The Media Tourist

New country music movie gets some things right—and a few wrong

The Neon Highway
Starring Beau Bridges & Rob Mayes
Directed by William Wages
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, March 15

In The Neon Highway, an aspiring singer-songwriter (Rob Mayes) hitches up with a washed-up former country legend (Beau Bridges) to get a song recorded in Nashville. But the “new” Nashville has changed a lot since yesteryear, and the two aren’t exactly greeted with open arms when they get to Music City. It’s a modest little music-centric melodrama with humor, heart and hope, a B-movie about second chances that features cameos by a handful of real-life music-makers, including Pam Tillis, Lee Brice and former BR-549 front man Chuck Mead, providing a backdrop of authenticity.

Bridges, a veteran actor with more than 200 movie and TV roles, gives his character, Claude Allen, an aura of weary experience, worn down by the grind after the hits have stopped coming. Mayes has done primarily television work and even released several singles as a singer-songwriter, which meshes with his role as Wayne Collins, whose fledgling career never recovered from a tragic setback several years ago. His song, “The Neon Highway,” is about hitting the road, taking the stage and performing again—a dream both characters share.  

But The Neon Highway is a bit off-key, alas, in its depiction of Nashville and its best-known export. For starters, it doesn’t look like Nashville, mainly because it was filmed almost entirely in Georgia, home to director William Wages, a former cinematographer turned TV director who’s also one of the film’s cowriters. There are no identifiable Nashville landmarks, but there is a plug for Leopold’s, the Georgia-based ice cream company owned—not coincidentally—by the film’s producer.

But one thing in particular rings realistically true: The rejection and indifference felt by Wayne and Claude when they get to Nashville is echoed by the experiences of thousands of songwriters and artists who know how rough the road to success can be. The movie hits some flat notes with cliches and hokum, and often seems dated about how the wheels of Nashville’s modern music business really turn; record execs, for instance, don’t dress like Urban Cowboy extras from the ‘80s, with Western shirts and rodeo-size belt buckles. And whatever the “sound” of Music City might be, wafting on the breeze as Claude and Wayne arrive on the outskirts of what the movie pretends is Nashville—well, it’s likely not a sonorous violin version of “Danny Boy.”

In the movie, Wayne’s job—as an installer for a telecom company—proves a novel (if highly unconventional) way of getting his song released. Don’t give up your day job, as the old showbiz adage goes.

Bridges, as movie fans likely know, has a younger brother, Jeff, whose long string of popular films include The Big Lebowski, Iron Man, Tron: Legacy, the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit, and his own country music movie, the well-received Crazy Heart. Both actor sibs have also dabbled in music, and they’ve made a handful of flicks together; one of them, The Fabulous Baker Boys, was nominated for four Oscars. Hey, maybe they should reteam for a movie about country music singers Buck Owens and Dwight Yoakam—and call it The Fabulous Bakersfield Boys. Just a thought.

The Neon Highway means well and it has its heart in the right place, somewhere in there between three chords and the truth. And it definitely does show how, as another old Nashville songwriting adage goes, it all begins with a song—even when things look a lot like Georgia. 

—Neil Pond