

  1. industry (marketing mimicry): The Doors ⇒ Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (the host's read). Walk Hard's poster of John C. Reilly was modeled on Val Kilmer in The Doors so it would pass as a real biopic.
    “the poster of John C. Riley is modeled on Val Kilmer in the doors, right?”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:30:27 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Led to

What the speakers say drew on it, marked the same way.

Elvis: 2 lines the host's read ×2

  1. unmapped (prefigured by): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story ⇒ Elvis (the host's read). A scene in Elvis (the subject thinking over his life before going on stage) is almost beat for beat preceded by Walk Hard.
    “there is a scene that is almost beat for beat preceded by walk hard 15 years ago.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:26:37 · Sean Fennessey (0.85 sure it was them)

Connected to

Elvis: 3 lines unmapped ×2 craft ×1

  1. craft (shared plot device): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Elvis. Both feature a dead brother as the formative trauma (Walk Hard's wrong-kid-died gag, Elvis's twin).
    “that's also the premise of Elvis is that, you know, his twin brother died at a very young age.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:35:59 · Sean Fennessey (0.85 sure it was them)

Walk the Line: 2 lines unmapped ×2

  1. unmapped (parody of): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Walk the Line. Walk Hard is a beat-for-beat demolition of Walk the Line (and Ray), pairing contempt with affection.
    “it is such a perfect note for note, beat for beat, cliche for cliche, demolition of this kind of movie, with just the right amount of contempt and affection”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:28:10 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)

Airplane!: 1 line craft ×1

  1. craft (structural analogy): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Airplane!. Walk Hard is modeled on Walk the Line the way Airplane! is modeled on Airport, then copies everything else.
    “in the same way that airplane is modeled mostly after airport, and then it copies everything else.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:27:58 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Behind the Candelabra: 1 line contrast ×1

  1. contrast (tone contrast): Behind the Candelabra → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Behind the Candelabra is very comic but not parody, unlike Walk Hard.
    “It's not parody. It's not comedy, even though it is very comic.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:48:46 · Sean Fennessey (0.80 sure it was them)

Eddie Vedder: 1 line people ×1

  1. people (cameo): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Eddie Vedder. Eddie Vedder inducts everyone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a parody of himself, singled out as the funniest performance ever.
    “It's like funniest performance ever in a movie, is Eddie Vedder doing a parody of himself, because he inducts everyone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:40:05 · Adam Nayman (0.80 sure it was them)

Forrest Gump: 1 line theme ×1

  1. theme (character analogy): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Forrest Gump. Dewey is the Forrest Gump of American popular music, inhabiting every style.
    “he's almost kind of the forest gump of American popular music because he inhabits all of them.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:39:25 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

John C. Reilly: 1 line career ×1

  1. career (career payoff): John C. Reilly → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Talladega Nights greenlit Reilly's lead role in Walk Hard, an apex moment for him.
    “I believe this movie Greenlit, him getting his own star role in a movie, which is Walkhart.”
    The Rewatchables · 'Talladega Nights' With Craig Horlbeck, Danny Heifetz, and Danny Kelly · 1:42:32 · Danny Heifetz (0.40 sure it was them)

Judd Apatow: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (produced by): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Judd Apatow. Walk Hard was produced and shaped by Judd Apatow, in his big year of Knocked Up and Superbad; one of his better credits.
    “it is produced by, and shaped in a good way by, by, by Judd Appital, right?”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:30:12 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Marshall Crenshaw: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (songwriting credit): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Marshall Crenshaw. Marshall Crenshaw, a power-pop singer, has songwriting credits on Walk Hard's catchy songs.
    “there's also some songwriting credits on it, I think, for Marshall Crenshaw, who's a great power pop singer from the 80s”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:33:56 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (satire trilogy): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Spinal Tap, Walk Hard and Popstar make an instructive trilogy of music satire, with Popstar the millennial, internet-era update.
    “if you drew a line from Spinal Tap through Walkhard through pop star, that's like just this expert satire”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:41:03 · Adam Nayman (0.80 sure it was them)

Raging Bull: 1 line craft ×1

  1. craft (biopic structure): Raging Bull → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Schrader's draft intercut a whole life like the later Dewey Cox style that many biopics now follow, before Raging Bull used bookends and one flashback.
    “Dewey Cox style originally was more the structure of the movie.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Raging Bull with David Krumholtz · 0:59:47 · Griffin Newman or David Sims (0.40 sure it was them)

Ray: 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (parody of): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Ray. Walk Hard arrived in the wake of Ray and Walk the Line and skewers their clichés.
    “that film coming out in the wake of things like Ray, and especially walk the line”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:27:51 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)

Rocketman: 1 line theme ×1

  1. theme (genre boom): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Rocketman. Walk Hard did not deflate the music biopic; Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody and Respect kept coming, certifying it as a subgenre.
    “So it didn't actually deflate anything. If anything, it almost like raised them up and certified them as an ongoing subgenre in film.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:29:26 · Sean Fennessey (0.85 sure it was them)

