Review of Wheeler

I really enjoyed this film. It was a great story, well written and a tremendous performance from Stephen Dorff. It was a very unconventional film, done as a documentary, about a fictitious character so there was a little bit of a guessing game going on as it felt like a real biopic, but that was part of the charm of the production. It was truly a story about hope, dreams, redemption and was quite inspiring.

Working with Nashville vet Bobby Tomberlin, a Dorff family friend, they accentuated the country elements in Dorff's writing and conceived a character to build a movie around: Wheeler Bryson, a cowboy from Kaufman, Texas, who moves to Nashville to try his hand at professional songwriting. "We wanted to show the journey a singer/songwriter would have to take if he drove up to Nashville: showing up, playing an open mike, who would you have to meet to get to the next step." They decided to shoot the movie documentary-style, with real locals and music-industry folk in every scene. And since they wanted their cast of non-professional actors to respond as if Wheeler were a nobody, not a movie star, they made Dorff unrecognizable, with a prosthetic lip and nose, bushy eyebrows, and a Texas drawl.

It was my second time viewing the film. I think I had a better grasp of it.