‘A Complete Unknown’ Is a Bob Dylan Movie. How Does It Feel?

Summary

The Big Picture: 'A Complete Unknown' Is a Bob Dylan Movie. How Does It Feel?

Hosts: Sean Fennessy, Chris Vernon, and Mallory Rubin
Episode Release Date: December 24, 2024
Podcast: The Big Picture by The Ringer

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1. Introduction to 'A Complete Unknown'

Timestamp: [02:04]

Sean Fennessy opens the discussion by introducing 'A Complete Unknown', a new docudrama directed by James Mangold. The film explores a pivotal period in Bob Dylan's life from 1961 to 1965, culminating in his electric transformation in New York. Timothee Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan, bringing a fresh interpretation to the iconic musician.

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2. Anticipation and Concerns About the Movie

Timestamp: [02:34]

Sean expresses his apprehensions about the film, highlighting his deep fandom for Bob Dylan:

Sean Fennessy [02:34]: "Listeners of this show know that I have been deeply concerned about this movie for some time. And I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan."

Mallory Rubin echoes these sentiments, describing Dylan as a central figure in her life and admitting her initial nervousness about the portrayal.

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3. Timothee Chalamet's Portrayal of Bob Dylan

Timestamp: [05:14]

Chris Vernon praises Chalamet's performance, noting his dedication to embodying Dylan without falling into the pitfalls seen in other biopics like 'Walk the Line' and 'Bohemian Rhapsody':

Chris Vernon [05:16]: "I never had a doubt. First of all, for a complete unknown... Timothee Chalamet was uncanny and unbelievable as Bob Dylan in a way."

Sean adds that Chalamet's performance is so compelling that it moved him emotionally:

Sean Fennessy [15:23]: "There were a couple of times where I just, like, burst into tears while they were singing, where I was just like, this is incredible."

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4. Film’s Focus on Music Over Character Depth

Timestamp: [15:00]

Sean critiques the movie's emphasis on musical performances at the expense of deeper character exploration:

Sean Fennessy [15:00]: "Does it even try to interrogate the interiority of Bob Dylan at all."

Mallory agrees, stating that while the performances are mesmerizing, the film lacks substantial development of Dylan's relationships and personal struggles.

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5. Key Scenes and Musical Performances

Timestamp: [25:09]

The hosts delve into standout moments from the film, particularly highlighting performances like 'It Ain't Me Babe' and 'The Times They Are A-Changing':

Mallory Rubin [27:39]: "And the piece of paper, the scrap of paper that she found with a verse from that song... those parts were very emotionally impactful."

Chris appreciates the film's ability to showcase Dylan's creative process:

Chris Vernon [10:13]: "I found himself basically, like, unmoved the entire film. Never itching, never being like, when is this over?"

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6. Comparison to Other Dylan Documentaries and Films

Timestamp: [10:13]

The discussion compares 'A Complete Unknown' to Martin Scorsese’s 'No Direction Home' and Todd Haynes's 'I'm Not There'. While 'No Direction Home' offers an in-depth documentary perspective, 'A Complete Unknown' opts for a more straightforward narrative focusing on music rather than personal introspection.

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7. Director James Mangold’s Approach

Timestamp: [18:11]

Mallory shares insights from a panel with Director James Mangold, who emphasized that the film isn't about dissecting Dylan's enigmatic persona but rather celebrating his music:

Mallory Rubin [18:11]: "He really pushed back against the idea that the film is about the fact that Bob Dylan is an enigma."

Sean appreciates Mangold’s commitment to showcasing Dylan’s artistry without succumbing to cliché biopic formulas.

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8. Overall Impressions and Ratings

Timestamp: [76:50]

The hosts provide their final thoughts on the film. Chris Vernon enjoys the movie despite initial reservations, while Mallory describes it as hypnotic and engrossing, though not fitting the traditional definition of a "movie." Sean praises the film for honoring Dylan's legacy and anticipates its critical acclaim.

Mallory Rubin [73:06]: "I just found it like so engrossing. Really, like hypnotic."

