Cate Blanchett to play Bob Dylan in an upcoming film.

Todd Haynes

The last casting shift was that Ledger replaced Colin Farrell.

christopher nolan to remake "night of the hunter" with vince vaughan

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2006/09/06/blanchett-dylan.jpg

A poster has leaked out...

http://www.justpressplay.net/images/movies/news/197.jpg

That's not a great poster,I have to say.

David Cross plays Allen Ginsberg. Awesome.

Blanchett and Cross

Cross is great in that scene, not really feeling Blanchett.
(I misread jaymc's post and thought Crosby was playing Ginsberg)

Dylan Movie to Open Like a Rolling Premiere
By JOHN ANDERSON

Imagine you’re a film distributor, handling an experimental movie by one of the country’s most iconoclastic directors. The subject is an enigmatic occasional recluse who is being portrayed by four actors, an actress and a 13-year-old boy. Where do you open that film?

If you’re very lucky, you get to book it at Film Forum, perhaps the most exclusive art-house cinema in Manhattan.

Now what do you do with a movie that stars Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger; whose subject is Bob Dylan; and whose director is the Oscar-nominated Todd Haynes?

Same answer. Same film. Which is what’s making the planned Nov. 21 release of “I’m Not There,” Mr. Haynes’s rumination on Mr. Dylan’s lives and times, something of a curiosity.

In addition to Film Forum, the film’s distributor, the Weinstein Company, will be opening the movie in just three other theaters, one more in New York and two in Los Angeles, giving it the kind of debut that might be afforded a Mexican documentary. Even “Velvet Goldmine” — the previous Weinstein-Haynes collaboration, about the British glam-rock scene of the 1970s, which starred an unknown Jonathan Rhys Meyers — began in 85 theaters in 1998.

But Harvey Weinstein, the company’s co-chairman, said the slow rollout was the best way to nurture an unconventional, nonlinear movie like “I’m Not There,” in which the above-mentioned stars play Mr. Dylan at particular stages of his life. Shot in styles that correspond to each Dylan epoch, “I’m Not There” sometimes looks like “A Hard Day’s Night,” elsewhere like “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” with Mr. Dylan’s life being imbued with mythic American qualities.

“With a movie like this you have to build it,” said Mr. Weinstein, who founded the company with his brother, Bob, two years ago after an acrimonious split from the Walt Disney Company saw them relinquish control of Miramax. “I don’t think you can go out on 500 screens. The reason for Film Forum is you go where the best word of mouth is on the movie. I like the movie; I think it’s adventurous. The audience is going to have to work — work in a good way.”

Mr. Weinstein said that a similar approach had worked for two of Miramax’s biggest successes. “Good Will Hunting” opened in New York and Los Angeles and eventually brought in nearly $140 million at the domestic box office, while “Chicago” began the same way and grossed $170 million. Those films had larger openings, however: “Good Will Hunting” (with the rising stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) in 7 theaters, “Chicago” in 77.

“I’m not saying this movie’s going to come anywhere near those,” Mr. Weinstein said, “but I have a tendency to start small and go big. If we threw this movie out wide, I don’t know what it would do. I think we have to start somewhere.”

The “somewhere” means Film Forum, “a real cathedral of cinema” according to Mr. Haynes’s longtime producer, Christine Vachon, which has presented the premieres of work by Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, Hal Hartley, Claude Chabrol, Spike Lee and Lars von Trier, among many others. But rarely does it get star-laden films like “I’m Not There.” And for it to agree to have another theater share a New York premiere is a rare move.

“We did it with ‘Saraband,’ ” said Karen Cooper, Film Forum’s director, referring to Mr. Bergman’s last American release. “Lincoln Plaza opened it the same day, and I don’t think either of us were happy. I thought the same crowd that lined up to see ‘Scenes From a Marriage’ would want to see ‘Scenes From a Divorce.’ I was wrong.”

Ms. Cooper said that she was offered shared openings all the time and regularly turned them down. But she said that she and Mike Maggiore, Film Forum’s programmer and publicist, decided the Haynes film was so remarkable that they would not mind sharing it with Lincoln Plaza. In Los Angeles, “I’m Not There” will open at the Westside Pavilion and ArcLight Cinemas.

Conventional movie-business wisdom says that if a film fails to catch fire at its opening theater, it will not move much farther. But Mr. Weinstein said there was “not a chance” he would not take this film into more theaters and cities, regardless of its fate on the coasts. “I’m going to play every major city in the United States with this movie,” he said. “I’ll play 100 cities, at least.”

He said he also planned to position Ms. Blanchett, who plays Mr. Dylan during his “Blonde on Blonde” phase, for an Oscar. (Mr. Bale corresponds to “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” Mr. Ledger to “John Wesley Harding.”)

“I may be jumping the gun,” Mr. Weinstein said, “but if Cate Blanchett doesn’t get nominated, I’ll shoot myself.”

Films considered Oscar-worthy are released in various ways. Last year, Pedro Almodóvar’s “Volver” and its star, Penélope Cruz, were seen as possible contenders, but Sony Pictures Classics opened the film in only six theaters. (It ultimately grossed close to $13 million.) Another nominee-to-be, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” opened on 17 screens. It has made approximately $37 million. Both those films, however, were in Spanish, and foreign-language films are a hard sell to the American moviegoer.

“I’m Not There,” which will play at film festivals in Venice, Toronto and New York, is Mr. Haynes’s first movie since “Far From Heaven,” his critically acclaimed 2002 homage to the melodramas of Douglas Sirk. The film, which has Mr. Dylan’s blessing, is also, according to Ms. Vachon, his most expensive film, although she declined to divulge the amount. (“Far From Heaven” cost $13.5 million, according to boxofficemojo.com.)

Though Mr. Haynes, who was unavailable for this article, has never had a major commercial success except for “Far From Heaven,” he has never suffered a lack of critical acclaim. His “Poison,” for example, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, and “Far From Heaven” received four Academy Award nominations, including one for its star, Julianne Moore. But Mr. Weinstein said the decision to pick up “I’m Not There” was not purely about making money but about an obligation to have important movies distributed.

