Johnny Cash — Dont Make a Movie About Me

If anybody made a movie out of my life I wouldn't like it, but I'd watch it twice If they halfway tried to do it right There'd be forty screen writers workin' day and nite. They'd need a research team from Uncle Sam And go from David Allen Coe to Billy Graham It would run ten days in the final cut And that would mean leaving out the gossip smut. And I do request for my children's sake Don't ever let 'em do a new re-make The thing I'm sayin' is, don't you see, Don't make a movie 'bout me Even for T.V. Don't make a movie 'bout me. Don't let 'em drag old Hickory Lake For my telephones and bottles and roller skates Down forty feet in the Cumberland mud There's a rusty old gun that once shed blood Out a hundred yards from my lakeside house Weighted down with a rock is a skirt and blouse A dozen pair of boots that made a dozen corns Trombones, trumpets, harmonicas and horns And the tapes that I threw from the lakeside door Silverstein, and Kristofferson from years before Everything has a story that should be let be So don’t make a movie ‘bout me. If they're hot on a book called Man in Black Tell 'em I've got the rights and won't give back If you don't know my tune you can't get it right I don't talk about me in . . . Man in White. Truth, said the Master, cannot be hid But he didn't say slap it in the face of my kids. A stone is a stone and forever a stone But I'm part good and bad and then I'm gone. There is no sin cleaner than the dirtiest So there's a lot about me that I don't want missed If it's days or years or whatever will be Don't make a movie 'bout me. Aw, I might as well face it cause they will some day So while I can I've got a thing to say I don't know anybody that I said I don't know And there ain't anybody anywhere I owe The I.R.S. gets the lion's share And what is left goes to my own named heirs. Don't let 'em make it in Hollywood If they must, tell 'em Arkansas is where they should. Here’s a hex on whoever makes it be, So don’t make a movie 'bout me. For Love or Monee Don't make a movie 'bout me.