Although he may be known as an iconoclast, Bob Dylan has a universal persona — aloof, aloof, borderline misanthropic — that doesn’t typically lend itself to Hollywood treatment. That didn’t stop the new Dylan biopic, though. A complete unknownfrom trying Based on the book Dylan electric vehicle And starring Timothée Chalamet singing his own live song and playing Dylan, the film takes off. Rev review for his acting. But there were some critics wrong idea A lot about the film Imaginary freedom As well as the relatively little context we’re given for the pulse of his life – not enough to either satisfy Dylanites or explain what’s going on for Dylan newcomers.
Why was it such a big deal when Dylan “went electric” – plugged in his guitar and moved away from the folk music he was making when he started out? What does his musical and personal legacy mean and why should listeners care?
Fortunately, I found a longtime Dylanhead who was able to fill in a lot of the blanks for me. Bill DevilleA 40-year veteran of the radio industry, he DJs almost nightly for a Minneapolis public radio station the currentThe city where Dylan made his debut before traveling to New York. Devil walks me through the context I was missing, and waxes rhapsodic about the experience of watching the film as A Dylan Guy. I may become a Dylan fan through sheer osmosis.
Aja Romano: One of the central tensions in the film is this supposed tension between folk and rock. I know that’s part of the long-standing narrative around Bob Dylan, but when you were watching the film, did you feel like it was an authentic narrative?
Bill Deville:I think so. I think his love of music wasn’t necessarily folk music out of the gate. I think it was blues and rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t want to say rock, because to me rock is the journey. Rock ‘n’ roll is the real thing. Fats Domino, Little Richard, Buddy Holly — I think that was the music he really liked. He discovered Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie and stuff like that, and that led him to folk. Also, he didn’t have a band at the time, so it was easy to go out with your acoustic guitar to a coffee house in New York.
So people-oriented was a detour for him.
I get that impression. He had his first gig in the late 50s as Elston Gunn. he was Bobby plays in Vier’s band – He was a pianist. He always talked about Her love for Little Richardtoo. It was his hero, more or less like Woody, I would imagine.
It sounds like it was more than folk culture that led him on his way.
I think there is some truth to this, but you are constrained by this timeline. It’s a nifty time frame, as he moved out of Minneapolis in 1961 and immediately headed to the Big Apple. In the movie, they said he did it alone, but apparently he did it with a friend.
It goes to the tropes that the movie runs with – a small town boy goes to the big city, right? Can you set the stage for us in terms of the actual scene in New York at the time?
Well, it was the coffee house scene. It was Dave Van Ronk and Pete Seeger. And Joan Baez was also around in that scene, and Cisco Houston and some of the old guys and Dylan – in the film, it shows him pushing them dead right out of the gate. And Joan Baez saw something – they saw something special in each other, which was pretty cool to see. It seems that Bob had a few songs in hand that he was already working on at the time. Also he was still doing a lot of covers. The first album came out and it was almost all covers except “Song to Woody”.
The first time I heard Bob Dylan’s song,Song to WoodyIt made me cry. And man, in that movie, when it was performed by Timothy, believe it or not, when he sang the song, it was just, oh my God, it’s so good. It sounds a lot like Bob. He was very trustworthy.
I think people were really surprised by the authenticity of that performance. I don’t think it’s something people would expect from him.
He went the extra mile. In a big rollout red carpet deal, he shows up as a Bob Dylan impersonator
Yes! It was the New York premiere A complete unknownwhere Chalamet cosplayed Dylan’s infamous 2003 fashion at the Sundance premiere Then panned movies Masking and anonymity.
She was wearing bangs and a stocking cap and a scarf and a leather jacket pulled straight from Dylan. It was hysterical.
He apparently had five and a half years to study the role due to epidemics and strikes. I don’t know if he was ever a musician, but he sang authentically and played harmonica and guitar. all songs is performed directly In the movie, which is also pretty incredible.
That’s the draw. Most people aren’t going to go into this film saying, “I want to know all about this Pete Seeger dynamic. I want to know all about the Newport Folk Festival.” Most people are going to come for the music, and to nail them that really shows a level of respect.
Were there moments that threw you off? Too much fan service? I think you have to approach this film with different levels of Dylan knowledge.
I saw it as a bit too much of a fanboy. I fell in love with movies. Some of the younger generation, I don’t think, get it. But a lot of it is based on things that really happened. Like the Newport folk, when Pete – they didn’t really cut too much power, but Pete really thought about doing it. He obviously didn’t. But he considered it.