“That’s the story of my life,” he said. “That’s exactly what I believe in. ‘I’m Not There’ and some of the tougher stuff — it’s not going to be ‘The Nanny Diaries,’ you know. But I’ve been very fortunate that what I’ve believed in has worked, and even when it doesn’t work, we make money in other areas to cover that. It is my responsibility and, more importantly, it’s my passion.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Heath Ledger to play Cate Blanchett in upcoming biopic.

the teaser for i'm not there

Having just read Jonathan Rosenbaum's Movies Wars, I can understand his frustration about certain media outlets' film coverage where it's less about the film and more about the mood of Harvey Weinstein.

AMPED

^

^

this debuts at the venice film festival this week.

i'll see it at tiff. curious.

Again I say... PSYCHED

I sorta can't believe this has taken so long!

i have some friends in this (shot in mtl). so curious

I PLAY JESUS FREAK DYLAN GUYS FYI

"a Finnegans Wake-like meditation on Sixties film culture.... (which)says, among other things, that the presence of politics in works of art, like the presence of the artist's personality, is at once unavoidable and virtually inexpressible. The audacity, beauty, and complexity of Haynes's ironic celebration-and-critique are, quite literally, unlike anything you've ever seen before."

http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/so07/imnotthere.htm

Cate wins Best Actree @ Venice

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aJz_JH9KFElQ

Sixties cinema was always already influencing the cultural-political reality from which Dylan sprang.

yeah well done i read hoberman too.

this is complete dangerous nazi shit btw, as is the godard quote about aesthetics and ethics.

alarmist much?

article binds together numerous bits of contemporary (though very old) rubbish.

I’m Not There joins Inland Empire, Zodiac, Syndromes and a Century, and I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone as part of a recent and broadly convergent body of work that revises, questions, and sometimes even tosses out narrative fictional structure, in light of our increasingly collective transnational digital culture.

throwing out narrative fictional structure was last daring in about 1922. 'transnational' is or hopefully was a big buzz-word in film academia, but wtf is meaningfully 'transnational' about 'zodiac', and what has it to do with collective, digital blah-blah?

I think he meant Disturbia.

y u hate fun

xpost

I don't even see where that quote claims "tossing out narrative fictional structure" is "daring".

guys, bob dylan is boring.

i did stand in line with cate blanchett at a patisserie in north sydney once. shes cute and not bob dylan like at all.

i think the implication is plain.

i suppose i am so BORED with

-godard
-debord
-deleuze
-warhol
-mcluhan

as '60s godheads. and when they're served to me by the writer of '48 hrs', something weird is afoot.

i hope the film is less leaden than 'velvet goldmine' and less derivative than 'far from heaven' and less suburbophobic than 'safe'.

xpost

'derivative'

Thanks for telling us how bored you are; we are edified by your boredom.

-_- ~~~ zzzzzzzzzzzz

I got my tix before remembering this was Haynes, but hopefully the actors will subdue him.

'psycho 98' > 'far from heaven'

pretty damn good, a must-see unless you HATED Velvet Goldmine (or Dylan); like that, its ambition exceeds his grasp, and hooray. Cate and the young kid are most mesmerizing. Billy the Kid (Gere) and Heath-Charlotte plot least rewarding. Looks, sounds great -- see it on the biggest screen possible (assuming that's even an option in yr town).

Malkmus sings for Blanchett!

i am pretty much 100% with you there morbs.

dylan hanger-on who gets dressed down by blanchett and hick type on the side of the road gere talks to are both local actors and friends of mine.

I really want to see this, but it's not showing anywhere near me.

This is why torrents are good?

NYT Magazine piece running tomorrow

pretty damn good, a must-see unless you HATED Velvet Goldmine (or Dylan); like that, its ambition exceeds his grasp, and hooray.

that sounds very much what i expected and makes me happy to hear. todd haynes + dylan is like a movie genetically engineered just for me.

I didn't know that it had been largely shot in and around Montreal til that Times Mag piece.

Also, Harvey Weinstein thinks Gere segment doesn't work. Even a porcine grubby mogul is right once in awhile...

Soundtrack has usual hip rockers (Calexico, Yo La T, Sonic Youth) a la VG, only this time they're doing actual Dylan songs instead of glam pastiches.

it's not showing anywhere near me.

It doesn't even open in NYC til Nov 21.

she tells Charlie Rose she heard he drives a yellow Hummer with a "World's Greatest Grandda" bumper sticker

btw, Julianne Moore kills w/ Joan Baez caricature

I'm guessing it's not gonna help that he picked someone annoying to play someone annoying

yes, David Cross is good too

Collection of related links thus far, including Ann Powers chasing down every biog reference that appears in the film that she can:

http://daily.greencine.com/archives/004883.html

What the hell happened to Cate Blanchett?

I had NO idea this was going to open in so many theaters. Suburbanites better brush up on those semiotics.

Tony Scott, gibbering with excitement

Not surprisingly, this hasn't opened here yet; I'll have to watch No Country For Old Men tonight.

Also: can Morbz confirm whether Christian Bale (coiffed like John Fogerty) is as hot as he looks in that picture?

purty hot

no one had this for T'giving dessert?

It opened today -- will go tomorrow.

My local daily's tepid review.

i liked this as much as i expected to, which was a lot. i didn't like it more than i expected to, which is mildly disappointing. but only mildly. (and i actually liked the richard gere sequence fine; the heath ledger segments were the ones i thought droned on a bit, finely decorated tho they were.) i can't really imagine the effect on dylan novices (much less dylan-haters, but i guess they're not going to see it anyway).

looked great, all of it. sounded great too of course.

i'm something of a dylan novice (ie i like the handful of songs i've heard but have never listened to an entire album of his in one sitting)* and i thought this was really awesome. like morbius said, ambition exceeds grasp slightly but i'm willing to award it points for its sheer audacity. i agree also about the heath ledger bits** dragging on somewhat but cate blanchett was stunning and the movie as a whole just looks really beautiful. haynes really has a knack for making semiotics seem sexy.

