Timothèe Chalamet is Bob Dylan ‘A Complete Unknown’.

Trailer is out. I was sceptical on his casting but less so now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcNNteP22gQ

This film has one glaring problem and it isn't Chalamet.

It's a bio-pic of a popular musician, so it's going to let everyone hear a bunch of songs they know by heart and will dutifully plod along, cherry-picking a few dramatic events and overdoing them. The formula is so tired it can be done in a sleepwalk. I expect this will be made with a reverence that will appeal to the most avid and tiresome members of his fan club. And it will make a lot of money because it's a big fan club.

I trust James Mangold with this, based on Walk The Line and Ford vs. Ferrari. I mean, I also liked Bohemian Rhapsody as a Wikipedia page on film. Wasn't compelled at all to see the Elton, Amy Winehouse, etc. ones.

why does is start with bass rumble is dylan going to fight galacticus

I don't want to watch a biopic of a musician I like because I have my emotional connection set and I don't want someone to try to manipulate it. And I don't want to watch a biopic of a musician I don't like, because, duh. That doesn't leave much in the genre. I remember liking The Glenn Miller Story.

I'm Not There is my favorite music biopic, but the trailer has me cautiously optimistic (helps that I generally like Chalamet).

I'll see this as soon as it opens, but I'd say its biggest challenge will be the shadow of Inside Llewyn Davis--not really about Dylan, of course, but immersed in that moment, and what Dylan stuff there is is great, especially the shadowy glimmer of the Robert Shelton-reviewed performance.

Chalamet regardless spent time researching Dylan during the pandemic, visiting former homes of Dylan in New York City and consulting director Joel Coen during this time.[10][11]

Just read up on it a bit--I thought it was about the Greenwich Village period, didn't realize it was Newport '65. So that's something different than Llewyn Davis.

Million dollar quarter but Nashville skyline

I can't take any of these seriously after Walk Hard

I don't usually care for these, but I did enjoy Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic. That will be the standard to beat here.

timothee looks like a young elijah wood not a young robert zimmerman here and also not sullen enough. he's got the blinking while playing down though

Would prefer a feature length biopic about the making of 'Brownsville Girl'

Maybe he could play Donovan next.

Sam Shepard and Bob Dylan locking themselves in a motel room somewhere to write it...

Think I’d rather see this

https://www.broadwaysf.com/events/girl-from-the-north-country/

My 12 year-old pretty much thinks Timothy is the bee's knees and will watch anything he's in, he is very much stoked to see this. I hadn't even seen the trailer yet and he was excited to show me.

Girl from the north country sucks

lol good to know

edward norton seems great as pete seeger but that's the only part that seems even remotely appealing about this, from the trailer at least

This is a film made for people who believe Dylan should never have gone electric and should have married Joan Baez.

Chalamet is actually the best part about it -- had he been one of the many people playing Dylan in I'm Not There.q

I love Willy Wonka and Dune and Dylan and I would appreciate it if Chalamet would stop fucking about with things I like. He’ll probably play David Lynch next.

Totally not gonna see this except be accident.

I don't want to watch a biopic of a musician I like because I have my emotional connection set and I don't want someone to try to manipulate it. And I don't want to watch a biopic of a musician I don't like, because, duh. That doesn't leave much in the genre. I remember liking The Glenn Miller Story.

Watching a biopic is almost always like listening to re-records

Some kind of crummy less-than copy of the original, which is still the greatest.

Some kind of crummy less-than copy of the original, which is still the greatest.

Heh. My second post was a re-record itself.

Biopics that focus on a really specific point in time are usually more compelling, if still mostly useless.

especially if it’s a time when their cultural cache is not particularly high

I expect this will be made with a reverence that will appeal to the most avid and tiresome members of his fan club.
― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Wednesday, July 24, 2024

This is a film made for people who believe Dylan should never have gone electric and should have married Joan Baez.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 25, 2024

Called it.

everything I've seen from this feels exactly like the Joe Keery film in Pavements

Watching a biopic is almost always like listening to re-records

― James Carr Thief (James Redd and the Blecchs), Wednesday, December 25, 2024 10:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I would say "tribute band."

Please. It’s like listening to rich little do a reagan impression in 2014

would love a Tim Chalomet impression of Reagan

It’s sort of sad that 20 years ago everyone knew that the idea of a straight Dylan biopic would be dumb and corny so we got I GOT THERE or whatever, but I guess 20 years have passed and more layers of historical prestige or whatever have accumulated so I guess it’s to be expected.

lol Jimmy the Mod

No discourse about Tim’s nose modification?

It’s sort of sad that 20 years ago everyone knew that the idea of a straight Dylan biopic would be dumb and corny so we got I GOT THERE or whatever, but I guess 20 years have passed and more layers of historical prestige or whatever have accumulated so I guess it’s to be expected.

I'm assuming this is more of a Hollywood issue than a Dylan issue (cf. Walk the Line/Bohemian Rhapsody, whatever).

haven't seen this movie, not very interested in it, but i don't think you can call it a "straight biopic" given that it only covers a five-year period of his life

Ah okay, yeah sorry, I meant more like that Don Cheadle movie where it was like not Miles at his peak. Not that I would ever watch that but it just seems more interesting than sticking with canonical stuff.

it only covers a five-year period of his life

Hibbing is tired of being ignored for its all-important formative influence.

Would like to see a biopic that covers the important parts of Dylan’s life: Kurtis Blow collab, We Are the World, Soy Bomb, lingerie commercials, Nobel prize, joining Twitter

...talking to Arthur Baker about producing Empire Burlesque.

This shit sucked

Would like to see a biopic that covers the important parts of Dylan’s life: Kurtis Blow collab, We Are the World, Soy Bomb, lingerie commercials, Nobel prize, joining Twitter

Throw in the late '80s Dylan and Brian Wilson collaboration too - you can cast John Cusack and build universe!

