Emmett Ray Essay

Emmett Ray is a fictional character played by Sean Penn in Woody Allen’s “Sweet and Lowdown” film. After doing some research on the film, I have come to the conclusion that Emmett Ray was never a real person, or at least not based on a real person. Ray was played by Sean Penn, and the music he pretended to play was actually played by guitarist, Howard Alden. Alden was a real jazz guitarist, who was associated with Concord Jazz, and played all the guitar solos in the film. He even taught Penn how to play the guitar so that he would be better prepared for his role in the film. Woody Allen created this character, Emmett Ray, and portrayed him as a cocky and selfish guitarist who was known as the second best guitarist in the world, behind Django

In other words, he had to be single and not have anyone holding him back from accomplishing his dreams. This is why he only went out with women he liked and not with women he loved. In my opinion, he only loved one woman in the entire film, Hattie. She was a mute, could not physically speak but could hear. Ray, would take her to his shows, buy her food, clothing, and took her anywhere he went. He was in love with her, even if he did not want to accept it. Since he only cared about his music and did not want to settle down with Hattie, he decided to pack his bags and leave her one night. It seemed like it was a decision he came to regret later on. Ray ended up married to a women named Blanche, they rushed into marriage too soon and ended up arguing a lot through it. She was some type of writer who liked to record the thoughts and emotions one had, on her notebook, in order to understand them well. Which is what she did often with Ray, but eventually it became rather difficult for her to understand him so she became bored of him. Blanche ended up cheating on Ray with a bodyguard and Ray eventually found out about it. There were three versions shown in the film on how and what Ray did when he found out about Blanche and the bodyguard, but in all three the outcome is the same, Blanche and the bodyguard are