*correcting this ASAP btw
**nb not "ledger's bits" which i thought were well-worth the $10.50 hem hem

haha I loathed Velvet Goldmine (and hate the soundtrack to this movie) yet I think I'll see it anyway, just 'cause

i love velvet goldmine and i think the best parts of it are more fun than i'm not there. but this one's put together more sturdily. (feels less made-up-in-the-editing-room.)

Seeing this tonight.

now i would like to see a movie about bob dylan's use of helvetica please

this looks like six kinds of awful movie all rolled up into one. i completely don't understand why anyone would finance, write, film or desire to see this.

this looks like six kinds of awful movie all rolled up into one.

otm. but in a good way.

i liked this as much as i expected to, which was a lot. i didn't like it more than i expected to, which is mildly disappointing. but only mildly

OTM. I liked the Ledger-Gainsborough sequences a lot, actually; his surly Heath Ledgerness and "Dylan's" create a nice tension in those domestic scenes.

Was that Wilco performing "Goin' to Acapulco" in the Gere sequence?

i think it's jim jones from mmj

All the supporting performances are wonderful, especially Bruce Greenwood as "Mr Jones" and Julianne Moore.

I thought the Black Panthercentric 'video' for 'Ballad of a Thin Man' was a bit much, but sort of in a good way.

I watched Dont Look Back for the first time in eons this weekend, and forgot how little music is in it; a must for Dylan novices along w/ the PBS Scorsese doc.

Eonline: $757,385 for Friday-Sunday at 130 theaters. per-screen average of $5,826.

dylan hanger-on who gets dressed down by blanchett and hick type on the side of the road gere talks to are both local actors and friends of mine.

-- s1ocki

Yeah, I know one of the guys who was in the band that played The Band, although I haven't been in touch for a while.

i thought this was pretty great

kim gordon lol!

What's hilarious is that her lines would have worked as a spoken-word bit on A Thousand Leaves.

"Do your early stuff!" (Beyond looking like him Cross not very Ginsberglike tho)

the heath ledger segments were the ones i thought droned on a bit

I thought the Christian Bale parts were the weakest, he played Dylan like a half mute zombie hunchback

xpost - that scene was serious lols

^that's not a bad description of Protest Singer Dylan!

this was a lot of fun. altho the overall portrait it paints is one of a very unhappy person.

He's a person?

xp

or who is unhappy in public. the Ledger role is the only one with much 'interiority'.

Every scene suggested that "Bob Dylan" is a nullity.

unhappy maybe in a sort of myth of sisyphus way. i have a hard time thinking of dylan as happy or unhappy. i get the sense he's managed to enjoy himself more than your average tortured genius.

sure - which begs the question why someone would want to BE a nullity

x-post

"Those are yuppie words, happiness and unhappiness. It's not happiness or unhappiness, it's blessed or unblessed."--Bob Dylan, 1991, Rolling Stone

but HE (Robt Zimmerman) is not a nullity

I get the feeling that he just follows his enthusiasms and synthesizes them into his own art

just because he cultivates mystery and doesn't put his private life out there doesn't mean he's soulless

the negative reviews of "I'm Not There" that I've read (Edelstein and Lane) have focused on the fact that you don't get to know "the real Bob Dylan" but the main thing I take away from the movie is that Haynes is saying that the art is the life -- all the info that Dylan wants you to know about him or about "America" is in the work

that paragraph I wrote sounds pretty hack, sorry

No, it makes sense. Whatever insights he's learned he probably got from staring out a tour bus window and reading the Torah in 1978.

I'm still waiting for any overheard moviegoer remarks by people who were expecting something closer to Walk the Line.

There's a couple lines in Dont Look Back (and the hour of outtakes Pennebaker compiled for DVD, 65 Revisited) where Dylan sez stuff like 'I'm not me' or calls his act a "gimmick."

(he'd already been outed by Newsweek? as a middle-class Jewish boy from Minnesota)

there were two young women, early 20s i guess, walking out of the theater behind me. one of them said something like, "i don't know, maybe if you were alive at the time it would make sense? like, people were laughing at all these things that i didn't even know were jokes. the only time i laughed was when that british guy was on tv and someone said 'he's an asshole.'"

were there a lot of laughs at the theaters you guys were in...? Me and my friends were pretty much laughing through the whole film, there were so many visual jokes and asides, but the rest of the audience was fairly subdued.

I saw it at Lincoln Plaza and everyone standing around yakking right afterward seemed to like it

xp

My audience was "reverent." Nobody else recognized "Blind Willie McTell" though.

yeah i saw it at lincoln plaza fri. nite, and most of the crowd seemed in on the jokes.

yeah, "reverent" aptly describes the aging hippie crowd we were in as well. I think the Hard Day's Night ref got the biggest laughs. that and maybe the appearance of Ginsberg on his moped.

its a great explosion of biopic conventions - Haynes is very much at home with the whole "its just an ARTIFICE - geddit?" theme. Felt this was definitely of a piece with Velvet Goldmine and Superstar. I like Haynes best when he's dealing with music and theatricality and the illusory nature of media.

Haven't seen this yet, but over the weekend I did read the Luc Sante thing about Chronicles which had several interesting things to say about Dylan and his identities.

thx tipsy! those young women sound like the ones I heard nonplussed at Chelsea Girls. (I bet they didn't laugh at Julianne's Baez caricature)

Blanchett delivering Bob's trademark mysogyny lines = laffs

Baez caricature was great, very precise.

and it wasn't mean-spirited either. It captured that still-bitter-all-those-years sanctimony that Baez exuded in No Direction Home and her Live Aid apperance.

love & sex do fuck ppl up most, except on ILX it's records and what bar to go to.

I'm surprised you didn't say "Hillary."

It was a huge waste of a Saturday night for me. And the creep who just had to sit next to me couldn't keep to his own space and belched garlic for 2.5 hours. I don't like people enough to go to movies in theaters anymore. As a fan of neither Dylan (yes yes heretical I know) nor Todd Haynes, the movie came over as an incoherent pastiche. Though I did laugh at Moore's take on Baez.