*build a universe

"Bob Dylan has to think about his whole life before each music video setup!"--Bob Dylan

Now imagining Bradley Cooper's '80s Dylan movie. JOKERMAN.

lol

i thought this was ok. performances are all great. but it's a total standard issue biopic. it doesnt' commit crimes like Bohemian Raphsody; but I prefer these things when they get kind of weird, like Rocketman (or I'm Not There, which I rewatched yesterday).

Perfect timing, I guess, seeing this on the day Jimmy Carter dies.

Much to my surprise--really thought I'd hate it (trailer, genre, impossible expectations)--I liked almost all of this. The '61-'64 half was really strong; parts of '65 dragged a bit--nothing too serious--weighted down by significance and over-familiarity, but good stuff there too (e.g., Seeger's NPR show). I read very little in advance of films I know I'll see, so I had no idea Pete Seeger was played by Edward Norton. Thought he was great--I hope he wins awards. Also liked Monica Barbaro as Baez. I thought at first the actress was Lindsey Broad from the American The Office, not thinking about the timeline there. Baez is always great in documentaries cutting Dylan down to size, but they maybe slightly over-emphasized that part of their relationship, I don't know--she didn't come across that hard-edged in David Hadju's Positively Fourth Street. I liked the character/performance a lot anyway. Timothée Chalamet made almost zero impression on me in a couple of other films, but he's fine here. Emma Stone is always good, though she gets stuck with the same wounded-girlfriend-watching-from-the-wings scene twice. (I liked her spinning-plate analogy.) Recognized Charlie Tahan from Ozark as Al Kooper almost immediately.

Two favourite scenes from many: the Newport performance of "The Times They Are A-Changin'," the camera roaming around for reactions from all the principals (especially the beatific smile on Seeger/Norton). Also one that was so obvious it would have been easy to mess up: playing "Song for Woody" in the hospital. I'm very partial to this scene, and the one in A Complete Unknown was almost as good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlKk9Fg2Eio

Emma Stone's so good, she's even good in films she's not in--sorry, Elle Fanning.

I had no idea Pete Seeger was played by Edward Norton. Thought he was great--I hope he wins awards

He won the Boston Society of Film Critics award for supporting actor and is nominated for Golden Globe and Critics' Choice awards. Oscar-wise, I think he's one of three guys fighting for two spots.

un-uttered nickname for someone at my workplace was "dollar store chalamet."

(xpost) He has Seeger so right--that otherworldly faith in the purity of what he's doing that almost makes him seem like a child at moments (he has a great line about jubilation)--it's uncanny. The film does seem to make a point of rescuing Seeger from the role of villian at the '65 festival, tranferring that over to Alan Lomax.

Seeger later claimed that while yes, he did tell the soundman that if he had an ax he'd cut the power cables, it was only because he felt the overall sound coming from the PA was too loud and distorted, and he wanted to hear Dylan's words--he didn't mind him going electric.

Didn't he always say that his (Seeger's) father was there, and he was worried about how the volume would affect him? I'll have to revisit Festival, which I loved the one time I saw it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_(1967_film)

Xp Joan Baez

Clemenza, I think we have to chalk up her “hard edginess” to music biopic conventions. If Suze/Sylvia is gonna be the innocent one, than Joan has to be tough one. I don’t think anyone has talked about their relationship with Bob Dylan more than Joan Baez and she seems to look at it pretty clear headed, but with fondness. I really liked in the end credits they mention Diamonds and Rust.

Loved the hell out of this read:

https://merrillmarkoe.substack.com/p/a-complete-unknown-the-ballad-of

that was driving me crazy also!

I was nodding along with Ms. Markoe's points. But tbf this was a Bob Dylan biopic, not a Seeger biopic, so Toshi's near-nonexistence in the film was a reflection of her extremely minimal importance to the story they were trying to tell. When you only have about 120 minutes to dramatize several critical years of Dylan's life you have to drastically economize and condense. Pete's direct importance to Dylan's career made it necessary to emphasize his role. Not hers.

Considering Toshi's ubiquity in Pete's life they couldn't eliminate her from those scenes. She was there. But in a Dylan biopic she was never going to be elevated to a major character, like Baez. The result onscreen was just as Markoe described, but I don't see how enlarging Toshi's role would have told Dylan's story more compellingly. From the storyteller's perspective, she really was just incidental and peripheral.

i can never watch movies like this. they are so silly. did they have an old guy in a suit smoking a cigar saying "mark my words, that young man will have no future in the music business!".

Quite the opposite here: faces of people listening to Dylan and trying to process what they immediately recognize as the future (Seeger especially).

#ReleaseTheToshiCut

I think you should leave that comment on Markoe's blog, Aimless. She might have a rethink and delete the post.

I had a bigger problem with the exposition, the LOOK DO YOU SEE episodes, and how the script regards Baez and "Sylvie Russo." They come across, glancingly, as strong women, but I couldn't figure out Mangold's attitude: how I was supposed to feel about them. Nuisances? Victims? Notches on a bedpost? Mangold does include the Newport scene where Bobby suddenly looks stricken at the thought of her departure, but is it ego or love? It comes out of nowhere.

xp Her POV is worthwhile. Hollywood has no scruples about distorting reality to make a better story, but when a real person is distorted its fine to give them a noogie for it.

whenever i see elijah wald's name i think: oh god he had to listen to so much dave van ronk music when he was doing that book with dave van ronk. i couldn't do it. his voice is as sweaty as he was.

in honor of this movie i bought some records from eric von schmidt's widow, helen. and listened to some of them. and i'm keeping one of her dylan records. she knew bob back then. i got some Monk records from her. her brother was Monk's tour manager and he was ALSO one of the early people behind the Newport Folk Festival. i spent a swell afternoon talking to him in his garage once. Bob Jones. his wife gave me some samosas. he had awesome records.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/arts/music/bob-jones-dead.html

As time goes on it seems like the only music biopic that got it right was 24-Hour Party People, partially because it would stop to explain who everybody was, and also that the Howard Devoto cameo is the peak of Cinema.