The Doors: 1 line industry ×1

  1. industry (marketing mimicry): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → The Doors. Walk Hard's poster of John C. Reilly was modeled on Val Kilmer in The Doors so it would pass as a real biopic.
    “the poster of John C. Riley is modeled on Val Kilmer in the doors, right?”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:30:27 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

This Is Spinal Tap: 1 line lineage ×1

  1. lineage (spiritual kin): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → This Is Spinal Tap. Both lampoon rock-star mythology; Dewey is a Forrest Gump of popular music where Tap's band has no identity.
    “connecting Walkhart to Spinal Tap, because I think there's a deep spiritual communion between these movies”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:38:58 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)

Untitled Bowie biopic (the one with no Bowie songs): 1 line unmapped ×1

  1. unmapped (solves a problem): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Untitled Bowie biopic (the one with no Bowie songs). A Bowie biopic with no Bowie songs is the IP problem; Walk Hard avoids it by inventing a fake musician with credible songs.
    “Walkhart solves that problem by inventing a fake musician and then giving him songs that almost sound more credible than the real ones.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:38:52 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Weird Al: 1 line craft ×1

  1. craft (craft): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Weird Al. The guest says the songs written for Walk Hard are credible enough to meet the high bar set by Weird Al's song parodies, which is the comparison for its style-parody music.
    “it's a high bar to match someone like weird out in his song parodies”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:34:07 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Where it came up

What was said about it, by kind

career (1)

  1. career (career payoff): John C. Reilly → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Talladega Nights greenlit Reilly's lead role in Walk Hard, an apex moment for him.
    “I believe this movie Greenlit, him getting his own star role in a movie, which is Walkhart.”
    The Rewatchables · 'Talladega Nights' With Craig Horlbeck, Danny Heifetz, and Danny Kelly · 1:42:32 · Danny Heifetz (0.40 sure it was them)

contrast (1)

  1. contrast (tone contrast): Behind the Candelabra → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Behind the Candelabra is very comic but not parody, unlike Walk Hard.
    “It's not parody. It's not comedy, even though it is very comic.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:48:46 · Sean Fennessey (0.80 sure it was them)

craft (4)

  1. craft (biopic structure): Raging Bull → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Schrader's draft intercut a whole life like the later Dewey Cox style that many biopics now follow, before Raging Bull used bookends and one flashback.
    “Dewey Cox style originally was more the structure of the movie.”
    Blank Check with Griffin & David · Raging Bull with David Krumholtz · 0:59:47 · Griffin Newman or David Sims (0.40 sure it was them)
  2. craft (structural analogy): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Airplane!. Walk Hard is modeled on Walk the Line the way Airplane! is modeled on Airport, then copies everything else.
    “in the same way that airplane is modeled mostly after airport, and then it copies everything else.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:27:58 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)
  3. craft (craft): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Weird Al. The guest says the songs written for Walk Hard are credible enough to meet the high bar set by Weird Al's song parodies, which is the comparison for its style-parody music.
    “it's a high bar to match someone like weird out in his song parodies”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:34:07 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)
  4. craft (shared plot device): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Elvis. Both feature a dead brother as the formative trauma (Walk Hard's wrong-kid-died gag, Elvis's twin).
    “that's also the premise of Elvis is that, you know, his twin brother died at a very young age.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:35:59 · Sean Fennessey (0.85 sure it was them)

industry (1)

  1. industry (marketing mimicry): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → The Doors. Walk Hard's poster of John C. Reilly was modeled on Val Kilmer in The Doors so it would pass as a real biopic.
    “the poster of John C. Riley is modeled on Val Kilmer in the doors, right?”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:30:27 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

lineage (1)

  1. lineage (spiritual kin): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → This Is Spinal Tap. Both lampoon rock-star mythology; Dewey is a Forrest Gump of popular music where Tap's band has no identity.
    “connecting Walkhart to Spinal Tap, because I think there's a deep spiritual communion between these movies”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:38:58 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)

people (1)

  1. people (cameo): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Eddie Vedder. Eddie Vedder inducts everyone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a parody of himself, singled out as the funniest performance ever.
    “It's like funniest performance ever in a movie, is Eddie Vedder doing a parody of himself, because he inducts everyone into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:40:05 · Adam Nayman (0.80 sure it was them)

theme (2)

  1. theme (genre boom): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Rocketman. Walk Hard did not deflate the music biopic; Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody and Respect kept coming, certifying it as a subgenre.
    “So it didn't actually deflate anything. If anything, it almost like raised them up and certified them as an ongoing subgenre in film.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:29:26 · Sean Fennessey (0.85 sure it was them)
  2. theme (character analogy): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Forrest Gump. Dewey is the Forrest Gump of American popular music, inhabiting every style.
    “he's almost kind of the forest gump of American popular music because he inhabits all of them.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:39:25 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

unmapped (9)