It probably didn't help that we watched Help! the night before.

its far from incoherent wtf

but basically if you hate Dylan and don't know anything about him I don't really understand why you would want to see this movie...? since its basic conceit is to be structured by reference points?

Didn't say I hate Dylan, just never been a fan. Went b/c Mr. Jaq wanted to see it, and I was home for a few days.

(I bet they didn't laugh at Julianne's Baez caricature)

yeah i imagine they were bewildered when the laughing started at just the sight of her.

I wonder if Haynes thought about asking Kristofferson to play Billy ... again?

# Cate Blanchett to play Bob Dylan in an upcoming film. [Started by Tuomas (Tuomas), last updated 1 minute ago] 58 new answers
# Oh! I Always Get Those Two Mixed Up! [Started by New Mark H (New MarkH), last updated 1 minute ago] 3 new answers

(saw this last night, liked it)

but basically if you hate Dylan and don't know anything about him I don't really understand why you would want to see this movie...?

Haven't seen this yet, but it's one of my most anticipated films of this year because a) I love Todd Haynes, and b) even though I can't stand his music, I'm interested in the idea of Dylan as an American icon.

the Billy sequences made me wonder why they were shot in the woods and not in a Peckinpah-styled Southwest. Esp with the musical number being "Goin to Acalpulco".

x-post

(I expect not to understand certain things, though, too.)

woods more evocative of Dylan's exile in upstate NY?

his woodstock years w/ the band

yeah that's the woodstock sequence. although haynes' conflation of it with billy the kid is fair, because both of them had to do with dylan's immersion in all that old-america tall-tales-and-outlaws nature-hippie stuff. (i kind of grew up in a vestige of that culture, so that sequence especially seemed right on to me.)

I was a little confused about where the Heath Ledger Dylan fits in the rough timeline -- is that after he gets back from swinging London but before the bike crash?

now that I think about it more I guess that character spans a couple of the eras and is just supposed to be "dylan the husband" (i.e. kind of a dick).

in conventional chronology that's post-bike crash "Desire"-era Dylan

btw also loved Bale's Born-Again Xtian Jewfro in this

in conventional chronology that's post-bike crash "Desire"-era Dylan

ok that makes sense .... but it's also heath who first meets charlotte g. in the village in roughly Freewheeling / Another Side era

yes, and the character Heath plays in his first film ("Jack Rollins") is the name of Bale's protest-singer/born-again character... Haynes stretched that character's timeline so he could do the relationship-bookended-by-the-Vietnam-War thing.

the heath character was the most fantastic in a way; i wonder if it was a lift from the dylan joke in the onion 20th century book, imagining an elvis-in-movies career for him.

Imagining a Dylan biopic being done around '64/65, like George Hamilton as Hank Williams, might be even funnier.

did anyone else think Kim Gordon's one scene = Nico...?

Man, I gotta see this.

I don't recall Kim saying enough to put me in mind of anyone.

yeah I don't recall either, maybe she was just supposed to be another NY folkie, Maria Muldauer or something

I don't remember any of her lines either ... I just thought she was supposed to be some minor folk-scene character (xpost)

also, Coco Rivington = who, Edie Sedgwick ?

guy who gets involved w/ her and makes Blanchett jealous = ? anyone in particular?

not that it matters

yeah I made the Coco = Edie assumption. the coterie of travelling companions on the UK tour seemed rather amorphous to me, I wasn't sure if any of them were supposed to represent particular people (apart from Grossman and Ginsberg, obvy).... I kept waiting for a Donovan joke but it never came :(

i know, i was sure a donovan character would turn up. (could have been played by tilda swinton.)

more random thoughts: the Black Panthers riff was weird and came out of nowhere, but Huey Newton DID really hold meetings lecturing Bobby Seale about Dylan lyrics (as well as Melvin Van Peebles)... also glad to see the gay subtext "Ballad of a Thin Man" visually referenced. Maybe it was the sandwiching together of these two sequences that threw me at first, perhaps a nod to the multiplicity of interpretations people were developing around Bob's songs at the time...

one of the gay weeklies in NY asked Haynes why he didn't include allusions / rumors of young Dylan hooking up with men, he said he didn't have time for everything and it wasn't significant enough.

huh never heard of that

Go to Rolling Stone.com -- Haynes and Greil Marcus chair a press conference, at which the gay stuff is alluded to.

interesting - I can only assume hanging out with Ginsberg probably spurred a few stories

ok more crowd chatter, courtesy of a friend who saw it at film forum over the weekend. he says there were two 30-something women sitting behind him, with what he swore were jersey accents. in the minutes leading up to the lights dimming:

Lady 1: So what is this movie about?
Lady 2: I don't know. I think Bob Dylan.
Lady 1: Who?
Lady 2: You know, Bob Dylan.
Lady 1: Who's that?
Lady 2: He's a singer.
Lady 1: What's he sing?
Lady 2: Oh, you know. Like, country.
Lady 1: Country?
Lady 2: Or folk. No, you know what? FOLK ROCK. He was a folk rocker.
Lady 1: What song did he sing?
Lady 2: Oh, you know. That one. "Blowin in the Wind."
Lady 1: I don't know that.
Lady 2: Sure you do. It's a famous song!
Lady 1: How's it go?
Lady 2: You know, like ... "How many roads does a man walk down..."
Lady 1: Oh! I know that song!

Lord A'mighty.