@ Aimless - surely given Toshi Seeger's central role with the Newport Folk Festival, an event which figures very prominently in the film, she might have been depicted with more of a speaking role. I mean there are like three separate scenes of Newport dudes discussing amongst themselves what's to be done about this Dylan fellow; TS's sole contribution to this debate is to, silently, stop PS from chopping up the cables with a hatchet. And what about the TV broadcast scene that Markoe zooms in on? Plenty of room to have her role sketched in.

I mean, if Alan Lomax can have another character explaining to Bob "here's who he is and why he's important to the folk scene," why not this other person who appears onscreen in wayyy more of the film? The movie (which I enjoyed) has room for outright trivia like the origin story for the organ part in Like a Rolling Stone (which I also enjoyed), so it's not like it's being finely sharpened down to one singular thesis statement on Dylan and his world. The sheer quantity of onscreen Toshi suggest to me that there were probably multiple lines of dialogue, maybe whole scenes with her and Bob, that got shot and then trimmed in the edit.

If Toshi Seeger' character had further lines and a more prominent part that were left on the cutting room floor then you'll have to take that up with the director and editor. Your point seems to be her character could have been handled better. OK. No argument from me there. That was Markoe's point, too. It's a valid point, as I already said.

My basic point was that these films always distort, condense and simplify everything that actually happened. The best way not to be disappointed by this fact is to not watch a biopic where you already know more about the subject before you go into the theater than the film could possibly tell you in two hours that were "based on a true story". As a genre they generally suck and I'd be just as happy if they failed to make money, so they'd go away.

I know it's ILX, but it's...bizarre to me that we're having a, uh, discussion about whether Toshi Seeger deserves more space in a Bob Dylan biopic by James Mangold and Jay Cocks.

if the film had been more inventive, it would've cast Eriko Hatsune as (a) Dylan.

I'm Still Not There

@ Aimless - no disagreement that biopics distort/compress/etc.! goes with the territory! but it's still worth noting when the choices about what to distort and compress are, at best, very weird. often that might be how we discern things about the intent of the filmmakers.

in this case, what's been highlighted is a very weird choice to show this important woman of color onscreen A LOT, all throughout the movie, but keep her almost entirely silent. i think it's fair to suggest that this maybe reflects some patterns or unconscious biases etc. like you'd kinda expect someone involved in making this to say "hey I noticed this character is onscreen all throughout our movie but we never show her saying or doing anything." apparently that didn't happen.

Related to all this (the film in general, not Toshi Seeger): you can watch Murray Lernar's Festival for nothing on the Internet Archive.

https://archive.org/details/festival-1967

I saw it once on TCM a few years ago and loved it.

As time goes on it seems like the only music biopic that got it right was 24-Hour Party People, partially because it would stop to explain who everybody was, and also that the Howard Devoto cameo is the peak of Cinema.

While planning a Zoomcast around A Complete Unknown, a friend just found this:

https://archive.org/details/renaldo-clara-1978_202208

I had no idea...I've been waiting forever to see that (and holding off on the murky bootleg VHS I have). The print looks good.

Also: https://archive.org/details/eat-the-document

pvmic: i really genuinely loved this

i’m not terribly bunged up about the specifics being left out or changed or elided - i agree Toshi could have/should have had a proper speaking role & deserved one but at least she ~exists~ in the movie universe unlike Sara, yknow his actual wife lol
(YES i know he didnt want her in the movie anyway shut up let me just say stuff )

the spine of the movie is the power of his songwriting & music & the effect it has on the people around him. it changes them. it’s like once Frodo has the One-Ring, and every time anyone sees the Ring they transform. All these people suddenly want what he has, or want him to be something more, or even at a minimum just want to feel again the way X song made them feel … and Bob is the travelling magician, beguiling folks with a new trick but he’s not going to stay put performing that one trick over again - he’s already thought up 10 new better ones that he knows they’d enjoy just as much if they’d only stop asking for the old ones.

like, the movie is in many ways less about Bob & more about what everyone around him brought TO him because of the music

anyway the opening scene w Woody made me cry & i thought Timmy’s Zimmy was really good & thoughtful & funny (and kinda hott tbh)

five marlboros out of five
no notes

I'm adding a new "anyway shut up let me just say stuff" shortcut on my keyboard for whenever I post here.

lol yr welcome

Good review

I like your take, veg. David Sims said something similar on Letterboxd:

"less about bob dylan than about the experience of dylan moving through your world, watching him grow as an artist, and constantly struggle to understand who or what is making him so special."

One of Baez's lines is key, the morning after the '65 show (paraphrase): "You got what you wanted--you got rid of us."

xxpost clemenza thx for the Festival link! i’d never seen the whole thing. a nice quirky diversion for my NYE

Glad you liked it. Was surprised to find out a friend doesn't--his main complaint is that the performances are truncated. Love Peter, Paul & Mary doing "If I Had a Hammer."

well, it was a lot more haphazard than i expected, one performance was shot from backstage & all you could see was closeups of the tops of the performers heads!

also mr veg was more distracted by the amount of hair in the gate lol

Toshi did have more lines than the Japanese-American pilot in Top Gun: Maverick who is in the background of at least 6 scenes and doesn’t get a single word in

I think this film really shafted Tom Wilson, whose impact on Dylan and American popular music was enormous.

Producers tend not to be part of artists' narrative. Mark Ronson got one mention in the Amy Winehouse biopic

I honestly don't think that Tom Wilson had much of an impact on Dylan. By all accounts he was a fun guy but i don't hear a lot of value added by his production. Dylan could have kept working with him if he wanted to and he didn't

If anyone got shafted in the movie I would say it was Alan Lomax being cast as the "bad guy." Again i know its just music biopic conventions but Bob absolutely gushes about him interviews.

Wilson is obviously a monumental figure on Highway 61, the first VU album, and Freak Out! alone, and he did lots else besides. One big contribution he made to Highway 61 was keeping Dylan loose in the studio--the two of them clearly had a great rapport when you hear all the outakes. I'd love for someone to make a good documentary on him (maybe that's already been done, not sure). But I don't think this is the film for that.

