A Complete Unknown — fact and fiction: 5 ways the Bob Dylan movie subtly plays with the truth
Timothee Chalamet is spot on — but is the biopic itself just as accurate with the details of Dylan's life?
Look out kid, it’s somethin’ you did
God knows when, but you’re doin’ it again
When it comes to A Complete Unknown — the new Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothee Chalamet and hitting UK screens on Friday 17th January — those two lines from Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues spring to mind.
Did that kid Dylan do the things depicted? And if so, God knows when!
The film, which charts Dylan’s rise from folk scene unknown to counter culture king, is a broadly accurate and thoroughly entertaining retelling of Dylan’s formative professional years. We see him traipsing around folk clubs, meeting fellow luminaries Joan Baez and Johnny Cash, bathing in critical acclaim and fan backlash in equal measure.
It’s a masterful performance from Chalamet, who is such a natural fit for Dylan’s wiry awkwardness as to think the two were related. But, that said, have we ever known the real Bob Dylan against which to compare?
Dylan, the master self-mythologizer, always played fast and loose with his own life story — he happily convinced many that he’d been brought up in a travelling circus, though in reality he was a college dropout. Dylan, who is a producer on the film, even insisted that director James Mangold include one wholly-fabricated scene (which has yet to be definitely revealed).
So, is A Complete Unknown fact or fiction, accurate or inaccurate, true to life or a fabrication? The answer, as with most biopics, is a bit of both. Fact and fiction… and wholly in keeping with any autobiographical steering Dylan has himself conducted over the years.
Attending an early screening of the film, Shortlist sat down to try to separate fact from fiction and found, as you’ll see in the examples below, it’s not quite as simple as that — and all the more intriguing and beguiling for it.
Naturally, for those not familiar with Bob Dylan’s life story, some mild spoilers will follow!
1. Bob Dylan did have a girlfriend who was his muse, BUT…!
…It wasn’t the activist Sylvie Russo — that person doesn’t exist, and is instead a version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend at the time, Suze Rotolo, who was an integral figure in Dylan’s formative professional years. Speaking to Rolling Stone, director James Mangold revealed the change was made — at Dylan’s request:
“It was a character who I felt—and I think Bob very much agreed when we talked early on — was the only one who wasn’t a celebrity and an icon in and of themselves with a kind of public persona [...] there was just a feeling for Bob of not subjecting her to that."
It’s a matter of retaining the privacy of someone not in the public eye then — though, as this piece and many other critics have pointed out, the disguise is a very transparent one. If the link between the fictional and real partner of Dylan needed any more pointing out, the real-life Rotolo featured on the cover of Dylan’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan album, and Russo (played by Elle Fanning) appears on the movie version’s cover. Rotolo was a fair bit younger than Fanning too — a teenager when she and Dylan first met.
2. A fan did shout ‘Judas!’ at Dylan, BUT…!
…Not at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. A Complete Unknown is accurate in depicting the shock that Dylan’s fans expressed when he turned things all the way up to 11 for the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when he revealed the new electric-guitar-driven direction his music was taking. The crowd didn’t know how to take it, and booed Dylan, believing he’d betrayed his folk roots and the theme of the festival. The clip above is from that actual show — listen for the jeers at the end.
But that iconic ‘Judas!’ heckle? In the film it’s shown as happening at the Newport show in 1965. While it did happen, it wasn’t until a year later at a show in Manchester. It’s a smart change by Mangold — heightening the drama with a conflation of two historical events to great effect.
3. Johnny Cash did play the Newport Folk Festival, BUT…!
…Not at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival! Again! Cash and Dylan were indeed pen pals, as shown in the film, and great friends throughout their lives — Dylan wrote the eulogy at Cash’s funeral. Both did indeed also play the Newport Folk Festival numerous times — but, unlike what’s seen in the film, Cash didn’t play the controversial 1965 show. Though Cash’s support for Dylan’s musical experimentation was galvanised by Cash, the pre-show drunken pep-talk from Cash (played superbly by Boyd Holbrook in the film) never happened — or at least not at the 1965 festival.
4. Al Kooper did improvise Like A Rolling Stone’s iconic organ line, BUT…!
….That wasn’t his only contribution to the Highway 61 Revisited album, and it’s something that’s overlooked in the film. Kooper was a relative rookie as a session musician when he turned up at the studio for the Highway 61 Revisited recording — he’d been invited along to watch how things were going by Dylan’s guitarist Mike Bloomfield. More a guitarist at that time than a keyboard player, A Complete Unknown is accurate when it shows Kooper somewhat tentatively finding a seat at the Hammond organ before improvising the song’s iconic organ riff — though it wasn’t as immediate a moment of inspiration as the movie depicts it, instead being the product and culmination of a few take’s work.
The organ part is Kooper’s though — and he made another iconic contribution to the record which the movie instead attributes to Dylan. It was Kooper who brought the police siren whistle into the studio, as heard on the album’s title track, not Dylan, who is shown in the film buying it from a street merchant.
5. Pete Seeger did try to turn down Dylan’s electric sound, BUT…!
…Not because he hated what Dylan was doing. A key element of A Complete Unknown is the waxing and waning friendship between Dylan and fellow folk pioneer, Pete Seeger, played in the film by Edward Norton. Though the two were at the very least acquaintances, and broadly friends, the film is thought to have exaggerated the closeness of their friendship.
It also exaggerates Seeger’s reaction to Dylan’s electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Seegar did rush to the mixing desk, asking for them to turn Dylan down — but only so the distortion over the speaker system wouldn’t be so bad. Or at least, that’s what Seegar subsequently claimed. Many years later, sometime in the 1990s, Seeger is said to have written a postcard to Dylan which read:
“Bob! Someone just told me that you too think I didn’t like your ‘going electric’ in 1965. I’ve denied that so many times. I was furious at the distorted sound – no one could understand the words of ‘Maggie’s Farm’ – and dashed over to the people controlling the PA system. ‘No, this is the way they want it,’ they said. I shouted, ‘If I had an axe, I’d cut the cable’, and I guess that’s what got quoted. My big mistake was in not challenging from the stage the foolish few who booed. I shoulda said, ‘Howlin Wolf goes electric, why can’t Bob?’ In any case, you keep on. Best, Pete.”
Regardless, the film sets up a philosophical conflict between Seeger and Dylan — the old guard making way for the new — and Mangold heightens the drama with Seeger’s climactic rage. If it’s any consolation to Seeger, the film does finally show him acquiesce to the bold new sound Dylan blasts out.
Lead image credit: Val Wilmer / Redferns / Getty / Searchlight Pictures