Sean Fennessy [75:38]: "It is a complicated film with a lot of strong ideas."

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9. Oscar Potential and Industry Impact

Timestamp: [57:14]

Sean speculates on the movie’s chances at the Oscars, highlighting Timothee Chalamet’s outstanding performance as a potential award-winning aspect:

Sean Fennessy [61:30]: "Like, I think he's gonna win best Actor. I think he is now just fully confirmed as the movie star of his generation."

The hosts discuss the film's resonance with both contemporary audiences and Dylan aficionados, suggesting it could perform well during awards season.

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10. Closing Remarks and Additional Recommendations

Timestamp: [85:33]

As the podcast wraps up, the hosts recommend additional Bob Dylan-related films and documentaries, including 'Llewyn Davis' and documentaries like 'Masked and Anonymous'. They reflect on Dylan's enduring influence on music and culture.

Sean Fennessy [87:42]: "If you like Bob Dylan's music, you will love it."

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Notable Quotes

• Sean Fennessy [02:34]: "I have been deeply concerned about this movie for some time. And I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan."

• Chris Vernon [05:16]: "Timothee Chalamet was uncanny and unbelievable as Bob Dylan in a way."

• Sean Fennessy [15:23]: "This is incredible."

• Mallory Rubin [27:39]: "Those parts were very emotionally impactful."

• Chris Vernon [10:13]: "I found myself basically, like, unmoved the entire film."

• Sean Fennessy [61:30]: "I think he's gonna win best Actor."

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Conclusion

'A Complete Unknown' successfully captures the essence of Bob Dylan's transformative years, primarily through Timothee Chalamet's compelling performance and the film's rich musical tapestry. While it may lack deeper character exploration, its celebration of Dylan's music and legacy resonates strongly with fans and newcomers alike. The hosts highly recommend the film for its emotional impact and faithful homage to one of music's greatest icons.

Transcript

[Chris Vernon]

What's up everybody?

[Sean Fennessy]

Chris Vernon here and welcome to a new season of the NBA and the Mismatch.

[Chris Vernon]

And huge welcome as well to my new co host, Dave Jacoby.

[Sean Fennessy]

I can't wait to link with you twice a week, every Tuesday and Friday.

[Chris Vernon]

Right here on the Mismatch to break.

[Sean Fennessy]

Down everything that's happening in the league.

[Chris Vernon]

Who's playing well, who we loved, who.

[Sean Fennessy]

We loathed, trade rumors, team dysfunction.

[Chris Vernon]

We've got you covered right here.

[Sean Fennessy]

So follow us, subscribe and hit us with those five star ratings on Spotify.

[Chris Vernon]

Or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Sean Fennessy]

And also don't forget to follow us on social media. That's Ringer NBA. And check out the full Mismatch episodes with the two handsomest podcasters in the history of podcasting right on The Ringer NBA YouTube channel. This episode of the Big Picture is presented by Walmart. Thoughtfulness matters. During the holiday season, Walmart has a huge selection of great gifts at great prices. So you can find the perfect thing for everyone on your list. Like a Samsung Sound Bar for action movie fans, the Lego Sorting Hat for those who queue up a Harry Potter marathon every year, or the Fujifilm Instax camera for the aspiring cinematographers. Give the gifts that show you get them at Walmart. There's no better feeling than a personal win. And the State Farm personal price plan can help you do just that. Talk to a State Farm agent today.

[Chris Vernon]

To learn how you can bundle and.

[Sean Fennessy]

Save with a personal price plan.

[Mallory Rubin]

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

[Sean Fennessy]

Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and.

[Mallory Rubin]

Eligibility vary by state.

[Sean Fennessy]

I'm Sean Fennessy and this is the Big Picture. A conversation show about the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you. Dan, you the Susie Rotolo and Joan Baez of my life. Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin. What's happening guys?

[Mallory Rubin]

We never did too much talking anyway, not until today.