Yeah, I haven't gotten a sense of Wilson as a "producer," more like an overseer or engineer. I'd love info to the contrary.

I quite enjoyed this for the most part. In the end it’s still a conventional bio-pic with the weaknesses of the genre, but it did a good job of finding a nice narrative core to focus on. Maybe not quite as good as Baz Luhrman’s Elvis. The acting, costumes and set design were top notch. The pacing and structure worked well for the most part, though I think having the famous electric performance at Newport as the climax, though inevitable, was a bit of a weakness. It’s just hard to feel that it mattered that much.

It’s just hard to feel that it mattered that much.

It's an 'origin myth', like baby Hercules in his crib strangling the serpents. Or like the X-Men.

I think this is the first time in almost forever I checked how a film was doing at the box office...Well, it has landed on a Highly Dubious Top 100 already:

https://screenrant.com/a-complete-unknown-top-100-highest-grossing-movie-factual-book-domestic-box-office-milestone/

"This means that it has taken the movie less than a week to land on the chart of the Top 100 highest-grossing movies based on a factual book or article at the domestic box office. With its total as of Monday, it has landed at No. 98 on the chart, surpassing the domestic grosses of Ridley Scott's All the Money in the World ($25.1 million) and the Mark Wahlberg-led inspirational dog movie Arthur the King ($25 million)."

Less than a week to surpass a Mark Wahlberg-led inspirational dog movie? Dylan must be doing cartwheels.

It's an 'origin myth', like baby Hercules in his crib strangling the serpents. Or like the X-Men.

I know enough of the Dylan mythos to know that it looms large in the usual narrative of his creative evolution, but I feel like the film failed to convey the importance in a way that would get the audience invested in what happened at that concert. I think the film-makers realized that on some level, which is why they overlaid that folkies vs rockers narrative arc with the Silvie relationship arc, having both reach a kind of turning point at the same time and place, but I don't think that really solved the structural problem.

Good review that (I think) gets at the core of the film:

https://www.vulture.com/article/review-a-complete-unknown-doesnt-try-to-solve-bob-dylan.html

"Is A Complete Unknown a good Bob Dylan biopic? I don’t know if, for the people most invested in that matter, such a thing could even be possible. But it’s a good movie about talent, and about how it feels to be around someone who has the kind of genius that feels like they’ve been touched by the divine."

yeah that’s really otm - definitely articulates far better what i was trying to say upthread

We both made the same point, and I think we made it brilliantly!

Maybe not quite as good as Baz Luhrman’s Elvis.

WOOF okay

I don't usually care for these, but I did enjoy Baz Luhrmann's Elvis biopic. That will be the standard to beat here.

― o. nate, Wednesday, July 24, 2024

Or I'm Not There. Or Dylan's own Masked and Anonymous. But although I disliked this movie there is more than one Dylan, hence more than one approach.

Have any of y'all read the Wald book? I bought it today.

i’m def interested in reading it, will be interested in yr thoughts!

I thought the Luhrmann Elvis was trash, but I liked this.

Music was better in the Elvis movie.

Lol

So boring

Who gives gives a f if he “went electric”

should have focused on whether he ever got a buyback at Kettle of Fish

Who gives gives a f if he “went electric”

It's 2025. In 1965, by all accounts, a few people did.

Can we please limit spoilers? Some of us don't yet know if he went electric or not.

But were his friends electric?

“Sheeeeee’s electic”

_Who gives gives a f if he “went electric”_

It's 2025. In 1965, by all accounts, a few people did.

The times will have been a-changin’

I was four at the time, and I didn't care, so you may have a point.

I honestly don't think that Tom Wilson had much of an impact on Dylan.

In the 1969 Rolling Stone Interview, Jann Wenner asked, "There's been some articles on Wilson and he says that he's the one that gave you the rock and roll sound. Is that true?" Dylan: "Did he say that? Well if he said it... (laughs) more power to him. (laughs) He did to a certain extent. That is true. He did. He had a sound in mind".

IMO, seems like Wilson was a guy who was sympathetic to iconoclasts and clearly good at being between them and the suits. But to your point, yeah, Dylan didn't want to work with ANYONE over and over again.

Wilson didn't produce Highway 61 Revisited; according to Greil Marcus he was replaced between the recording and the mixing of "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Johnston, on Albert Grossman's decision.

I haven't gotten a sense of Wilson as a "producer,"

Every story about him in the studio involves reading the newspaper and flirting with his girlfriends in the control room, but he obviously got records made.

Tom Wilson interviewing John Cale and "Lewis" Reed on an MGM-sponsored radio show in 1967:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjcYA_5c4KY

I mean, the guy worked with Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor, so.

Liked it just as much the second time. Great exchange: 1) Baez, after Dylan plays "Blowin' in the Wind" for her (and she joins in): "So that's...what?" "I don't know."

Music was better in the Elvis movie.

I think most of the music here, especially the folk stuff, is great. I'd say two of the Dylan/Baez Newport duets, "It Ain't Me Babe" and "Girl from the North Country," are as good as movie recreations get.

good lines:

"This is the Kinks"

"Sorry, Odetta" (Odetta subsequently shown grooving)

Just for the hell of it, and because I don't think it's ever turned up in a movie (documentary or otherwise), I kind of wish they'd worked this in somehow (well-known quote):

We were driving through Colorado and we had the radio on and eight of the Top Ten songs were Beatles songs. In Colorado! 'I Want To Hold Your Hand,’ all those early ones.

They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid...But I kept it to myself that I really dug them. Everybody else thought they were for the teenyboppers, that they were gonna pass right away. But it was obvious to me that they had staying power. I knew they were pointing the direction where music had to go...in my head, rhe Beatles were it. In Colorado, I started thinking about it but it was so far out I couldn’t deal with it - eight in the Top Ten.

It seemed to me a definite line was being drawn. This was something that never happened before.

The Beatles get mentioned once, I believe. Which is fine. And part of the point he's making is captured earlier with Little Richard, when he's in the car with Seeger.