That moment — when Edward Norton, playing Pete Seeger, stares at an ax during Dylan’s electrifying set at the Newport Folk Festival — had people confused. And especially when you look at the commentary of the time, historians are divided on whether the decision to play electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival was actually a controversial issue. When you look at the early sources, some people said they were grumbling Because the sound was bad And they can’t hear exactly what’s going on. It wasn’t actually playing electric about him.
I think it was a pretty good round [of controversy]. That whole tour in ’65, it felt special — that person yelling, “Judas!” — that Actually happened [Manchester]England. And they put it in the picture, too, even though it happened across the pond, not Newport, Rhode Island.
But I think there was some truth to the idea that people wanted him to be this guy purist. I think that whole thing was a little too precious for Dylan. He just wanted to rock.
Why do you think the film ended on that particular note?
I don’t know, but I think it was important. It could have gone either way. I mean, think about it: Bob could have been this legendary folk musician, pure person, and he could have been twice as popular as Pete Seeger, but he didn’t like it. I don’t think he wanted to be bound by folk stuff. The folk canon is good enough, but Bob had all these songs. He wanted to do it his way. He didn’t want to be manipulated, and his way was to play rock ‘n’ roll, I think.
He was not an old man. He was in his really low 20s when he first started playing with his acoustic guitar. And the British invasion was happening right. I think he saw that rock ‘n’ roll was what was going on, and he wanted to be a part of it. No one wants to be pigeonholed or typecast, and he was more than a folk traditionalist.
I think the people who didn’t want him to do it made him want to do it [play rock music] Even more it inspired him. And he still played some folk songs, so it wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be. Maybe it was then, but I never found it to be that big of a deal. It was, “There are two kinds of music, good and bad.”
The film almost cast Pete Seeger in the mentor-doppelgänger role. As the film opens, Seger is appearing in court on contempt charges His behavior before the House Un-American Activities Committee. We then see Dylan meet Guthrie and Seager at Guthrie’s hospital bed. Although he met both artists soon after arriving in New York, Neither of these descriptions is true.
I guess it’s about setting up Pete Seeger as a kind of rebel in his own way. He was like a king at that time. Was sleeping with Woody Huntington’s diseaseSo he was not well. I think Woody was more of a mentor to him than Pete, although the film doesn’t make it look that way. Apparently he idolized Woody, but in the film, Pete took care of him and he stayed at her house a few different nights.
Pete didn’t really write songs like Bob Dylan – it just wasn’t his thing. He maintained the folklore. But I think that there was a lot of admiration for Seeger and he was a hero to Dylan.
Folk was an essential form of resistance at the time, so it makes sense that, character-wise, Dylan would gravitate towards that.
Yes – and D [1963 March on] Washington with Joan BaezThat was huge. But you see [Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary] No directions home The press that was questioning him as if he was some kind of radical, and he really wasn’t that radical.
The film treated Johnny Cash as a giant Easter egg, with Boyd Holbrook playing him as Dylan’s penpal. What did you do to their relationship?
[Cash] Just inspire him. He liked it. And that kind of truth, because he accepted [Dylan] When she was under his wing The Johnny Cash Show In the late 60s, after making Dylan Nashville skyline Album I think that Johnny Cash had great, great respect for Bob and it was mutual. They wrote letters for years.
I think that relationship contributed to the film’s commentary on genre mixing. Especially to the younger generation coming to see the film – they may not be as familiar with Dylan, but they’re certainly familiar with a lot of Johnny Cash’s rock covers and other genre-mixing, and they’re bringing that context with them to the film.
If I’m coming to this film for the first time, what should I know about Dylan’s legacy and influence?
You should know that he is one of the most important songwriters of all time. i want to hear Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan And Highway 61 revisited And Bringing everything back home. All three of those albums are the most focused on cinema.
I couldn’t believe how amazed I was when he sat in the care center, in front of Woody and Pete, and he “sang to Woody.” And you realize the importance and significance of meeting her hero and how important it was that she found him and was able to play a song for him.
I really didn’t expect it. I expected big moments of electrifying stuff at the end of the film, but this was a touchingly sweet moment. I was so enthralled after watching that I loved the whole experience of watching the film.
Did it strike you as creepy?
It was probably ugly. But I think it took everything he had to do to do it. And he did it.
