Subsequent month, James Mangold’s movie A Full Unknown opens in cinemas, bringing to the massive display screen the early years of BOB DYLAN, from people interloper to his electrical apostasy at Newport in 1965. On this extract from from Uncut’s January 2025 concern, we uncover how a lot involvement Dylan himself had on this cinematic endeavor..
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LOS Angeles, 2020. Though town is in lockdown, a espresso store has been opened for the morning for the unique use of two illustrious prospects. James Mangold, the director of Stroll The Line, is there to fulfill Bob Dylan, who has been quarantining on the town since his By no means Ending Tour was mothballed because of the pandemic. Sitting reverse each other in a sales space, they’re there to debate Mangold’s plans for a film based mostly on Dylan’s first years in New York. The implication is his determination to go electrical will ultimately be titled A Full Unknown.
“On that very first assembly, as we sat collectively consuming espresso, one of many first issues Bob stated to me was, ‘So what’s this film about?’” Mangold tells Uncut. “The gracious method he was conducting himself made me really feel very comfy and I discovered myself saying, ‘I feel it’s a few man who was choking to loss of life in his hometown. He ran away from his household and pals and every thing he knew. He got here to New York and created a brand new household and a brand new id and new pals and flourished. Then he began to choke to loss of life and ran away from there too.’ That’s the film.”
A number of extra conferences adopted, for hours at a stretch, within the espresso store. Dylan, it transpired, had so much he needed to say about his youthful self. “After I sat down with Bob the primary time, he had already learn my script,” continues Mangold. “He stated to me that he wasn’t gonna inform me what I might and couldn’t do. He was simply gonna give his perspective on what went down. His recollections and observations about that interval had been vital to me – together with his sense that he hadn’t even come utterly to phrases with, or understood, what occurred.”
The supply for Mangold’s movie is Elijah Wald’s 2015 e-book Dylan Goes Electrical!, which explores Dylan’s milieu from 1961 to 1965, up till he plugs in and performs “Maggie’s Farm” on the Newport Folks Competition on July 25, 1965.
“That second in Newport actually is cinematic,” Wald tells Uncut. Monica Barbaro, who performs Joan Baez in A Full Unknown, agrees. “I feel the viewers will likely be rooting for him to go electrical and check out no matter it’s that’s making his hair stand on finish. The movie is so as, event-wise, however Ed Norton [who plays Pete Seeger] stated that it had a kaleidoscopic impact with our massive solid of [real-life] characters. This may very well be a restricted sequence – we shot a lot, and perhaps there’s a four-hour model someplace.”
Hollywood’s earlier Dylan biopic, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There (2007), solid six totally different actors to play ‘facets’ of Bob, emphasising his mercurial, shifting thriller. Mangold solely has one Dylan to take care of right here – Timothée Chalamet, given the half method again in 2018 following his star-making flip in Name Me By Your Identify. Accordingly, Mangold has tried to seek out the flesh-and-blood actuality of a Minnesotan child blowing into MacDougal Road, trailing tall tales as he makes his solution to Newport ’65.
“I’m out to grasp these folks as pondering, feeling people who had been making selections about what they sang or who they dated in the identical random method any 21-year-old would possibly,” Mangold says. “I really like the concept of individuals who have had such a profound cultural impact after they weren’t iconic and nobody knew what was gonna occur. The notion of Bob Dylan is the man within the flare of spotlights with the curly hair and the Ray-Bans, however the transformation into that’s the finish of our image. The film is exceptionally candy as a result of there’s such innocence about these characters earlier than all their strikes are price cash and each tune they sing outrages or pleases so many.”
Chalamet’s personal perspective on the undertaking is probably extra akin to the enigma he performs. “That is interpretive,” he lately defined to Apple Music. “This isn’t definitive… this isn’t the way it occurred. This can be a fable.”
