In the great French film, Un Coeur en Hiver, Emmanuelle Beart plays a violinist. The music (Ravel) is dubbed, but I just read that she studied as a violinist for 18 months prior to the making of the film just to get the fingering right. I was wondering about other examples of this kind of diligence, or non-diligence people know about. Two come to mind: Sean Penn for the Woody Allen film (cannot remember the title) about the Django-ist guitarist, I heard that he practiced for several months (though Rick Fielding said to me that he was obviously making mistakes). Another is Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces -- he seems to be playing for real, though of course they are reasonably easy.

yours,

Peter T.