The very existence of biopics is to uncover the truth, to expose the truth, to make things transparent.
In other words, everything Bob Dylan has tried to avoid during his more than 60 years in the cultural spotlight.
This makes James Mangold’s job Completely unknown — about Dylan’s early years before his stunning switch to electronic music at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival — is tricky.
As Timothée Chalamet’s film prepares to hit theaters on Christmas Day, Dylan himself weighs in (“Timmy is a fantastic actor, so I’m sure he’ll be completely believable as he plays me”). . THR We spoke to Mangold, who co-wrote the script with Jay Cox, to get his take on the mysterious musician.
Let’s start with tweets. I guess this is a surprise?
Yes. No one said, “Here comes the Dylan tweet!” Like Bob, it was exciting, funny, heartwarming, charming. Even the way he dabbles in the world of Twitter is hilarious and makes you laugh.
And very to the point — He ended the article with “Read this book after watching the movie.” [Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!, on which the movie is based].
Bob was very “straight to the point.” I love it because I do too. Don’t sugarcoat it.
However, there was something ambiguous and cunning about him that even he addressed in his tweets. Whenever we see Dylan, the question that often comes to our mind is: “Is this really him? What is he?
Film is an interpretation. It can only be one explanation. But even the documentary is only a version of him because he’s fully aware that they’re filming him. So he was actually the actor in those situations, performing for the camera.
This makes your job very difficult. How to make a movie about someone so desperate to be away from other people — How do you deal with opacity when a biography aims to reveal the truth?
It’s a very interesting question, but it’s also a question that’s solved by meeting him. I don’t think he’s opaque. I just feel like we want more than he can offer, so we assign him this opaque or mysterious identity. There was enough of PT Barnum in Bob to say, “I’d be okay with that.” In fact, he shared a lot of things with us. If you think of the songs as part of the film’s text, then Bob was the third screenwriter, or possibly the first screenwriter. We have 26 of his monologues. No one denies that these songs are personal, but we still call him opaque.
This may be because the songs are opaque.
They can, but that’s what makes great art. I think he’s saying, “When the album comes out, this is my gift and that’s the end of it.” He’s not going to make a video of him buying ice cream at CVS. We do not have to understand how they connect to his personality in a traditional, Freudian way. I deeply understand the artist’s hesitance to go down the rabbit hole because the thirst is never-ending.
Let’s talk about the big makeover. His defiance of his mentor, folk artist Pete Seeger, and his triumph at the film festival underscores one of the film’s big questions, a timeless theme: When does an artist perfectly expand his or her identity? When are they just vain?
We think of it as a reinvention, but I don’t think he ever considered that in his career. He came to New York and fell in love with Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Johnny Cash, none of whom were solo folk artists.
I’m not sure if his desire to form a band was, as he told me, about legacy and reinvention, i.e. solitude. How lonely it is to be an artist standing on stage with a guitar, as a folk artist often does. So I think the more successful he is, the more attractive the band will be. It brings camaraderie. It wasn’t transactional, like so many relationships in his life. They were just making music.
You’re saying we underestimate the personal element here.
Yes. I think Newport in 1965 was like a crazy Thanksgiving dinner. At its heart is a family struggle: a prodigal son pushing against his controlling father and the boundaries he can no longer tolerate. An emotional convulsion, not a cultural revolution.
And, even now, I’m not sure Bob knows why.
Really?
He doesn’t know. “I still don’t quite understand,” he said.
What did he think of the way you depicted the cause in the film?
He hasn’t seen the movie yet. Welcome him. All he had to do was make a phone call. but [Dylan’s manager] Jeff Rosen said he doesn’t think he’s ever seen any documentaries about him. That’s a clue too, isn’t it? It became a kind of self-preservation, a protection of his own soul, which I think he had been passionate about for many years.
This story first appeared in the December Independence issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