David Edelstein "tried tried tried" to like it, but find it wanting:

http://nymag.com/daily/movies/2007/11/im_not_there_whats_missing_fro.html

what interests me isn’t so much the archetypes that Dylan embraces and that Haynes creates using six different actors. It’s the transition from one archetype to the next. Haynes cuts crisply among the different Dylans, but only in the most superficial way imaginable does he dramatize those instants in which one persona can no longer contain him. And each time those transitions are a mark of artistic restlessness rather than an emotional escape hatch. He means the songs, in their glory, to make those transitions more evident and the movie as a whole more fluid. I found it a bit of a fudge, and the film a Cinema Studies experiment that doesn’t transcend its parts. Having recently rewatched the Pennebaker documentary Don’t Look Back, I don’t even think Cate Blanchett’s esteemed turn as the gnomic, drug-addled star suggests the vulnerable human being we glimpse at every turn. She’s less Dylan than Chuck Barris.

i think the cate/jude character seems plenty vulnerable. and i'm not sure "artistic restlessness rather than an emotional escape hatch" is an either/or situation. but also, i didn't expect from the movie much insight into dylan-the-man, whatever that might mean. (i didn't even expect that from chronicles.) in a way, that line of reasoning gets some basic things about dylan wrong; it's continuing to ask "but who is he REALLY," a question that dylan's whole career (and the movie too) is sort of an argument against.

Yeah, I think he's either misreading Haynes' intent or is just disapproving of it.

also, DLB is '65 Dylan, Cate/Jude is '66, which is a BIG diff, so I don't know why he's using one to critique the other.

why on earth is Edelstein looking for "vulnerable human being(s)"?

yeah Edelstein's problem seems to be with the basic premise of the picture, the essential unknowability/slipperiness of this media-persona

saying the Jude section has little to do w/ Don't Look Back is splitting hairs, I think. isn't some of that segment shot-for-shot Pennebaker?

Edelstein's review at least made more sense to me than Anthony Lane's, where he made the somewhat startling admission that he thought the Brit magazine editor was otm o_0

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2007/11/26/071126crci_cinema_lane

there is no mistaking a hard, Brechtian sense of dramatis personae being used like tools

he says this like its a bad thing

like OH NOES, META

Armond's review was written by Addison DeWitt.

(i rote review too.)

are there any movies that anthony lane likes?

isn't some of the Jude section segment shot-for-shot Pennebaker?

I'm not sure, but that's not in DNB cuz the real snippy press conference Jude press conference is almost verbatim from '66. Maybe it's in Eat the Document? Which is '66 footage, shot by Pennebaker but appropriated by Dylan, correct? (I last saw it in Scorsese/PBS)

I thought Eat the Document was Dylan taking Pennebaker's DLB footage plus some stuff of his own and editing it all together

anyway yeah yr correct about the press conference

no, ETD is '66

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0233629/

so he was booed for going electric two tours in a row?

1965 is DLB=acoustic
1967 is ETD=electric

but... he was playing electric stuff by '65 right? I mean the film opens with Subterranean Homesick Blues... he just didn't have the electric band with him on that UK tour...?

I thought everything after Newport he was doing two sets, one acoustic and one electric, but I don't really know

anyway I guess I got the "shot for shot" thing from NYT. I've never seen Eat the Document.

Devotees of Dylan lore will find their heads swimming with footnotes, as they track Mr. Haynes’s allusions not only to Mr. Dylan’s own music but also to the extensive secondary literature it has inspired, from books by David Hajdu and Greil Marcus to films, including D. A. Pennebaker’s 1967 documentary, “Don’t Look Back,” some of which Mr. Haynes remakes shot for shot.

I could've sworn there's footage of concert-goers complaining that he's a sellout for going electric in DLB, but maybe I am mixing it up with ETD.

DLB=spring of 65
Newport=summer of 65

??So maybe he wasn't electric yet during DLB??? Could I be any more boring? Anyway, I need to see this movie this weekend. Very excited

CORRECTION: Newport electric Maggies Farm extravaganza holy shit Pete Seeger's gonna cut the electric cord=summer of 65

NOW i am boring

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMxJFsyR85o

i thought the newport folk festival was the first, early step of the tour which eventually wound its way to Manchester (where the "Judas" incident happened - now it's the Live 66 discs, one set acoustic, one electric)

i also thought that Eat the Document was the same footage as Don't Look Back, but cut differently

i'm also not a dylanologist by any stretch

also many xposts

'65 UK was his last acoustic tour, I think. "Subterranean" had just been released as a single, the album wasn't out yet.

"I kind of liked being blasted out of my skin"

i also thought that Eat the Document was the same footage as Don't Look Back

No. Pennebaker recently cut unused footage (incl concert stuff this time) for DLB into 65 Revisited -- my take -- for the latest DVD edition.

I thought it was weird that the movie spun the Judas thing as a sort of chaotic defeat with the curtain crashing down, when in reality ("reality") Dylan yelled to the band PLAY FUCKING LOUD and they kept rolling

yeah I was waiting for the "play fucking loud" response too

There's a dropped-in 'flashback' of Protest Dylan doing a song in front of some crates in Mississippi 1963, with black men standing in the b.g., in DLB that is replicated w/ C Bale in I'm Not There. (I don't remember if it's the same song, the one about Medgar Evers)

I think it is the same song, Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll

i have yet to meet anyone in this life who thinks dylan should not have gone electric. who are these people?

ha in the dissensus dylan blog wars of a few years ago, i remember reynolds and matt woebot defending the grouchy earnest mancunians who thought dylan was ruining and prostituting everything. "seemed like nice kids" or something.

xp

no, that's not the song in THAT scene in DLB. "Hattie Carroll" is the song Pennebaker shoots longest in '65 tour in DLB, but cuts off the last verse. Which then appears by itself in 65 Revisited. Is this confusing enough?

you can see his Newport '63-65 perfs in yet another doc:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/film_review.asp?ID=3250

ha I guess I should stop pretending like I remember what's in Don't Look Back off the top of my head

OK, the Protest Dylan clip in DLB is of him doing "Only a Pawn in Their Game."

Did anyone (besides my friend) recognize the Richard Lester ref that is not Beatles-related? The old society dames in wheelchairs: Petulia.

Tried to go see this on Sunday afternoon but it was sold out. Hopefully I'll get another chance before it leaves theaters.