[Sean Fennessy]

Today we are talking about a complete unknown which is the new docudrama about Bob Dylan. About Bob Dylan at a very particular period in his life, a critical period in his life between 1961 and 1965 when he came to New York and ultimately went electric. This movie is directed by James Mangold, Big Jim. It is co written by Mangold. I believe he did a rewrite of a script by the great Jay Cox. This movie of course stars Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan.

[Mallory Rubin]

Boy does it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Listeners of this show know that I have been deeply Concerned about this movie for some time. And I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. I know Mallory is also essentially on a par with me in terms of Dylan fandom. A mega fan.

[Chris Vernon]

Chris Ryan, very big Bob Dylan fan.

[Sean Fennessy]

How would you put yourself in the, in the hierarchy?

[Chris Vernon]

I think that he was like a really formative person for me, but other maybe acts from that time period have eclipsed him in terms of my, like, constant interest in returning to it.

[Mallory Rubin]

You're more of a Pete Seeger guy.

[Chris Vernon]

But I was going to say that this movie marks what is a pretty reliable. Every five to seven years there is a Dylan revival because of a film or a documentary that comes out, or a book or an appearance. And this is the great gift of Dylan fandom, is that you can kind of leave it for a few years and then something will happen where you're like, well, it looks like I have to go listen to a ten hour chronological playlist of his work from 1960 to 1970.

[Mallory Rubin]

So deeply abridged.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I was going to say that ain't much.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mal, why don't you talk about your fandom appreciation, how you came to love Dylan?

[Mallory Rubin]

Sure. I would say he is the most important man in my life other than the two of you.

[Chris Vernon]

What's up, Adam?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, Adam, what about Barry and Barry.

[Mallory Rubin]

Rubin, who of course introduced me to Dylan. Yeah, I was trying to like think back and identify the exact moment in time where I really fell into the discography. And I don't, I can't tell you the exact year, but I'm. I am certain that I just stumbled upon Biograph in my dad's living room. Like that is definitely what happened. And it was early high school for sure. And, and also then Love and Theft had come out in 01. And that double whammy of realizing like the depth of music and history and decades of exploration that awaited and also that there was something brand spanking new featuring to this day one of my favorite songs of all time, Mississippi. And now we're two decades further down the road. And that is still true for anybody who stumbles upon Dylan today. There's something brand new waiting and there's just now even more history. So right away he became my favorite and that has lasted. He is my favorite musician, he's my favorite writer, he's my favorite poet, he's certainly my favorite character in film or documentary. And I just think that he's the absolute best. And so because of that, I, like you, was incredibly nervous about the movie. I would describe my anticipation level as active dread. And so I look forward to exploring why that proved to be ill founded.

[Chris Vernon]

Number one, I never had a doubt. First of all, for a complete.

[Sean Fennessy]

You never had a doubt?

[Chris Vernon]

No, I had strong. I was long this movie. And we'll get into whether I was right or wrong. Just to piggyback off what Mal saying, like, I do want to say that one of the things that this film does very well and one of the things that I think is the most rewarding part about being a Dylan fan is that you get to do three different things at once. You have the work itself. So you can just revisit these albums and live in them. And they mean different things to you at different points in your life. You have like the absolute like two universities worth of scholarship and writing and thinking and documentary filmmaking and people who spend all their time on Reddit analyzing like Dylan and the Dead shows and stuff like that. But then you also have like this incredible wealth of stuff that Mal mentioned. Biograph. But for me it was Bootlegs, the first bootleg series, which I think came out in 89, but was like a huge part of when I first started working at record stores at the end of high school. That would get played a lot. And it was my first glimpse into listening to someone becoming what they were about to be. So like basically listening to the creative process take place. And that was like my first introduction to the idea that like. Like a Rolling Stone does not just happen. It's like it's 18 takes of it and it's a waltz with a piano. And then accidentally a guy comes in and starts playing an organ and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't know that's how art got made. So you get to see that, you get to listen to that, obviously, but to actually see some of it dramatized was one of the great pleasures of this movie.

[Mallory Rubin]

Very similar to how I feel getting to watch Chris put together a talk. The Thrones outline all the stages of discovery.

