← All Of It with Alison Stewart
All Of It with Alison Stewart
'A Complete Unknown' with James Mangold and Edward Norton
00:19:54
Actor Edward Norton joins us, along with director and writer James Mangold, to discuss the project.
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WNYC Studios
Listener supported WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you are here. Let's take a listen to some Bob Dylan.
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Edward Norton
Once upon a time you've been so fine. Do the bunch of time in your prime, then you.
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Alison Stewart
In the new film A Complete Unknown, we get a glimpse of the enigma of Bob Dylan through the musicians and love interests who entered his orbit in the early 60s up until the moment he went electric. The film begins in 1961 as Dylan makes his way to New York. He meets his ailing idol, Woody Guthrie, and soon encounters folk musician Pete Seeger, played by my next guest, Edward Norton, in a performance that was nominated for a Critics Choice and a Golden Globe Award. We see Dylan develop into a person who absorbs those around him, from the earnest singers like Seeger to the more ID like Johnny Cash. And it's an interesting watch for New Yorkers. We get to see the city during a moment in time. Some of you listening may recall that time and not a lot of the action. Actually, a lot of the action takes place five minutes from our studios. A Complete Unknown was written and directed by James Mangold. It is nominated for a Critics Choice Award for Best Picture. You can see it in New York this weekend. It opens nationwide on Christmas. I'm really glad to speak with Ed Norton. Hi, Ed. Edward.
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Edward Norton
Edward, thanks. Yeah, good to be here.
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Alison Stewart
Which do you prefer, Ed or Edward?
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Edward Norton
My dad's Ed, and he might be listening, so probably he's here in the Village. We're all in the Village today.
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Alison Stewart
What was challenging or rewarding for you in playing Pete Seeger in particular? In particular?
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Edward Norton
Well, you know, I moved. I moved to the village in 1991 when I was 21 years old. I honestly Song to Woody, Dylan's first original song and his first record, was it was part of the soundtrack of my own personal kind of mythology. Moving to New York and thinking about the actors and musicians I loved and wanting to step into their footsteps. It's it. So. And Pete Seeger, if, you know, if you came up as an artist in New York, you. Pete Seeger is one of the, you know, the Olympians. He, he. And not, not, not necessarily because you have to be a folk fan. He just was known as one of the. The artists who made a difference. You know, he was one of the artists who. He was the paragon of the artist. Avenue between 24. You there?
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, I'm here. Hi, this is Brooke calling for Sydney. We've got. You know what? We've got. Hold on one second. We've got different lines going. Okay, let's see if your line is working. Are you there, Edward?
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Edward Norton
Yeah. So we're all set.
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Alison Stewart
Okay, perfect. You know what, we're going to ask everybody to hold on for a minute because all of our zooms are going at once. Let's see if we've got this in the control room. We're all set. All right, let's restart. I'm talking to Edward Norton about a complete unknown. I think it's just us on the line. Can you hear me, Edward?
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Edward Norton
Yes, indeed.
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Alison Stewart
All right, it sounds good. You were talking about how important Pete Seeger was to anyone who was an artist who came to live in the Village.
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Edward Norton
Yeah, you know, he. Pete Seeger was the folk singer who helped clean up the Hudson River. You know, he was the singer who answered Martin Luther King's postcards and went to the south to play in the civil rights marches in 1958, you know, and was on the Selma march and wrote We Shall Overcome. And it just. He was at the absolute apogee of. Of artist as activist, artist as humanitarian, artist as environmentalist. And if you were even glancingly interested in those issues and the idea of artists as citizens, he really is like one of. He's like Gandalf, you know, and so I had a lot of admiration for him. And because I am interested in music and play guitar and stuff, you knew, Pete Seeger also was this formidable virtuoso banjo and guitar player and kind of one of the greats. And I grew up with my mom's Peter, Paul and Mary records, and you would see that Pete Seeger wrote Where have all the Flowers Gone and if I Had a Hammer and all these things. So I knew a lot about him and I knew maybe even more about Dylan. But in some ways, I'd say it was. In some ways, I'd say it put a burden on the idea of doing a film about them because I. I held them in such A mythological status. Sometimes you almost feel it's heretical to try to, like, represent these people, you know, because they're so iconic, so musically virtuoso. And, and Jim. Jim Mangold, who is a wonderful director, you know, he was really articulate in talking about why he wanted to look at this brief period where these people were colliding with each other. Young Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, the veteran, Joan bae, as the kind of princess of folk at the time. And how this emergent moment that was taking place largely in Greenwich Village produced this cultural flowering, this phenomenal moment of emergent talent that Dylan was in many ways the pinnacle of that ended up not just being kind of the punk rock, outsider cultural, you know, kind of form, but. But really playing a really substantial role in the political expression of a whole generation that wanted progressive change. And, and, and I think Jim's interest was anthropological and he was interested in. In the ways that these people were allies, competitors, lovers, got into arguments and the way that. That. That fertile. Those fertile interactions produce this. This thing. And Dylan obviously is, you know, he's. He's a global sort of cultural and literary icon almost. But I think Jim wanted to look at, you know, the idea of almost the innocent. The innocent and aspirational kind of characteristic of that time.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, it's sort of interesting because Pete Seeger in the film is a traditionalist in the good sense of the word. And he's really appealing to Dylan's songwriting, sort of his greater angels. And then you have Johnny Cash, who's sort of more ID like and pulling at Bob Dylan. What is it that Seeger wants for Dylan and for his talent?