Something that made me laugh this time--when Dylan makes some dismissive remark about Donovan. Poor guy--the real Dylan makes fun of him (and shows him up) in 1965 in Don't Look Back, then a fictionalized Dylan does the same 60 years later.

I can see why Dylan would be dismissive of Donovan. They had very different musical ideas and Dylan's were much more interesting and compelling. But, hell, Donovan made some good music, too, and comparing the two is an unnecessary exercise. Nobody was ever going to nominate Donovan for a Nobel Literature Prize, but the same holds true for the Beatles and Little Richard for that matter.

I used to think Donovan was bad because of the Dylan put-down but eventually I changed my tune.

Oh, I love Donovan. (And Dylan's jibe in Don't Look Back is more like good-natured joking around: "Donovan? Who's this Donovan?") He's got songs that, in their way, are as out-there as anything from the mid-'60s, why filmmakers keep using him again and again.

^this

Although I seem to recall other people using those quotes to put Donovan down.

in fairness, in Don't Look Back we're still talking about the Catch the Wind Donovan not the Season of the Witch, Hurdy Gurdy Man, etc. Donovan

Atlantis.

A friend of mine told me what to expect going in so I basically enjoyed this.

Said something like "they did a good job on a film that didn't need to be made."

Lucy Sante and a podcaster I am unfamiliar with weigh in: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/arts/music/bob-dylan-a-complete-unknown-dylanologists.html

Ian Grant of the Jokermen podcast! which rules & Ian is great

if you are a Dylan fan (or Lou Reed or Cale or Beach Boys) i highly recommend. deeeeeeeply nerdy

Seeing this tomorrow with Dad.

I see Clemenza has mentioned FESTIVAL a couple times, and I’m just halfway though, but that’s some amazing footage. Streaming on criterion and has some indelible images of Dylan and Baez. Baez seems have an impossible role of telling the public that they are being weird about Dylan but she has to do it in front of his face. Though he agrees, he resents her for it

I liked this!

We took my mother-in-law to see this over the holidays, she loved it. Of course she spent some time in NYC around that time and was flooded with nostalgia.

Surprisingly, our 13 year-old LOVED it. On the way out he goes, "so he was kind of a bad ass, huh?". He's already asked to watch it again. As we were driving home he showed me a Dylan playlist he was whipping up on Spotify but a) he definitively did NOT want my input, and b) afaict he hasn't listened to it since.

Me? I went in with incredibly low expectations and found myself enjoying it. Good performances saved this from being awful, imo.

I've had a few posts clearly indicating how much I like the film. So let me nitpick about an oversight that occurred to me yesterday--one that I think is important.

The Newport show was July 25. I was curious about when the Byrds "Mr. Tambourine Man" cover came out--it was released in April and hit #1 in June, a few weeks before Newport. That seems like important backdrop that deserves at least passing mention.

My 12-year old son also enjoyed it, which was perhaps surprising given that he had no prior interest in Dylan and most of the crowd at the matinee showing we attended were grey-haired boomers. But one side of Dylan that Chalamet nailed was Dylan as the wise-ass but vulnerable kid with the talent to back up the attitude, which I think may have been part of the appeal for him. xp

bob dylan IS brat

my nitpick is the interpolation of the Royal Albert Hall/Manchester Free Trade Hall "Judas!" into the climactic Newport performance. plenty of drama there, no need to fudge that.

yeah i didnt like that either, felt kinda dumb

Hey, Joan Baez's birthday today--same day as Nixon's!

I don't think Nixon liked Joan Baez, he bombed Hanoi when she was visiting it in 1972

lol

I'm thinking they might not have been on the same page...(Assume it was Nixon who tried to put her husband in jail.)

No:

Harris himself was ordered to report for military service in January 1968 and refused. He was indicted almost immediately and charged with felony "disobedience of a lawful order of induction" and tried in federal court in San Francisco in May 1968. He was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, with the judge's admonition that "you may be right but you're going to be punished. After a year of unsuccessfully appealing his conviction, Harris was remanded to "the custody of the Attorney General" in July 1969 and incarcerated in the Federal Prison System where he spent twenty months before being paroled; he spent one month in San Francisco County Jail, seven months in the Federal Prison Camp, Safford, Arizona, and twelve months in the Federal Correctional Institution, La Tuna, Texas. After his release on March 15, 1971, Harris continued organizing against the Vietnam War until peace agreements were signed in March 1973.

So he served most of his sentence under Nixon, but LBJ was president when he was convicted.

Marcus, not surprisingly, devotes a whole "Real Life" to this today that's here, there, and everywhere. Overall, he likes it for sure, doesn't love it.

I remember my father having a grudging respect for Baez's husband because he chose to go to jail rather than flee to Canada

Marcus, not surprisingly, devotes a whole "Real Life" to this today that's here, there, and everywhere. Overall, he likes it for sure, doesn't love it.

Ha, he agrees with me about Wald:

Elijah is a lovely and interesting person, but I’d found his earlier books on Robert Johnson and the Beatles based on pseudo-heretical provocations, so I didn’t read the Dylan book—fearing it was going to be another nobody-booed-at-Newport revisionist number.

It's more complicated, though.

"interesting" ha

There is no particularly compelling reason to see this, but if you do see it, it's fine. No better and no worse than most biopics, though I did bristle at them appropriating the "Judas!" moment.

Three random thoughts:

1) I kinda wish they had made an Ed Norton Pete Seeger movie instead.

2) At times Chalamet looks uncannily like Dylan, but I thought Monica Barbaro looked nothing like Baez. However, she *did* at times look uncannily like a young Emmylou Harris, which I found really confusing/distracting.

3) I kept thinking how funny it would have been if Dylan had given his blessing but insisted on playing himself in totally cliched bookends, flashing back from his deathbed to an interviewer at the start and then dying at the end. "I was so much older then ..." (coughs) "I'm younger than that now." (dies).