Cate and the young kid are most mesmerizing. Billy the Kid (Gere) and Heath-Charlotte plot least rewarding.

yeah, totally. also, i hate to say it, but i agree w/Anthony Lane. Once Richard Gere showed up, the whole movie fell apart for me. i also didn't get why Bale played Jesus Dylan??? I thought the conceit of the movie was changed persona=new actor. anyway, really confused by the Bale/Ledger characters too. this was fun, but only for bits & moments, and wasn't really satisfying.

Newport scene was great, The Beatles were HYSTERICAL (that whole sequence was great) Julianne Moore was awesome. David Cross was kinda lame though. He looked just like Ginsberg, though. Spooky.

“I’m Not There” is bravely conceived, but some of the reconstructions of the folk movement could have come straight out of “A Mighty Wind,”

Anthony Lane OTM^^

I watched "Eat the Document" a couple night ago, and can confirm it takes place during the 1966 European tour (part acoustic, part electric, as on Bootleg Series vol 4). The movie is bewildering. Dylan is disoriented throughout, except when on stage when he + the Hawks are in top form. The footage is very shaky; if this is Pennebaker, a lot of editing would have had to happen before release. There's a great scene with Johnny Cash looking more druggy than Dylan. Obv. the taxi ride with Lennon is a big deal, although like "Cocksucker Blues" way more boring than the hype would suggest.

guy who gets involved w/ her and makes Blanchett jealous = ? anyone in particular?

loosely based on Bob Neuwirth, maybe? Not that he & Dylan passed around Edie Sedgwick, but rather as his companion during the '65 tour.

The third weekend, the Weinsteins almost tripled the number of theaters -- and the total gross went down by a third: $920 per screen.

So no, this is not gonna cross over (surprise).

it doesn't make any sense backloading quality releases into the last two-three months of the year. is it the public's fault for giving a fuck about awards, or the academy members who can only remember films they seen/had hyped to them from six weeks before voting?

There's plenty of circular short-attention-span credit to go around.

INT would do about as "well" at the b.o. in any season, though.

i planned to see this tonite but it quit showing last night. :(

the idea that this was ever gonna be a hit is pretty absurd. even among my art-film friends some of them aren't going because they don't like dylan, and a lot of my dylan-fan friends aren't going because they think todd haynes is up to something sneaky and they don't like the idea of it. the natural constituency of the movie is pretty small.

(but as a member of that small constituency, i'm glad haynes got to make his movie.)

'65 UK was his last acoustic tour, I think. "Subterranean" had just been released as a single, the album wasn't out yet.

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

yes. tho maybe the album was out? i think they play a copy of it in dont look back but maybe it's a dubplate? the tour was in april-may. also although he played an electric guitar at newport in 1965, the 1966 UK tour was a lot... more electric.

xpost

this has had great reviews and i would have expected a pretty large urban-area hit. as with mid-60s dylan, maybe it'll do better in the uk lol.

lot of my dylan-fan friends aren't going because they think todd haynes is up to something sneaky and they don't like the idea of it

my thoughts exactly!

I've talked to some people who found it quite boring. Someone told a story of going with his girlfriend - she fell asleep, so he woke her up and said, "If you're not watching it, can we leave?"

'65 UK was his last acoustic tour, I think. "Subterranean" had just been released as a single, the album wasn't out yet.

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, November 29, 2007 9:02 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Link

yes. tho maybe the album was out? i think they play a copy of it in dont look back but maybe it's a dubplate? the tour was in april-may.

I thought DLB was released in '67 (I think I saw that copyright date on my DVD), so Pennebaker would have plenty of time to add the "Subterranean" video.

they shot the subterranean video in '65 in london, same time as the rest of the doc. that song was definitely out there, question is, was the album? i think it was.

9 Bob Dylan Subterranean Homesick Blues Single Apr 1965
1 Bob Dylan Bringing It All Back Home Album May 1965

So, yeah.

surprisingly, i liked this movie more than i thought, the Blanchett-fellini style part and charlot ginsbourg godard meets sirk parts are the genius,master picks of this great movie.
my friend was bored,though.

one of the great directing elements here, is the fact that dylan is, in lots of parts, alone on one side of the frame,while on the other side- bunch of people in line looking at him,amazed.he is always individual,always performong,even if he is not intending to.
the individual vs. society and the 60's cinema influences works great together.
and the focus mostly on the 60's years is crucial, thinking about that period as the crisis bridge in america between conservative society suddenly embracing individualism .
the crisis that goes on till present i guess.

girls dressed as boys can be a cool aesthetic, less of a cliche than the other way around.

this film looks like a load of record collectin' mojo readin' bollox to me tho.

http://i16.tinypic.com/6x7fm38.jpg

btw, it appears that this is the last night that this is playing on a screen larger than the Film Forum's in NYC -- and it needs to be seen big -- ao I'm headed for Loews 19th St for a second viewing.

Y'know I didn't want to overpraise this movie just because so many boneheaded people find it incredibly demanding (and it's just not that demanding unless your only yardstick is "Air Bud", I mean people who can handle "Last Year At Marienbad" are not going to break a sweat here) . . . but I do need to say in this movie's defense that, even though it's a mess, it stays with you for a long time afterwards. I felt it really lingered in the mind; it's not *just* bricolage, there's a real emotional impact that it transmits, and Blanchett's performance is the reason.

is is a mess, but in a good way.
like fellini and godard were "mess" in the 60's.
the best parts of the films are tributes to those directors style.
in this case the good thing is also the bad : imitation.a great one though ,but still .

Drew is right, there is, perhaps ironically, some real emotion communicated. I even found the last shot strangely moving. there's a nice balancing act between the bricolage and semiotic play and the real honest to goodness attempts at meaning. (as if the process of signification could accomplish anything else!)

Irony and emotion don't always cancel each other out.

I forgot how funny this was, probably more LOLs than anything this year except The Simpsons Movie (like the Brian Jones "cover band" line.)

The only part that seems most like a "mess" (which I wouldn't often use to describe Fellini, and probably never Godard -- even his bad films seem rigorous) is still Gere/Billy, but I even liked that more this time.