[Sean Fennessy]

Also deeply influenced by Rambo and mostly.

[Chris Vernon]

Composed in the bathtub. Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

What about you? What was your origin story with Bob?

[Sean Fennessy]

It's similar to yours. I'm just a little bit older than you, so Time out of mind Becoming a phenomenon many years after. I think most people had felt like Bob's best years were behind him. That was a huge comeback for him, that record. It was a Grammy celebrated. He'd done an Unplugged around that time. And so he was very much back in the consciousness in a mainstream way after a long I mean, roughly like 82 through 95. It's this very quiet period. And that's really my adolescence. And so up to that point, I think a lot of kids who are big readers, as we all were, who were. I was deeply interested in music and had a simultaneous hyper obsession with the contemporary and hyper obsession with trying to, like, cram in as much knowledge of the past as possible. And if you listen to a lot of classic rock, he just recurs. Like, if you listen to a Birds record, his songs are all over the place. If you listen to the Beatles, his influence is all over the place. If you start reading about the construction of popular music and especially rock and roll in the 60s, he just looms so strongly over all the writing. And so, yeah, I mean, same for me. He's my favorite writer. I can listen to songs that I first heard when I was 11 and still be kind of untangling them and finding new meanings and new appreciation for them. Just have a very big emotional relationship to the music. And it's one of the few things I've remained uncynical about in my life. And I think it's one reason why I think this movie scared me a little bit, you know, And I think there have been, you know, to your point, Chris, like a lot of really good films about who he is or what he is, or using his music in compelling ways or using him as a performer in compelling ways. He's been in some of the best concert films of all time, some of the best documentaries ever made. He has been in great westerns. You know, he's made his own movies. Like, he. He is a. He is meaningful to movie history too. And there's never really been something like this which is extremely Hollywood and standard. This is very straightforward. And we know now after like roughly 20 or so years of this framework, kind of typical and cliche riddled style of movie making. So I'm a fan of Mangold.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah, same.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think it's interesting that he chose to do this movie because of course he made Walk the Line, which was a big success, won Reese Witherspoon an Academy Award. Most people felt Joaquin Phoenix pulled off a performance of a person who is unreplicable in Johnny Cash. And you've got a very similar challenge with this movie, with trying to personify someone who is as much living mythology as he is just a guy in somebody's house right now. And in the aftermath of Walk the Line, he made Walk Hard came out and Walk Hard detonated this format forever. And that movie is so clearly inspired by the success of Walk the Line. And I gotta give Mangle credit for just not hearing the footsteps. Because he kind of just commits, like, every sin all over again in this movie. And so I want to use that as, like, an entree into talking about whether you guys like the movie or not. Because you can like the movie because of those things. You can like the movie in spite of those things, or you can reject it because of those things. I think those are kind of your choices. So where did you land on a complete unknown?

[Chris Vernon]

I actually found it to be probably a little bit less formulaic than maybe you're describing it. Like, I think it's actually more or less a very, very, very long music video. Like, the lack of dialogue in this film and the lack of really particularly dramatic scenes. There's, like, half a dozen, maybe. And. Because if you know anything about Dylan or even if you're just using the logic of, like, well, I know it. I know that he actually does go electric. So this is sort of a moot point. Like, you just wind up immersing yourself in the power of that music. And there are a lot of parts about it that I think are going to be mocked. But I'm almost like, well, what did you think people were doing when they saw Bob Dylan the first time? They were probably staring at him.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

Because they were like, holy shit. You know, he's. And so even if there are factual or historical inaccuracies in the film. And in an effort to, like, build up dramatic tension or something like that, I found myself basically, like, unmoved the entire film. Never itching, never being like, when is this over? Or when they. When are they at the Newport? Or, when does he meet Mike Bloomfield? I was like, I am so happy to be going on the magic carpet ride. I think from the moment it starts in the back of a station wagon, you're like, holy shit, dude. This is great. And I fully acknowledge that Queen fans might have felt that way about Bohemian Rhapsody. And Elton John fans might have felt that way about Rocketman. And I did not. I was like, this sucks. But for this, for Bob Dylan, for something I care about, I think they did a really credible job of creating. Is it a Hall of Presidents feeling? For sure.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

I don't care. Like, I like going to Disney every once in a while.