Re the Marcus column: he speaks in code half the time when he writes (endlessly; way too much) about Dylan, but I agreed 100% with his opening:

"What I found most compelling in James Mangold's movie about Bob Dylan’s first years in New York...is that (1) everyone wanted to talk about it. Are you going? Have you seen it? Where? Who was in the audience? And of course, What did you think?"

I mean, I know that's not true--the world and the pop audience and this board are filled with people who have less than zero interest in Dylan or the film (I thought Eric H. might pop back just to express his antipathy)--but that's what it feels like among people I know, and I haven't felt that in a while.

Among people who read Greil Marcus, I suppose.

Overlap for sure, but I don't think everybody who's posted about the film on my FB wall reads or cares about what Marcus writes. I just feel like, in a general sense, people I know are seeing the film and talking about it far more than I expected.

Talkin' Bob's Dylan's First Years in New York Movie Blues

At a New Year's Day brunch among some fellow and erstwhile ILXors, I mentioned having seen the film and the general reaction was "Why?"

"the world and the pop audience and this board are filled with people who have less than zero interest in Dylan or the film"--I did acknowledge this...

Oh yeah, I know, I wasn't arguing with you, just making my own observation

i saw this and i didn't hate it. i enjoy the music of bob dylan

What struck me this week was having lunch with an old high-school friend who, 45 years ago, was amused by my pop-music obsession, and his interest never much progressed beyond that in the ensuing decades. (He is a habitual moviegoer.) He was excited as I was to talk about the film--and in fact, thought I was going to dampen that because I probably hated it.

There was one brief moment where I genuinely feared there was going to be a scene with him riding his motorcycle and the film would end with a cut to black just as his motorcycle goes into a skid.

It practically did!

I just feared something even more melodramatic.

clemenza won't read this because he won't or because he killfiled me months ago, but it's true that I've heard chatter in unexpected places. A couple students in my film class last week raved about it -- one guy saw it twice! It's making a profit, so it isn't just appealing to Old Weird America freaks.

Besides the Judas moment, the only other time I sort of rolled my eyes was when he buys the whistle on the street. and yeah, I kept thinking they were going to show the motorcycle crash.

was a bit surprised there was next to no depiction of drug use, particularly amphetamines.

Well, he wasn't much of a boozer, spliff smoker, and pill popper until the end of the film anyway.

Don't confuse indifference to killfiling, something I've never done and never would.

https://www.hearingthings.co/a-deep-dive-into-johnny-cash-offering-bob-dylan-a-bugle-in-a-complete-unknown-2/

Truly, that article attempts to deserve the proud name of Some Internet Content.

Its kinda funny that one guy yelling one word at one show is still such a big deal

I heckled Flipper at a small club show in 1982--no one ever talks about that anymore.

Its kinda funny that one guy yelling one word at one show is still such a big deal

At least it was a real word:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PorhRKs43Bk

I Zoomed with my two friends about A Complete Unknown, no doubt repeating some things I've posted here. We're going to follow up next month with another one on all the other Dylan-related films out there (I posted Internet Archive links to a couple of them somewhere in here).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lObPtV__9Oo

A question I never considered that I've talked about with a few people since I saw this: is there a difference between acting and doing an impression? One random example I thought of while discussing was "Amadeus" (which I recently re-watched), where how Mozart walked, talked, interacted with others is unknown and therefore up for interpretation or direction. Another is "Secret Honor;" Philip Baker Hall doesn't particularly look like Nixon, but he embodies him. A more extreme but useful example is of course "I'm Not There," with six different Dylans, all distinct takes with varying degrees of accuracy.

Philip Seymour Hoffman does a good job acting through his Capote impression, though it's been a while since I saw it. Iirc you could see him making acting choices. In this one, Chalamet gets so much accurate that I wonder what was left to bring to the role. His performance was largely a product of all the choices he *couldn't* make. He had to look a certain way, he had to talk a certain way, he had to dress a certain way, he had to sing a certain way. What was left, and how is that any different than, say, a Vegas Elvis or Michael Jackson impersonator, judged by how close they get to the real thing?

Definitely a difference, I'd say, and all three of us felt Chalamet--to his credit--struck a nice balance. He was close enough to Dylan that you weren't thrown the way I think people are by Anthony Hopkins in Nixon--a performance I really like, but you have to cross a bridge of sorts to even accept him as Nixon--but he's definitely not fixating on every last mannerism and voice inflection, which can be a distraction itself.

Interesting too, in terms of this question, to look at three different screen Warhols: Jared Harris, Crispin Glover, and David Bowie. I think they're all good--just enough like Warhol, but all different.

For sure, good example.

So is it Hopkins' fault for not looking or sounding enough like Nixon, for being so recognizable as Hopkins that it was impossible to see him as Nixon, or for not working hard enough to do a better impression (if there is a distinction to be made)?

I've thought a bit (tangentially related) about Colin Farrell in "The Penguin." You can barely see him beneath all the make-up, and yet it is (imo) demonstrably good acting that makes it past all the latex. I wondered as I watched it how someone else under all that might have done. Could they have done better? Another way to look at it is could another actor have been better than Chalamet, even if they looked/sounded less like Dylan? Or would that have been too distracting, like Hopkins as Nixon?

I thought Norton was really good as Seeger, but maybe that's because Seeger is just less recognizable enough that any choices he made as him were less conspicuous.

Doing an impression is acting, though.

What was left, and how is that any different than, say, a Vegas Elvis or Michael Jackson impersonator, judged by how close they get to the real thing?

NB I haven't seen this movie yet, but I think this is an interesting question — playing a role vs. being an impersonator. I think the big obvious difference is that in the former category, like Chalamet, you're trying to not just look and sound like somebody but to imagine their whole interior life, how they think, why they act or don't act in certain ways or say or don't say certain things. A good enough performance should mean that someone can maintain that character without a script, can train themselves to act or react in a given situation as that person (or as their idea of that person). Whereas an impersonator or a tribute act is only going for superficialities, the look and sound and costumes and dance moves. They are only that character in an extremely limited setting, they don't have to worry about how they eat a sandwich or take a piss.

