Take Sides: Gary Busey as Buddy Holly v. Lou Diamond Phillips as Richie Valens

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I was watching television this morning, and one of those Holiday Inn Express ads came on, with the dude who does his best thinking in the shower. Evidently, I do, too....

Take a side - We're not talking about anything prior to their respective performances as two thirds of the Day the Music Died, and we're certainly not talking about subsequent performances/run ins with the law. Who was better/more convincing/captured the energy of their respective subject's music better?

As an ancillary question, who played the Big Bopper in either movie?

― Big Loud Mountain Ape (Big Loud Mountain Ape), Thursday, 23 June 2005 12:57 (twenty years ago)

Gary Busey was very good. Film was rub.

― mark grout (mark grout), Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:01 (twenty years ago)

LDP all the way.

― PB, Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:13 (twenty years ago)

LDP, surely.

And along the same lines, Marshall Crenshaw as Buddy.

― Zed Szetlian (Finn MacCool), Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:38 (twenty years ago)

Although I think Joaquin has a chance to get to the top of the musician biopic heap with this Cash movie he's got coming out....

― PB, Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:48 (twenty years ago)

grout OTM.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:52 (twenty years ago)

Esai Morales

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:56 (twenty years ago)

As over huffed as it was/is, Jamie Foxx was amazing as Ray. Joaquin has his work cut out for him. I am just as, if not more, interested to see Reese Witherspoon as June. We'll see.

― Big Loud Mountain Ape (Big Loud Mountain Ape), Thursday, 23 June 2005 13:57 (twenty years ago)

For showing his ability to convincingly play something other than a psychopath, Busey takes it.

Now when the hell is Hollywood gonna complete the triptych by casting Dan Aykroyd in "The Big Bopper Story"?

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 23 June 2005 14:01 (twenty years ago)

haha!

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 23 June 2005 14:01 (twenty years ago)

...but my favourite was (Kid In The Hall) Kevin McDonald, playing "Buddy Fuckin' Holly" as an absolute asshole, bullying his way onto the plane, and sealing everyone's fate by insisting that his pet chimpanzee be given a turn at the controls! Fun-ny stuff.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 23 June 2005 14:15 (twenty years ago)

Now when the hell is Hollywood gonna complete the triptych by casting Dan Aykroyd in "The Big Bopper Story"?

Jim Belushi, surely?

Anyway, Gary Busey wins hands down. I mean you'd think he was totally the wrong build, but he carries it off. And La Bamba sucks bambas.

― Taste the Blood of Scrovula (noodle vague), Thursday, 23 June 2005 15:08 (twenty years ago)

I believe there is some good stuff about Buddy Holly from Little Richard in Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock and Roll.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 23 June 2005 15:10 (twenty years ago)

by Charles White.

― k/l (Ken L), Thursday, 23 June 2005 15:11 (twenty years ago)

I believe there is some good stuff about Buddy Holly from Little Richard in Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock and Roll.
-- k/l

Oh yes. "He came and he went!"

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 23 June 2005 15:41 (twenty years ago)

Busey learned how to play guitar for the role and sang/performed all his music parts live on the set so I offer a completely ROCKIST vote for Busey.

― gygax! (gygax!), Thursday, 23 June 2005 15:43 (twenty years ago)

Actually, it's conceivable that he already knew how to play when he took that role, since he co-wrote a song for "Nashville" three years earlier.

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Thursday, 23 June 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

seven years pass...

My girlfriend found the only and only record by Carp this past weekend, from 1970. Do you guys know of Carp? Gary Busey's band. He drummed, and some of his Oklahoma State classmates did the other stuff. It's actually really solid country/blues/rock!

― Clarke B., Wednesday, 6 February 2013 13:13 (thirteen years ago)

ten years pass...

the opening of La Bamba scared me from flying on planes for almost the entirety of my childhood

― Cthulhu Diamond Phillips (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 18 April 2023 22:16 (three years ago)

which I didn't learn until I was an adult was him witnessing this real life incident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_Pacoima_mid-air_collision

― Cthulhu Diamond Phillips (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 18 April 2023 22:17 (three years ago)

Unbelievably, there's an audio recording of the plane crash as it happened - captured during an assembly inside Pacoima Junior High's auditorium. Heads up, listening to it won't help anyone's fear of flying.

There's still small pieces of F-89 wreckage in Las Tunas Canyon. When I got into aviation archeology, it was one of the first crash sites I checked out.

― Elvis Telecom, Wednesday, 19 April 2023 10:48 (three years ago)

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