[Mallory Rubin]

Totally.

[Sean Fennessy]

What do you think, Mel?

[Mallory Rubin]

This is my favorite movie in a long time.

[Sean Fennessy]

Why?

[Mallory Rubin]

Even though I don't. And Chris and I saw it together, and we talked about this right after with. With. With Joe, we all saw it together. I wouldn't necessarily call it a movie. And that's obviously something I'm interested in discussing with you both today. But I was absolutely riveted watching it. Like, my eyes were as wide as Scoots the entire time.

[Chris Vernon]

But you moved as much as him as well.

[Mallory Rubin]

Every time Boyd came on screen, I was like, ah, elbowing Chris. And he's like, yeah, I know Boyd.

[Sean Fennessy]

Boyd Holbrook portrays Johnny Cash in the film. You have plenty of opportunity here today.

[Mallory Rubin]

Boy, does he. You know, as we've already alluded to, it's hard to think of too many people in the history of music, or really any aspect of. Of culture who have not only made the impact that Bob Dylan made, but have been like, chronicled to the length that Dylan has been chronicled. And so, like, part of what I was nervous about was just like, why? Right. What will we. And especially because I think this period in particular, 61 to Newport in 65, is one of the most studied and interrogated and poured over stretches of musical history. Now, I am a Bob Dylan lover, but I can't claim to be a music historian like you are. And yet even I know a lot about that period in time and what this represents.

[Sean Fennessy]

This was my complaint when the movie. When I first heard about the movie is I was like, this is the least interesting time. To me, this is the one I least want the docudrama about because it's the one with no mystery, right?

[Mallory Rubin]

And so the combination of. And I do think, like one of my critiques of the film, which again, I loved, is that I think you start to really feel that in the third act. I thought the first hour, 45 was. Was way stronger than the closing stretch because you start to feel the inevitability of reverse engineering against the quote, unquote purpose of the film. But ultimately, I think for us sitting in the seats and for the people who are making it, the purpose of the film is to just spend time with one of the most consequential figures in the history of the world. And the performances were unbelievable. Like, Timothee Chalamet was uncanny and unbelievable as Bob Dylan in a way that, I mean, I love Timmy. I think he's a great actor. And when the trailer came out for the movie, I was like, oh, what is happening here? What is happening here? What have they done? And watching it, I was again just like, completely swept up in the magic of enjoying the thing. I think when it ended, Chris, you know, we were looking up at the credits rolling and it's screen after screen after screen of song. Right. And you were observing like. Like, you know, just, is Dylan gonna get like a screenwriting credit? Right. Cause so much of the script of the movie is in fact the songs. But I ended up loving it. I think it end. It was an. It was an inversion of what I anticipated. I thought the songs would play second fiddle to an attempt to interrogate an unknowable figure. And that was just simply not the case. And I love it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Doesn't even try.

[Mallory Rubin]

I realized that about it.

[Sean Fennessy]

