Who was Billy Ray supposed to be?
I tried going through Joplin's discography to see if I could figure it out and no luck. Any ideas?
Of course, he may not be based on anyone real.
I tried going through Joplin's discography to see if I could figure it out and no luck. Any ideas?
Of course, he may not be based on anyone real.
The Billy Ray character is based on Jerry Lee Lewis, the hillbilly who married his 13 year old cousin.
Janis Joplin didn't fit the image that a backwoods redneck like Lewis had of what a woman, especially a Southern woman, should be, and this is why he hated everything about her. Janis wasn't the subservient, demure, beauty queen with the heavily sprayed bouffant who revolved her world around an abusive grease ball and worst of all, she was a female (!) rock singer, which in good ole' boy Lewis' eyes was lower than a hooker.
Yeah! Whoever he was, he was a cold-hearted, mean-spirited ass----. I hated his character.
shareThanks, Cookie! It led me to this lovely article!
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/my-big-sister-janis-joplin
I didn't read the whole article, but it seemed that the only thing about Lewis in it was that remark he made about Janis's sister. So... does that necessarily mean Billy Ray was based on Lewis? I wouldn't think so. But I don't really know. You say you went through Joplin's catalogue and didn't find anything. Her giant hit Me & Bobby McGee was written by Kris Kristofferson. And Kristofferson's work was much closer in musical style to Billy Ray's than Jerry Lee Lewis's, that's for sure. But I'd hate to think that the Billy Ray character's behavior in the film was based on anything Kristofferson would ever actually say/do. I like Kristofferson. But you never know. Great artists are not always the nicest people. They're just... people.
"Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."
Kristofferson and Janis were friendly with each other. She was too wild for him to be super tight but he liked her and vice versa.
More along the lines of someone like Merle Haggard or one of those Grand Ole Opry Republican guys.