Well, sure, but look at Tom Hiddleston at Scott Fitzgerald or Adrien Brody as Dali in the terrible Midnight in Paris: goon show sketches that nevertheless caught the essences of these men, or at least how I perceived them.

at = as

So is it Hopkins' fault for not looking or sounding enough like Nixon, for being so recognizable as Hopkins that it was impossible to see him as Nixon, or for not working hard enough to do a better impression (if there is a distinction to be made)?

Not to get off-track, but I think I'm one of the few people who love his performance, and it's hard to explain why. One thing I always say is that he spends the whole film awkwardly trying to find his way into the role, and that accidentally works perfectly since Nixon himself was always awkardly trying to act like a normal person.

goon show sketches that nevertheless caught the essences of these men, or at least how I perceived them.

One of my favorite examples of that is Kevin O'Connor as Hemingway in The Moderns.

I'd like to bring in the Ian Dury biopic, "Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll".

Because Andy Serkis did an "amazing job" of being Ian Dury.

But, for me it never convinced because I still felt he was only 90‰ there.

Do you think that was because of your familiarity with Dury or Serkis's ultimate failure to get there?

I genuinely feared there was going to be a scene with him riding his motorcycle and the film would end with a cut to black just as his motorcycle goes into a skid.

I thought so too because as you all no doubt know that is how Lawrence of Arabia begins; instead they went with Seeger saying "be careful on that thing."

Ooh foreshadowing

A friend of mine said his problem with the movie is that it doesn't show any dues-paying creative struggle. No missteps or rough drafts or difficult getting a gig or a record contract.

It's as if he burst on the scene already a legend or some shit

No missteps or rough drafts or difficult getting a gig or a record contract

that's what Inside Llewyn Davis is for

It's as if he burst on the scene already a legend or some shit

Lol, I can't tell if you're just poking fun at your friends, but it was shockingly fast, wasn't it?

Dylan arrived in New York in 1961. People were writing about him by the end of the year, and his first album came out in March of '62, almost exactly a year after his arrival. His second album was just a little over a year after that, and it features several of his very best and best known songs. That's pretty fast!

For point of comparison, Next Dylan Bruce Springsteen released his first album in 1973 (after hustling around the area for a few years), appeared on the cover of Time and Newsweek in in 1975, but didn't break through with a top 10 hit until 1980!

Apparently Dylan invited Bruce to play the Rolling Thunder review in 1975, but Bruce wasn't allowed to bring the band so declined. Here's a picture purporting to be their first meeting.
https://preview.redd.it/3ug6g3iqvan51.jpg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=dff4215a8ef1eec1558beeb1a1de8d822352e24b

I don't think a-struggles-of-a-musician film would be very interesting. There's already Payday with Rip Torn and probably dozens of others. So while I'm sure that was part of the story, the where-did-this-come from? part makes for a much better movie.

Dues-paying shit is SO standard and so American too -- it's as if you have to show your work to earn your right to artistry.

Standard and American in film, that is.

https://movie-sounds.org/images/char/foghorn-leghorn.webp

Do you think that was because of your familiarity with Dury or Serkis's ultimate failure to get there?

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, January 21, 2025 11:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Effectively, they are the same thing. A lot of people have been full of praise, I did notice Baxter Dury was more even handed however. Probably partly because it's more about him than anyone...

Also, most other biopic subjects have lots of tribute acts and impressionists 'doing' them, so we're more tolerant of performances of Elvis, John&Paul, Elton, Bob.. Whereas Ian Dury has only one face and physique...

Dylan’s dues paying era was back in Minnesota when he was playing the package shows taking Buddy Holly’s place after his death.

Is that what the weezer song is about ?

My name is Judas

i laughed at the switch to 1965 with moody dylan walking down the dark street in shades at night moodily. the way joan and sylvie both found him captivating and frustrating seemed credible in the context of the movie. that merrill markoe blog post was good. monica barbaro, u r vv pretty

Seeing it tonight.

Telling you, man, Barbaro is closer to young Emmylou, threw me off!

https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/screencaps-6.jpg
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff6ba81bf-7259-475d-b4d5-c6f27692b3e5_1280x720.jpeg

idk, i don't require my movie stars to be facsimiles of the people they're playing, i'm just saying i might have to watch top gun: maverick sometime

Re: are impressions the same as acting, NortonSeeger is pretty uncanny.

Like did he have his neck elongated and attached to a swivel or something? The voice and expressions were Pete but you could also tell you were looking at Edward Norton. I can't explain it.

did he have a prosthetic nose?

Yes. Both Norton and Chalamet had prosthetic noses.

I think Norton and (to a lesser extent) Barbaro are the first rooting interests I've had for the Academy Awards in years. Maybe I've forgotten something.

the groundswell for Barbaro caught me by surprise. she hadn't really attracted any awards attention until the SAG nominations. feel like voters just really liked the movie and she's riding its coattails because otherwise I thought she was fine but not a stand-out.

I feel more strongly about Norton, so maybe rooting for her is more tied to my feelings about the film overall.

barbaro exuded this incredible vibe the whole movie, but i gotta say the performance that knocked me out in this movie was... elle fanning????

Her character was kind of…underwritten maybe, but her performance rose above.

this movie hates women but as always i loved the women the most

interestingly, Fanning won the National Board of Review's award for supporting actress but didn't seem to find much traction elsewhere

The actresses were fine in a film that had no use for them as women.

Titanic for boomer retirees:

Kathy Bell is happily and whimsically following the movie marketing slogan “see it before it’s gone.”

Indeed, “see it” she has, enjoying the eight-time Oscar nominated film “A Complete Unknown” 29 times and counting since its release on Dec. 25, 2024, with a majority of her viewings coming at The Wilmette Theatre.

Spoiler: he plugs in

Lol

I saw similar viewers in the audience when I went

Hotness strikes again!

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/30/dont-look-back-after-decades-of-apathy-a-complete-unknown-has-turned-me-into-a-dylan-nut

That is some cringe. You have linked to cringe.

eh it's fine

Loved how beyond Dylan's hotness being revealed to her via some actor, she then just chooses to waffle and say nothing of interest.