Also think there was a 2001 HAL 9000-lip-reading ref at the start.

the Brian Jones cover band line was LOL

what i meant is that they were/are "mess" only to the untamed eyes

Just watched it. Ya know, the Gere parts really reminded me of a Burton film (like Big Fish, maybe) and maybe they are both going back to something else. The movie star Dylan (was that Heath?) was the only personification of Dylan that seemed inconsistent with my beliefs about Dylan (which isn't to say it was less 'authentic,' just that is was more shocking to me). Loved Blanchett, loved Bale.

Jesus it's really long though. I had to watch it in two sittings (with few minute breaks throughout), else I probably wouldn't be able to make it through the whole thing. Oh, and I hated the Charlotte Ginsburg character (is that her real accent?).

(My complaint about the length isn't too say it's too much - just to say it's very, very demanding. At least, was to me.)

really zoomed by for me. Southland Tales, THAT was long.

C.G. is French, yes (not to mention the daughter of a movie star and pop star).

The movie star Dylan (was that Heath?) was the only personification of Dylan that seemed inconsistent with my beliefs about Dylan

You mean his being 'a bad husband'? It seems to be the scholarly consensus.

That's such a strange thing, Mordechai. The Ledger section matches what we know about Dylan's breadbaking years in Woodstock.

I didn't mean the facts so much as the feeling of it. He didn't "seem" like any Dylan I was familiar with.

I would put that down to it being the "private"/assholish Dylan

film o' the year

Err, yeah. No question (much as I loved Into The Wild). I had no idea it was going to be that good. I had no idea a film *could* be that good, technically, at least. But it wasn't just the technique. Wow, I am still reeling.

Also, are there any Fellini or Godard films that are actually as good as Haynes's homage here? I think I might have to reinvestigate. I am excited!

the masculin-feminin ref a++

Would anyone help to seed the torrent of an Eat The Document DVD from here?

the 2+ gig one?

fuck it, i'm in.

Yeah, there were about 3 seeds and I've got about 10% of it, but it's down to one at the moment.

my connection is slow right now but i'm on it.

Ta, I didn't think it had ever been released on DVD, so maybe this is actually no better quality than the vcd version I'm also dling, but it's worth a go.

it's never had an official release nah.

Humph. It all downloaded but I'm damned if I can make it work.

uh yeah it's been looking all wrong, numbers not adding up and stuff. fuck it. a lot of it was used in the scorsese thing right?

I think Scorsese used a lot of the ETD-era Pennebaker footage, but I'm not sure how much of it was actually from ETD.

Oh well, it's on youtube in pieces, but the bootleg DVD looks great

Finally saw this. Pretty good, but could have used a dash of Brother Bru-Bru's Hot Sauce.

two-disc edition in stores today.

DVD waiting for me at liberry. Anyone seen the extras?

No, but that sounds like a very good idea indeed.

The prosthetics in the deleted Cate/Dylan nude scene deserve an award of their own.

o_0

I could've sworn Ryan Schreiber was in the Newport Folk Festival scene.

man what a dope movie

i need some kind of annotated companion cause i know im missing like 90% of the inside baseball

I wd bet I missed 60% of it, and it don't much matter

(u might wanna google Ann Powers + INT if nec, max)

I don't really know much about Dylan, most of the songs in this I was hearing for the first time, but I had read the autobiography at least and it was interesting to see how things I knew about him got translated into these other characters.

This movie is amazing by the way, I loved how it deconstructs the Rock biopic, which is always about this layering of times, which is always in love with eras and costumes and a mangled nostalgia and sort of made that analogous to the Dylan who constructs the present from a past that telescopes further and further into the past, It's just obsessed with that overlap montage and flashback that makes up the crescendos of these movies and makes a whole movie that surfs along on this. It finds its own poetry of pastiche too, the Christian Bale bits aren't really funny the way they seem to be, they're stranger and reminded me a lot of Superstar. In face out of any director Haynes' remakes camp as something more personal and moving, all that jumbled gibberish that the Moore/Baez character spouts (perfect casting, so perfect) isn't really ridiculous.

Sorry, I just watched it.

In face out of any director Haynes' remakes camp as something more personal and moving, all that jumbled gibberish that the Moore/Baez character spouts (perfect casting, so perfect) isn't really ridiculous.

I'm not sure what this means, but I'd like to know.

The only reason Far From Heaven isn't horrible is because its so serious about camp. It neither turns the campier elements of Sirk into a bawdy spoof or strips it away, instead its always a slipping mask. Its also interesting to me that these both have Julianne Moore, because I think Haynes and Moore definitely bring out the best in each other, she has this strange timbre to her voice and a tendency to be a bit Meryl Streep, but with Haynes she's lacerating, so controlled that quivering tone is laughing/crying.

The bio-doc trappings are all played up, the set-ups, that daft photo of Moore doing Baez, the weirdly portentous "he was a genius" crap, but there's something really harrowing about it, not in spite or because of the set up, but both. Like I think the whole movie collides these fragmented elements in the hope that something will make sense in the cracks and overlaps. Like when Richard Gere finds the guitar case.

Story one: Robert Pattinson - dyed blond - is a new wave punk high school teacher fresh out of university, dealing with the ignorance and illiteracy of his students, one of whom won't stop flirting with him.

Story two: Julia Roberts plays the blond, male leader of a pop group making his first movie after achieving stardom. Annoyed by its poor quality, he wants to write his own movie but he's pestered by resentful bandmates and hangers-on who won't stop saying how smart and sexy he is.

Story three: A young African boy with blond hair saves money to buy an electric bass and move to America. Imagines performing with musical legends ranging from Hendrix to Marsalis. "And what music will you play, little one?" "I will play everything."

Story four: Successful jazz bassist Owen Wilson and philanthropist Gwyenth Paltrow tour the world with his band, fuck.