No, it's the most fascinating thing to me about. About the movie. And I. I most. I definitely am not as enthusiastic as either of you guys. I think I like it way more than I thought I would.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And there were a couple of times where I just, like, burst into tears while they were singing, where I was just like, this is. This is incredible. And it's. It is that thing you're talking about with Queen where just like, hearing those songs so loud and them nailing the performances.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is just. It just took me over, like. And I can never sit in a movie like that and be like, this isn't good. You know, like, it is. It is impactful. But, you know, I don't know. I'm still. I'm totally stumped on this movie in so many ways about how I feel about it, because do I. Did I want a Bob Dylan movie that was going to attempt to interrogate what he was up to and to unpack his psyche and his motivations? Or do I want something that just sort of, you know, burnishes the myth a little bit and then otherwise just platforms, the music, what would have been better? I don't know. I don't know. I do think it's interesting that, like, there's really no meaningful exploration of the interiority of Bob Dylan at all.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah. So I, you know, you mentioned walk hard as, like, this comparison point. And Jim Mangle basically, like, kind of being like, I fuck it, I'm doubling down. To me, the very useful comparison point would be I'm not there for this film, which I know we're going to talk about Dylan on screen in a little bit, but I can't resist talking a little bit about Todd Haynes's 2007 movie before that. Because this. Todd Haynes's conception of this story, not necessarily this specific story, although there is the Cate Blanchett section is essentially the second half of this movie. You know, the polka dot shirt, essentially, that's the kaleidoscopic, like, way of Doing this. That's the. Like, he's unknowable. So we have to shatter the urn and piece it back together through all these postmodern storytelling devices. And I think that I just really responded to Mangle being like, straight up, I'm just going to, like, look this thing in the eye, and there may not be, like, a core here. Like, I may not get to the, like, is this guy an act of self creation? Does that matter? How did you treat women? Like, I don't. Yeah, there's an unknowability to that. And to some extent, like, that's not Chalif May's fault, but it was almost like watching someone's game tape, like, where you're like, oh, my God, this guy. This guy is.

[Mallory Rubin]

Timmy would appreciate that, and I'm sure.

[Chris Vernon]

He would, but it's like, this guy fucking learned how to play guitar for five years. Like, he can do this in a master shot, and you don't have to, like, dub in stuff and everything. Let's get as much of that up on screen as possible. And that is going to be a very worthwhile experience in a movie theater.

[Mallory Rubin]

So I did a thing that I've never done in the history of podcasting about movies. I went to a screening, and then I reached out to the studio and was like, I have seen the movie, but I. Can I please see it again?

[Sean Fennessy]

I was so amazed when you told me that earlier.

[Mallory Rubin]

I just, like. Because I couldn't stop thinking about it. And so the second time that I went, there was a panel after the film with Mangold and the cast. And one of the things this is what you were just saying made me think of this.

[Chris Vernon]

Chalamet's just furious about the seating in the scfp.

[Mallory Rubin]

He's like, I thought we were here tonight.

[Chris Vernon]

How is Boise's date getting this?

[Sean Fennessy]

Mafi, stop talking over me.

[Mallory Rubin]

One of the things that Mangold said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but was like, he really pushed back against the idea that the film is about the fact that Bob Dylan is an enigma. And he said, in essence, like, you can't play a question mark. I can't tell Timmy to play a question mark. And we know him through the songs. He gave us all these songs, like, what more do we want than what he told us about himself in the songs? Now, I, like, really don't agree at all, at all with that, but I found that to be such a fascinating perspective. And the fact that we're like, I don't. Don't agree with that, even though you made the movie, is to me part of the proposition and part of the reason why, even though Bob Dylan has been in people's lives for so long and studied at such length, it's worth making a movie like this because just as he is a figure defined by reinvention, that's why I'm not there. Like, this movie does it with one actor, but in very different tone. Right. And sensibility, but it's the same thesis in a way.

[Chris Vernon]

Right.

[Mallory Rubin]

It's like when we see the envelope or the Notebook with Zimmerman on it, there's not a single moment other than Sylvie the Sue's stand in saying, are you going to tell me anything about.

[Chris Vernon]

Your past or the sister being like, oh, I guess he wasn't really in a carnival. Right. Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

It's just there as one more fact on the ground. Right. One more bit of context to say. Well, before we even got to the period where everyone was studying how he reinvented himself, this was an inevitability. This is who he is at his core. It's why when Seeger is driving him to his log cabin built by his own hands, and he's there talking about the idea of being a folk singer, he's like, well modified Right before any of this actually even happens. And so, like, why is the movie called a complete unknown?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, of course.