It’s cringe, but knowing, funny cringe.

Loved how beyond Dylan's hotness being revealed to her via some actor, she then just chooses to waffle and say nothing of interest.

^^^
"I was foolishly dismissive of Dylan before, now I have nothing to say."

She got me to listen to "Idiot Wind for the first time in years. No small thing.

Pointing out a musician's hotness IS the point, sailor.

She got me to listen to "Idiot Wind for the first time in years. No small thing.

Laura Snapes is the Guardian’s deputy music editor

Mission Accomplished.

I had a somewhat similar reaction the first time I saw Don't Look Back. I was already a moderate Dylan fan, but seeing that film in college I was like "OH! He was a goddamn star." His charisma, his cool, and sure, his hotness — it made the whole thing make sense to me, how this guy had been The Guy.

is Lex gonna review this?

I hope so!

You know, I haven't done a Dylan deep dive like Snapes has, but the movie made me appreciate him in a way I'm not sure I ever really have. I've also been pretty agnostic about him, since folk music and poetic lyrics have never been my thing. It's easy for me to get bored and tune out. But *watching* the songs being played in that context, I could feel their grip. And I watched Don't Look Back the next day because I wanted to experience the real thing.

that's cool!

i was sorta dylan agnostic until just before the pandemic. i really fell in love with john wesley harding and i was like "i think i need my love for this record to reframe how i feel about the rest of it," which it kind of did! surprising myself (much as it was also in character), i adored the christian period, and wrote a little about it in my pandemic substack https://hologramofthesenses.substack.com/p/the-train-bends-the-track-992

I'm in the same boat as Snapes! I've seen the film twice and gone pretty deep into the catalogue. This film definitely lit something inside me.

All good. I've gotten into someone's music through seeing a doc or a film about them. Just feel if you are gonna write about that experience it should tell a bit more.

ah i love this so much, great stories

^^^
Dylan is fun! Everyone should have a Bob phase.

Also, everybody must get stoned.

it does help

My sister saw this and liked it but there is absolutely no chance of her going through a Dylan phase.

I wonder if Dylan ever went through a Dylan phase.

I went through a thing where I would watch basically every music biopic or documentary, regardless of how I felt about the artist. I also read basically every musician memoir I could get my hands on.

Me, I already had my Thoughts on Bob* figured out before this most recent onslaught of Dylanisme, so I was immune this time. Able to see him from what I think is the appropriate distance (appreciative but not unoriginal or starstruck). Hot or not.

* = tell me all your Thoughts on Bob

Wait no what if Bob was one of us

Unoriginal? Uncritical.

the movie made me appreciate him in a way I'm not sure I ever really have. I've also been pretty agnostic about him, since folk music and poetic lyrics have never been my thing. It's easy for me to get bored and tune out. But *watching* the songs being played in that context, I could feel their grip

This was definitely my wife's words after seeing this with me. I dug out "Highway 61 revis" and she greatly enjoyed it. I could sell the idea of watching "Dont Look Back" (nearly added the apostrophe there) by saying it's the real people in the virtual sequel to "A Complete Unknown", but I'm guessing the nov might wear off.

Timothèe Chalamet is David Essex ‘A Complete Unknown’.

(... according to some people)

finally watched this and performances were good to great but as a movie it kinda blows.

looking forward to Jack Black as Jerry Garcia in Cap'n Tripps

Mom wanted to see this before it left the theatres, which I guess thanks to the Oscar shutout is the coming week (down to one cineplex in Houston!).

Some shocks:

-Movie Dylan <Doesn't Really Do Drugs!>

-Seriously WTF

-No mention of The Byrds? Or Phil Ochs?

-Alot of this film's "1965" was actually "1964"

-Again, NO DRUGS?

Rewatched Ladybird with the kid and I had totally forgotten Chalamet was in that. My hatred of his character may explain my Chalamet resistance.

He's meant to be a snot in Ladybird wtf. He engenders no sympathy.

https://i.imgur.com/WzxhMCO.gif

He’s like if Wally Brando wasn’t funny. That’s Timothy Chalamet.

Chala-may-NOT

He inspires more irrational hate than other actors his age and in his generation. I think he's learned to make the most with that body and voice.

he sounded like an upstate NY teenager in Dune II where everybody else (except Zendaya also who sounded like a teenager) was a thespian or at least had a commanding voice. it was so jarring.

so I'm not so sure about his voice

Dune needs thespians?

i love lil Timmy C … have done since Little Women. I think he’s knocked unfairly for a naturalism that is a feature and not a bug imo

otm

I like him too, I thought he should win the Oscar for Call Me By Your Name over Gary Oldman, but his natural voice is too timid and mumbly for a blockbuster movie like Dune, or even a period film like Little Women (which featured a lot of other bad voices and accents, foremost being Florence Pugh's. She is also featured in Dune II as a would-be empress, pronouncing figure as "figger").

I haven't seen him in A Complete Unknown yet, he's probably great.

I'm just getting too old and jaded

He was the best Laurie in the history of LW -- and I mean going back to the Katherine Hepburn version. He was perfect.

AMEN

Generally love him, also thought he wasn't quite right for Dune 2 (specifically - he didn't work as a doom-fated messiah for me. No issue with him in Dune 1.)

He’s in the LW version that has Laura Dern?

Goddamn it, that’s the next movie on our list. This man will give me no rest.

it’s my favorite version!

Thought this was OK, but after reading Positively 4th Street, what I want is a Bob & Joan & Richard & Mimi hang-out/vibes movie.

Never knew about this till today. Not nearly as famous as the guy who brought out the electric guitar at Newport that year, but wow. As I listened, it felt like Ochs and Eric Andersen were trying to have it both ways--covering the Beatles, but clowning around just enough so they could say "we don't take the song seriously"--but Ochs makes his intentions clear after they finish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv8vJ3f3AoM

(This was also at Newport '65, which may not be clear.)

awesome