Story five: Bill Nighy wanders the English countryside, playing his lute.

i would watch this

i can't actually work out who it is

lucky

oh wait, duh

Bill Nighy wanders the English countryside, playing his lute.

seriously i would watch this on youtube for hours

the movie ends with nighy stepping around a small blue turtle

'psycho 98' > 'far from heaven'
― That one guy that hit it and quit it

OTM

Haha! It took me almost five minutes to get that!

possible linking device for da croupier's story: intercuts from an epic tantric sex scene in which rutger hauer is having intercourse with an unseen figure who is revealed, over the closing credits, to be himself.

Everybody knows I'm not a folk singer.

I hadn't seen this film until a couple of weeks ago, when I checked the dvd out of the library. I was surprised at how much humor it had. The not-funny parts were ok, too, but just ok.

For the sake of reference: I never was a hardcore fanboy and was too young to ride the Dylan bandwagon during the protest-song first wave. I do like Dylan's music and I've listened to it off and on since about 1970. I met his music via his first Greatest Hits album, in mid high school. I worked my backwards to the earlier stuff, then we both moved on thru the 1970s stuff. I stopped paying much attention after his come-to-Jesus moment.

I think of his lyrics as highly evocative, but not very good poetry, which is something of a conundrum as the two usually go together. IMO, his outstanding quality as an artist is that his songs are fun to sing. His reputation for profundity has never been merited, but he is very entertaining.

I'm more surprised there's been no mention of the 'non-linear' 6 characters.

i.e. All of the characters could exist at the same time. None of them are meant to be 'the real Dylan' of any duration, more that they resemble 'part' of him at any point in time. (The meeting of Gere and the young lad is not an anomaly, not really!)

The Heath Ledger one seemed more true to how Dylan is in real life.

Yep, just watched it, last night.

Any news on those 2DVD extras?

also the heath ledger one played the christian bale one in his biopic

quite.

if only Heath had lived to do the upcoming Bale biopic

Just saw this last night. I thought Haynes should have had Cate Blanchett play Dylan/Jude as a woman, rather than her impersonating a man. It would have fit, no?

rescreened this last night--still loved it but i thot the ending was sort of weak--also going to acapulco scene just doesnt do it for me at all, i guess cuz i cant get out of the "wtf mmj" headspace

second time 'round I was bothered only by MMJ

MMJ?

dont think i ever finished this - found it kinda bloodless

My Morning Jacket

had no idea that was the guy, didn't bother me a bit

great!!!!!!!!

i have yet to meet anyone in this life who thinks dylan should not have gone electric. who are these people?

― gff, Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:13 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

heh i was thinking the same thing during that scene - maybe its just that nobody today would admit to booing him then

not sure that this is a great movie for people who like dylan's music but don't know much about his life (ie. me) - watching it i was like 'i dont really get it but its interesting' but reading this thread is making me feel like i missed out on *everything* since i wasn't howling with delight like many of you apparently were - wish i at least watched DLB first

that said, if this came out when i was 17-18 it wouldve been my favorite movie in the world

also bruce greenwood was my fav dude in this

saw this last night, at last.

I thought it tremendous. The potency, the richness of pastiche.

i watched this again, first time since it came out, inspired by the poll over on ILM.

i dont have anything terribly intelligent to say about it, but i loved it this time. only off note is the sonorous sounds of eddie vedder doing "all along the watchtower" over stock footage of vietnam. cant decide if that's a cliche or a knowing cliche, but doesn't seem to work either way.

this is sorta obvious in retrospect, but thought connecting "finger-pointing" folk dylan to angry christian dylan via the Bale character was insightful.

would love to read an in-depth analysis of this. i really enjoy movies that seem to be "coded" in some way. like, all the different characters have a different category (poet, prophet, fake, etc.) but the Cate Blanchett one isn't included in the line up with the gun shot sounds and, as far as i can tell, isn't really given a category in that way (perhaps "Ghost" if i was hearing things right). need to watch again.

it's basically the same narrative/central conflict as Velvet Goldmine, just without the Christian Bale character

need to see that too!

I think its fantastic but it def has its detractors (primarily people who get upset by how many liberties it takes with the ostensible "facts" but then I think those liberties are precisely the point)

INT or VG? i guess both. watching this with a dylan-skeptic who kept asking about verisimilitude was funny since it made me realize how many things were tweaked and re-named "desolation row" style. probably difficult to get a strong sense of it without a minimal grounding in dylan-lore but they found it quite affecting anyhow.

I was referring to VG there but both films make it really clear that playing with the facts, the mutability of the subject matter, is central to the films' premises.

Forgot Charlotte Gainsbourg was in this.

They actually screened 35mm prints of this at Metrograph and MoMA recently. It was quite a nostalgia trip to see it again - I vividly remember seeing it when it came out, and I still have the ticket stub (now faded but just barely legible) tacked to my old bedroom wall. Back then, I was almost alone in the theater. (I didn't realize until the end that a couple was sitting in the back.) I was blown away, but it was kind of sad to see the film do so poorly as the screening I went to turned out to be the last before the theater booked a different movie. I think it had ran for at best two weeks. This time, it was a packed screening, and it still holds up for me. I think it's one of Todd Haynes's best films and the best film outside of D.A. Pennebaker's films that I've seen on Dylan. It's clearly a movie that understands his work very well and knows how to reflect that dramatically and cinematically rather than spelling it all out. (Even the few minutes of pseudo-documentary interviews are more about the way Dylan was idolized by his '60s fans.)

xps Also, a bit late, but here's Jim Hoberman's write-up back when it came out:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2007/11/13/like-a-complete-unknown-im-not-there-and-the-changing-face-of-bob-dylan-on-film/

rewatched this last night and laughed out loud when cate-as-dylan first thrills then destroys brian jones by recognising him at a party and introducing him as "brian jones from that groovy covers band"

i like haynes even when's being a bit leadenly DO-YOU-SEE but there's maybe less of that in this movie than any of his other movies?

(except for the destructive journalist being called jones, i mean i see why you feel you can't dodge that but YES WE GET IT TODD)

ranking the dylans: cate, marcus carl franklin, whishaw, gere, bale, ledger

cutest allen ginsberg ever: david cross lol

He has a couple of DO YOU SEEs in May-December.