Richard Ouzounian

But it's the acting that makes this song sing so truly. Every role is cast with the proper grit and texture, with all the ranch hands seeming like the rough, broken men they are and Leighton Meester playing Curley's Wife as the tawdry rag doll with her eye on a non-existent prize that she has to be. Jim Norton has an almost biblical resonance to his work as Candy, a man who dares to hope one more time, even if fate has shown him that he shouldn't, and Ron Cephas Jones makes something frighteningly wonderful out of the crippled black outcast, Crooks.