  1. unmapped (parody target): Walk the Line → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Amanda argues effective parody must work from something that works, and watched the two back to back; the buzz-saw brother incident mirrors Walk Hard's setup.
    “for something, to be an effective parody, it has to be working from something that actually works.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:04:20 · Amanda Dobbins (0.90 sure it was them)
  2. unmapped (parody of a parody): Elvis → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Elvis seems to parody Walk Hard's parody of women ripping open shirts at the star.
    “somehow this movie is doing a parody of the Walkhard parody of the scene of like women like busting open.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:09:20 · Amanda Dobbins (0.80 sure it was them)
  3. unmapped (prefigured by): Elvis → Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. A scene in Elvis (the subject thinking over his life before going on stage) is almost beat for beat preceded by Walk Hard.
    “there is a scene that is almost beat for beat preceded by walk hard 15 years ago.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:26:37 · Sean Fennessey (0.85 sure it was them)
  4. unmapped (parody of): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Ray. Walk Hard arrived in the wake of Ray and Walk the Line and skewers their clichés.
    “that film coming out in the wake of things like Ray, and especially walk the line”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:27:51 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)
  5. unmapped (parody of): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Walk the Line. Walk Hard is a beat-for-beat demolition of Walk the Line (and Ray), pairing contempt with affection.
    “it is such a perfect note for note, beat for beat, cliche for cliche, demolition of this kind of movie, with just the right amount of contempt and affection”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:28:10 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)
  6. unmapped (produced by): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Judd Apatow. Walk Hard was produced and shaped by Judd Apatow, in his big year of Knocked Up and Superbad; one of his better credits.
    “it is produced by, and shaped in a good way by, by, by Judd Appital, right?”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:30:12 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)
  7. unmapped (songwriting credit): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Marshall Crenshaw. Marshall Crenshaw, a power-pop singer, has songwriting credits on Walk Hard's catchy songs.
    “there's also some songwriting credits on it, I think, for Marshall Crenshaw, who's a great power pop singer from the 80s”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:33:56 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)
  8. unmapped (solves a problem): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Untitled Bowie biopic (the one with no Bowie songs). A Bowie biopic with no Bowie songs is the IP problem; Walk Hard avoids it by inventing a fake musician with credible songs.
    “Walkhart solves that problem by inventing a fake musician and then giving him songs that almost sound more credible than the real ones.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:38:52 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)
  9. unmapped (satire trilogy): Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story → Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping. Spinal Tap, Walk Hard and Popstar make an instructive trilogy of music satire, with Popstar the millennial, internet-era update.
    “if you drew a line from Spinal Tap through Walkhard through pop star, that's like just this expert satire”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:41:03 · Adam Nayman (0.80 sure it was them)

Fun items about it

  1. fun, about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Adam watches the Beatles-stop-fighting-in-India excerpt on YouTube about weekly; he saw the film twice in theaters.
    “I don't know how many times I've watched the Beatles stop fighting here in India excerpt online on YouTube.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:30:05 · Adam Nayman (0.90 sure it was them)
  2. fun, about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Amanda saw it on a Netflix mailer on a couch with a group of young people, which she thinks is how this whole generation of films should be experienced.
    “which is how I think all this this entire generation of movies should like truly be experienced.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:31:43 · Amanda Dobbins (0.90 sure it was them)
  3. fun, about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Walk Hard's Roy Orbison parody 'Life Without You' is stirring; the fake hippie numbers like the song about a change that never says what it is are great.
    “the fake Roy Orbison song he does, the life without you is really quite stirring”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:34:22 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)
  4. fun, about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: Tim Meadows and Chris Parnell as Dewey's backing band mocking a Dylan parody: 'This is very deep.'
    “Tim Meadows with his perfect delivery. like, you don't understand. This is very deep, you know?”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:34:52 · Adam Nayman (0.80 sure it was them)
  5. fun, about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: The film's jokes annotate themselves: characters introduce themselves and each scene has a thesis statement, which the film dares you to call out.
    “daring you to call it, call bullshit on this trope of just people saying who they are at all times, which I think is priceless.”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:35:37 · Amanda Dobbins (0.70 sure it was them)
  6. fun, about Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story: The final Hall of Fame performance is with Jewel, Lyle Lovett and Ghostface, inducted by Eddie Vedder who 'should have won an Oscar'.
    “he performs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the greatest band of all time, which is Jewel, Lyle, Lovett, and Ghostface”
    The Big Picture · ‘Elvis,’ ‘Walk Hard’ and Top Five Music Biopics · 0:39:49 · Adam Nayman (0.85 sure it was them)

Who the speakers said made it

As said on the shows, not checked against the real credits.