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Here’s why the new Dylan biopic may be just what Bob needs
Bob Dylan is unknowable. But “A Complete Unknown” may be just the thing to ensure that his legacy endures.
COMMENTARY
Bob Dylan tweeted, apropos of nothing, a few months back: “I ran into one of the Buffalo Sabres in the elevator at the Prague hotel … He invited me to the game but I was performing that night.”
At 83, the enigmatic weirdo that is Robert Zimmerman keeps on truckin’.
Jokerman. Manipulator of crowds. Dream twister.
Hold this thought.
For close to a year, Bob Dylan fans online have agonized and analyzed over every drop of news that’s leaked about the upcoming biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” releasing on Christmas Day.
There were comparisons to “Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story.” Dylan Twitter was on fire with a smattering of takes: This will be awful. It’s not cool to hate on the movie. Why even make this movie? This movie will mean everything.
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But see, that’s the Catch-22 of the musical biopic: The subject’s most devoted fans will be the most critical. We don’t mean to sound like gate-keepers — we’re just too emotionally invested. (Beatles fans are already nervous about the ’27 biopics.)
Biopics, in general, are hard to do well. They can easily veer cheesy. That’s the nature of the beast. They rely almost entirely on facial likeness, accents, costumes, hair, mimicry, imitation, tropes. Musical biopics even moreso.
Even those done well — Jamie Foxx’s Oscar win for “Ray” — may not be for subject-diehards. They’re not built that way.
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To me, to many, Dylan is the phantom of the opera in the perfect image of a priest. Masked and anonymous. The perpetual school kid throwing the middle finger, the conman with his wigs and bag of tricks. The liar giggling into his fist.
Zimmerman has created the Dylan myth so beautifully, his devotees — for better or worse — might be hesitant to watch shadows on the cave wall in an Oscar-buzzy Hollywood blockbuster.
But it turns out the shadows have been partially cast by the Jokerman himself.
Cambridge native Elijah Wald — author of “Dylan Goes Electric,” on which “A Complete Unknown” is based — told me “it was Dylan’s people who optioned it” in 2016.
“People keep acting as if Dylan is speaking from outside of this project — Dylan was involved with this project before Timothée Chalamet or [director] James Mangold,” Wald said in our recent phone interview.
“I think it’s a really good movie,” he said. “They did not dumb down the music. It’s not historically accurate, but it’s poetically accurate.”
I don’t need total accuracy. Accuracy is not really Zimmerman’s thing. (See: early press conferences, the outlandish lies slyly woven throughout Netflix’s “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese,” or most anything he’s ever said or done publicly.)
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Wald’s insights piqued my interest. I’m still unsure if I’ll see the movie, and it doesn’t really matter. “Unknown” doesn’t care about me. Zimmerman’s already got me. He wants to release a bootleg made solely of 234 outtakes from “Shot of Love”? Take my money. I’m on the bus.
Biopics, though far from gospel, serve solely to recruit more disciples.
If you Google “is bob dylan” right now, Google autosuggests: “is bob dylan still alive?”
Dylan needs new blood. He needs Gen Z. He needs Chalamet introducing young ears to old music. He’s 83. And unless they were raised by Dylan fans, teens probably didn’t run to buy “Bootleg Fragments – Time Out of Mind Sessions (1996-1997): The Bootleg Series Vol. 17.”
Walk into any high school now and ask a kid who sings “Desolation Row.” (Anybody? Bueller?)
When I interviewed Arlo Guthrie last year, he told me Dylan is “certainly one of the best-known poets of that era and remains immensely important. I hope it lasts.”
Today, Guthrie said, “I think younger people in general [aren’t] aware of the depth of knowledge it takes for somebody to be a poet like Bob Dylan. They’ll look at some of the works and go, ‘Oh, this is cool.’ But there’s more to it. I’m hoping in the long run, people acknowledge the work that goes into being somebody like Bob Dylan … You don’t just write songs like that. There’s work behind it.”
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And that’s the nail on the head.
That’s why I hope Gen Z watches.
It’s the music we’re preserving here. It’s the music that needs to be heard – on Spotify or the next platform after that – long after all the CD-playing grandparents die off.
Dylan must know he needs this. Not for his bank account or ego – for his work to survive centuries from now.
It’s interesting that Dylan’s team optioned this particular story. Because Newport is a key part his myth. The transformation of Woody Guthrie-wannabe to the Ray-Ban-wearing, polka-dotted, middle-finger-raised-to-the-world version of Dylan relies on those boos. The boos transform him into misunderstood lone wolf. Newport was Cool Dylan’s chrysalis.
There is a photo I love, taken by the late Daniel Kramer, of Dylan studying a chess board.
“That’s one of my favorite” photos, Kramer once told me. “Because that’s who he is. He thinks out his problems and he doesn’t make a move until he knows where he’s going.”
I love Dylan because I never know his next chess move.
I love Dylan for the same reason Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield loves Taylor Swift. In his new book, “Heartbreak is the National Anthem,” the Massachusetts native writes: “She’s the one none of us will ever understand — a jigsaw puzzle that turns out to be a mirror.”
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Bingo.
Like a chess master, studying the board: how do you fool ’em all next? Where don’t they expect the strike? A Nashville record? Sinatra covers? Chalamet knew what he was doing when he wore the blonde Dylan wig and blue hat on press tour — that’s the Dylan his diehards love. They Man, the Myth, the Legend we hold up like Shakespeare: to be studied for centuries. The inexplicable freak. The jigsaw puzzle. The jokerman, born with a snake in both of his fists while a hurricane was blowing.
This is the Dylan I love: the rascal. The wiseass. The guy tweeting about his love for “The Great God Pan” and painting Brazilian landscapes. Shedding off one more layer of skin. Keeping one step ahead of the persecutor within.
This is who I hope movie-goers will discover long after the Milk-Duds are gone.
I hope everyone who sees the movie enjoys it. But I hope Gen Z loves it.
I hope they sit in a trance and leave shaking with Dylan-fever. I hope, a year from now, they can tell you their favorite version of “Idiot Wind,” their favorite Dylan era. Hope they dig until through masks until they realize the man behind them is a snake charmer. Two moves ahead and laughing. The Class Clown shooting spitballs because he knows the lesson by heart. Pirate radio mystic. And he has mythologized his Dylan character so beautifully, that even the popcorn is part of the legend.
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Lauren Daley is a freelance writer who writes frequently about all things Dylan. She can be reached at [email protected]. She tweets @laurendaley1, and Instagrams at @laurendaley1. Read more stories on Facebook here. Read more stories on Facebook here.
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