Says Eric Wald, quoted in "For Bob Dylan’s biographer, 'A Complete Unknown' is a dream come true — even if it’s mostly fiction/Elijah Wald’s 'Dylan Goes Electric'inspired the new Timothée Chalamet-led Dylan biopic" (Forward).
Wald starts ticking off movie scenes that never happened in real life — Dylan arriving at Newport on a motorcycle, Van Ronk telling Dylan that Woody Guthrie is in the hospital... Joan Baez... being part of the Greenwich Village folk scene (no, Cambridge, she hated New York)....
“The example that keeps coming back to me, though,” Wald continues, “is the morning after the whole craziness goes down at Newport — with Dylan riding off on his motorcycle past the fairgrounds where Pete Seeger is helping put away the folding chairs. Dylan did not have his motorcycle at Newport and I don’t think Pete Seeger was out that morning putting away folding chairs.”...
That example says a lot about cinematic art. It's good to show specific, concrete things that carry a lot of meaning and evoke strong or delicate feelings. Wald says the movie is "poetically accurate." Yes, Bob with the motorcycle and Pete with the folding chairs replaces what in the book is extensive examination of Pete's devotion to communalism and Bob's individualism. A movie could just have Bob and Pete talking about these concepts and how they apply to events in their lives. That could work in live theater or even in a movie (as in my favorite movie, "My Dinner With Andre"), but movies are expected to be highly visual. If they're not, what was all the money for?
Dylan tweeted his approval of the movie, but he hadn't seen it yet. Wald says: "My sense is that he likes movies and he has never had any hesitation about fictionalizing his life." That sounds right.
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18 comments:
Althouse, “A movie could just have Bob and Pete talking about these concepts and how they apply to events in their lives.” As the screenwriter of the sure Oscar winner, “Frankenstein, Part II,” Ann is correct. One maxim in the biz is, “Show, don’t tell.” Bob and Pete yammering on doesn’t make it. Trust me, I know.
If Wald got paid - and he most certainly did - why is he trashing the movie and whining about minor errors that are necessary to make a movie?
Althouse’s teeny-bopper crush is awesome. I got the 85 year old church widows, prof! In the flesh!
“They say that the film is based on my book. But the film has virtually nothing in it that’s from my book.”
I had to read further to see that it was the author of a Bob Dylan book referring to the new movie. When screenwriters change key parts of a book for the screen, usually it is for the worse.
Sometimes it’s as bad as hack writers wanting to tell their version of the story, or feel the elements have to fit a particular narrative that the source material does not adhere to.
But sometimes it’s as simple as you have to tell a story differently depending upon the medium. A book flows differently from a movie or a play. A movie is different from a TV show or a miniseries. And a writer needs to think about the best medium to present their story.
Whether the motorcycle/folding chairs episode took place or not, it neatly encapsulates why Dylan is infinitely preferable to Seeger.
"Dylan tweeted his approval of the movie, but he hadn't seen it yet."
Bob Dylan @bobdylan
There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!). Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me. The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric – a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve seen the movie read the book. 1:49 PM · Dec 4, 2024
Certainly Dylan left the impression he hadn't seen the movie when he commented on it (or purposely commented on it before he had seen it).
I've recounted here before how Bob Dylan once looked over my shoulder and asked to borrow a newspaper to read a local review of his prior night's concert privately in his dressing room.
It was over 30 years ago on the Oh Mercy tour, but it always left the impression on me that Dylan was surprisingly curious about what other people think about him. Makes me think he's seen the movie by now, but maybe hasn't said so to avoid the requests for comment.
"Good books make bad movies. Bad books make good movies." Also, graphic novels (comics) often make good movies. There's only so much that can be said, shown, and understood in ~2 hours of moving pictures. So, every story gets converted into a de facto comic book.
If films follow every letter of a complex book, it'll often stretch out into ultra-long stuff like a TV miniseries (e.g., Roots), the 10-hour Lord of the Rings, etc.
I thought of Michelangelo while reading this post so I looked it up in this here blog and this popped up. In the form of a question Should this movie (art) challenge us? Or am I getting off the plot of the post? I do that sometimes.
Timothée Chalamet has the same tousle-headed punk appeal of Luigi Mangione or Dzhokar Tsarnaev.
Discuss, giving arguments pro and contra -- or simply ask GPT Grok.
“A movie could just have Bob and Pete talking about these concepts and how they apply to events in their lives.”
Make it a musical or the seats will be empty.
The specific example Althouse analyzes well. A lesser screenwriter would have relied on exposition to say what that striking visual juxtaposition communicates in mere seconds. No one wants to sit in a cinema and listen to Pete drone on about communism. And perhaps intuitively knowing how biopics are made Dylan cleverly suggested seeing the movie first "then read the book." That is, understand the times and the character differentiation by experiencing the shorthand of the highly visual motion picture and follow up by reading at your own pace how the details unfolded.
To be fair none of this is new to anyone who read Dylan's autobiography but a different perspective is appreciated if you have interest in the subject. Bob is to the core a quite interesting figure.
We saw A Complete Unknown last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. The audience gave a hearty round of applause at the end. Anyone who loves Dylan's music will love it. The movie is like spending 2 hours with beautiful, talented people who have spent months learning his how to play Bob's (and Joan Baez's) songs - who have completely internalized the songs & what they mean - and are showing you what that feels like. Watching the movie feels like what listening to his records used to feel like a few decades ago, back when we did such things. Ignore the details, enjoy the experience. Highly recommended!
The best result is conveying the emotional impact of the book when condensing characters and scenes to fit the motion picture format.
Women interested in woman crap is one of the hazards of getting involved with women.
"But of course with the spread of literacy you now tend to get girls who have thought and feeling too, in some measure, and some of them will probably belong to the Royal Philological Society or something, or in any case have their own 'thing,' which must be respected, and catered to, and nattered about, just as if you gave a shit about all this blague." - Barthelme
And transmits the meta-idea that Dylan is moving forward (as is rock and roll after that momentous "Pop Festival") and Seeger is being left behind: once more Bob chooses individualism over collectivism.
Liberal license entertained with magical attribution is often a first-order forcing of catastropic anthropogenic climate change.
The egghead women want to hear a really good poem before screwing.
Dylan had key characteristics that speak to his lasting appeal. He is very talented (while making his art look "easy"), he is very well read and curious and understood his place in the arc of pop culture/pop music (self-aware) in a way very few people are able to be and he is very self-assured in his individualism. "Going electric" illustrates this well. His iconoclastic tendencies lead him to vigorously object to being "claimed" by any group, which is one reason he separates himself from the Folkies by picking up that Fender strat. They wanted to claim him, tried to claim him, because he was very talented and wrote songs that sounded like Woody could have penned them. But they were rigid in the ideology and rules for "folk." Dylan understood that rock and roll was going to have the more lasting impact, because it captured the youngsters' attention and it had already subsumed American blues, bebop and even country elements, and the dominant voice in rock was by far the electric guitar. Picking one up, in London no less, clearly showed he would be part of the larger more sustained movement in popular music, one with no rules, one that welcomed the Animals, the Stones, the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, the Kinks, Jimmy Hendrix and all the rest.
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