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Edward Norton
You know, I'm not sure I would. I'm not sure I even want to impose it. I'm going to say this, and I'm not trying to dodge the question, but, you know, one of the things that I think Dylan gave artists apart from the songs themselves is he gave us almost the impossible standard of the artist who defends. Defends the right of the audience to come to their own interpretation of meaning. You know, when people would say, what do the songs mean? He would say, I wrote them. I don't know what they mean. You tell me what they mean. He would. He refused to unpack it before. You know, he was the magician and he wasn't going to show you the trick. Right. Because he knew that the power of the trick that he was doing was. Was to create feeling in you and make you let you see yourself in what he was writing or see your generation in what he was writing. And I think, and in some ways the film, in answer your question, I think there's a lot of ways you can interpret the relationships between a Pete Seeger and a Bob Dylan and a Joan Baez and a Bob Dylan and, and they were paradoxical and multidimensional. You know, you, I think that's what I love about what Jim's done is he doesn't, he doesn't take a side per se, or cast a value judgment on one type of integrity versus another type of integrity. And Seeger's integrity was legendary. The type of integrity Dylan had as an artist who follows his own line is something that's also admirable for different reasons. And, and they weren't the same and they were allies and then they, and then they kind of parted ways. But, but I think letting the audience kind of feel what they align with and what they relate to and is a big part of why we're doing it, you know, So I have, I have some of my own thoughts about it, but I think, but I think part of the, part of the beauty of it is the paradoxes and the, the things that, you know, because people can be allies and still get into arguments, you know, and people can be lovers and still be competitors. And that's, that's what I think makes it rich and juicy and human and relatable. Even if you're not a folk singer. Right?
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Alison Stewart
Pete Singer, of course, longtime New Yorker and he appeared on WNYC a number of times. We found an appearance from 1941.
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Edward Norton
Oh, wow.
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Alison Stewart
In which he talked about his banjo playing. Let's listen.
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Pete Seeger
That five string banjo you heard was played by Pete Sega. Pete's been a member of the American Square dance group for some time. He's just come back from a trip down the south and he's brought back with him some swell folk tunes. Say, Pete, you don't see many five spring banjos today, do you?
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Unknown Interviewer
Why no, you don't. You see, the banjo is one of the few really Native American instruments. The five string banjo's the kind they used to play in the old minstrel show 75 years ago. And I've heard tell that it was developed by Negro slaves who were brought over from Africa. And when the old minstrel shows died out, the five string banjos became less and less common. So now they're found mostly down in secluded sections of the South.
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Pete Seeger
What do you say, Pete? Play us one of the tunes you picked up on your trip.
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Unknown Interviewer
Okay. Here's one called John Hardy and that's Pete Seeger.
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Alison Stewart
You can, of course, talk to Rhiannon Giddens about banjos. That's an amazing African American instrument. When you were playing, it was you playing the banjo. Is that true, Edward?
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Edward Norton
Yeah. I mean, I have a grounding in guitar and was able to. I was able to work with some phenomenal professional banjo players. Although I will say there's something really interesting, which is Pete Seeger played a. He was a virtuoso. He could play Beethoven's Od de Joy in the banjo and, and. And play bluegrass and play just about everything. But he played often in this style called claw hammer, and it's not as popular today, and it's hard to find people there. There were some, you know, brilliant banjo players who can't totally work out sometimes some of the things he was playing. But because I had a background in guitar, I was. I was able to put a lot of focus onto a very few of his. A very few of his things, and it was heart. Banjo is really difficult. I find it difficult. And, and. And there are aspects. I don't want to say all of our techniques and trickery, but yes, we, we. We played our songs live. I mean, we, we. We all felt that there is such a different quality to your voice when you're singing in a large space for, For a real audience. And so we, we wanted to capture the core of the performances live. And, and it was just. It was the right thing to do. The thing I. The thing I learned, we all learned. And Timothy is, you know, brilliant in his musical renderings of Dylan's songs, but you just realize Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger, they were people who played unadorned. And they make it look easy, they make it look simple. And when you try to recreate what they do, you really realize the depth of their talent, you know, the depth of their vocal control, their breath control, the sophistication of what they're playing. It's, it's. It was kind of wondrous for all of us. And I think. But, you know, I, I don't think you'll find a movie this year with more. With more music in it. It's got a lot of really great music in it. Not in a. Not like being a musical, but more because these people were living in music. They were. They were expressing themselves through music.
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Alison Stewart
You know, what do you appreciate about this kind of story? The way this movie is among the many music films that you'll get to see. Maybe not as much music as yours, but this One has quite a bit.
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Edward Norton
I think, as I was saying, it's really not a biopic. This doesn't sort of move through a life in a color. It really is an immersion in this very intense moment of creative collision between people in the Village and, and really looks at the way a complete unknown, this very young person, arrived in this city. And in the span of less than four years, he made himself into his talent, propelled himself toward, into this incredible place in the culture, and, and yet he needed to move on from that. Even, you know, Jim, Jim has said, and I really like his articulation of this, that, you know, Dylan kind of came from nowhere because he was restless and he wanted to get somewhere and he got there and he did things and then he got restless again and then kept moving, you know, And I think I love the way that the film looks at a very short window in which a lot happened and then it dissipated in some sense. And because I think it, it has a lot to say about, it has a lot to say about youth and about, about the way that we will ourselves into being who we want to be. And, and, and I think it has something to say about the ebbs and flows in American life, of the way art and politics and culture will kind of come together. And then maybe now we're in a period where they're not so closely, you know, interactive. And it's worth meditating, it's worth meditating, I think, on, on how closely intertwined the societal change and the art were at that time. It's a beautiful depiction of that time.
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Alison Stewart
I think when you think about living in New York in the early 60s, what part of it would you have really liked? What would you have liked living in Greenwich village in the 60s?
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Edward Norton
You know, I think I, I. You have this feeling that there was still a kind of a radical anti commercialism right there. Just people, you know, there's a great line. In one documentary I saw Bobby Neorth, the musician and painter, he, who was, who was friends with Dylan, he said, he says, back then, you know, nobody said, how many records have you sold? They said, have you got anything to say? You know, and you get this feeling that there was an intense, an intense interest in the authenticity of the work as opposed to its commercial value. And I think we're in this period in American life where I feel like the addiction to maximization of just about everything is expressing itself, you know, where we're in real danger, I think, of, of art being completely subsumed by the idea of content and its collateral Value. And I think it seems like there was a really interesting gravitational pull in the village of artists of all different stripes who were here to really kind of be at the center of a serious conversation. And that sounds appealing to me. But you know, it's funny, I. I mean honestly, this is, this is a New York station and it's a good New York detail. But I used to, when I was 22 and doing plays on East 4th street and, or I would go see downtown theater, see the Worcester Group or whatever. I remember seeing Willem Dafoe in the Worcester Group, who I later got to work with and, and I would wander up to McDougal street and there was a place that's still there called Lantern de Vittorio just below Washington Square park on McDougall on the, on the west side of the street. And that was like my go to place for taking a date after a play and having a beer and, and a piece of pie or whatever. And I found out in the course making this movie that that was Pete Seeger's house. That was where Pete Seeger lived with his wife Toshi when they were first married. Probably right after that interview you just played. It was her parents house. Her father was a Japanese man who did scenic design for the Providence Town Playhouse, which was right next door. And they lived on the first floor which is where the restaurant is. And I had this, I had this like, you know, flooding realization that for years when I was in my early 20s, I used to sit in the evening by the fireplace in what had been Pete Seeger's bedroom, which is amazing and it's still there. You could, you can go to that restaurant today. And, and if you go, you're in, you're in Pete Seeger and Toshi Seeger's old in law's house before they moved up to Beacon where they, where they famously lived. And you know, it's like that's the great thing about Greenwich Village. And I mean I'm looking out across it now and it's sort of like, you know, we're losing some things here and there. But there is still. There's such an incredible. Like when you're walking around in the Village, you're, you're passing the ghosts of so many, so many amazing people. And I think it's, it's what I still love about living here.
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Alison Stewart
I can't wait to walk past there on the way home. What exciting. My guest has been Edward Norton. We should the shoot. The movie is called A Complete Unknown. He plays Pete Seeger in the movie Edward, it was really a pleasure talking to you. Come by the studio, we'll have a conversation about art, whatever.
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Edward Norton
Absolutely. I need you to send me that clip of Pete. I've heard many, many, many things and I had never heard that one. And it's great. I love hearing his voice in every phase of his life. And you know, he, he, he was, he was a remarkable New Yorker. And I think, I hope, I really hope Timothy and I talked about, like, why do you do something like this? And I think you realize that even if you're a fan, you realize there are many, many people who have lost a direct connection to Pete Seeger's music, to Bob Dylan's music even. And, and if a young, if, if more people return to connection with it because the film, you know, evokes the romance of that time, I think we'll, we'll feel really happy. I think, I think it took us deeper back into it and, and hopeful. Hopefully it's an access point for others to get connected to that, that period and those artists.
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Alison Stewart
Thanks for your time today.
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Edward Norton
Absolutely. Thanks a lot.
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