[Mallory Rubin]

I mean, that's a lyric in the song that we're building toward. This is a period in his life where he became famous. I love that moment where he's writing the letter to Johnny and he's like, I'm famous. I'm excited for some of Chris's voice work today, but I think that despite what the director and maker of the movie is saying, it is also an acknowledgement that this is a figure who in some way will forever defy the level of interrogation that he invites.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. So the one thing that I think the movie is very confident in doing, which I think is a real credit to it because it didn't have to do it this way. And a lot of times when you have movies that are executive produced by living artists, you don't see this, but this movie is very steadfast and pointing out that Bob Dylan is an asshole, you know, and especially at this time in his life.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

That he is. Has a complicated relationship with the women that he seduces or that he spends time with. That as an artist, he is defiant of people who took care of him and put him on their shoulders. That he is willing to kind of like, mangle history in an effort to go forward. You know, one of the best things and worst things that I've done since I saw the movie was I rewatched no Direction Home, which is Martin Scorsese's documentary, sort of archival documentary about this exact period. It's the same time, it's 61 through 65. And that movie is just amazing. If you love Bob Dylan because you have so many of the key people who are in his life at the time, Susie Rotolo, Dave Van Ronck, friends from Minnesota, people in 1997, explicitly explaining what Bob was like. And Bob's in it too. And he gives one of the longest interviews he's ever given. He gives tons of great information. But throughout that entire documentary, you get the sense that, like, Bob Dylan is a real opportunist. In fact, I think someone calls him that at a certain point, that even though he is this touched, like, almost like angelically God gifted thinker and writer, that he was like, I want to win. Like, him being. Wanting to be famous, him wanting to ascend above whatever the expectations of a traditional folk singer would be, are so interesting. And I give the movie a lot of credit for not shying away from that, for not trying to valorize him. Because Bob Dylan is like, I'm not a protest singer. This isn't. These songs are not about that. They're something different. And so I respect that they did that. It still doesn't resolve. It's the only thing that it kind of like confirms to me.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, I think that he definitely moved too fast for culture to keep up with. And so by that logic would move too fast for a movie to capture. I mean, Todd Haynes actually had this really good quote when he was about casting the six different actors where he said, the minute you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was. He's like a flame. If you try to hold him in your hand, you'll surely get burned. James Bengal was like, I'm in a movie about Indiana Jones. You know what I mean? Like, I. I don't give a shit.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, I killed Wolverine.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, like, he's like. He's like, I think I can do this. And I think what he does that. When I. When I think about why I am going to go watch this movie again, it's everything that's on the outside of the frame. It's the depth of realization of the apartment, the CBS studios, the control room, the notebooks, the coffee cups, the cigarettes, the wine bottles. Like, I want to see all the accoutrements. I will go back for Chalamet. He is. It could have gone so, so, so, so wrong. And it doesn't. And he knows it. And that's why he's having one of the great promo runs in American history. Is like, he didn't fuck it up. And if he had fucked this up, it would have been one of the all time flops in, in like you could ever have. So I. I really do think that there is a kind of. He is trying to look at this object straight on. And it is an object that never, ever allowed itself to be regarded that way.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I mean, what I wrote down in the notes is just like, Dylan is prismatic. He's not linear. And this is a movie that's trying to tell you a linear story. Todd Haynes does the absolute best he can by, as you say, shattering the urn, trying to give him sort of multifarious meaning by putting him inside of lots of different people. Because that's how Bob Dylan imagined himself, as a shapeshifter. There's like, the Irish love Bob Dylan because Bob Dylan is like a folkloric character. He resembles a leprechaun in so many ways because he's a trickster. But the movie, it's like deep and abiding sincerity is just like a little much for me, where I'm like, this is the guy who wrote 4th time around just to make fun of Bob Dylan, you know. Excuse me, Just to make fun of John Lennon, you know, I mean, like, he is. He's like a motherfucker.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And it's a little bit. There's a little bit too much when I say that they're biopic cliches. It's the long holds on people admiringly gazing upon him. You know, it's the like impressionistic flashes of moments rather than any deeper exploration of a big moment. Like him writing a song. Like, what did we really learn about him writing a song in this movie? That he was like, went over to Joan Baez's apartment one night and did it to like embarrass her.

[Mallory Rubin]

Like, did you come here to make me watch you write? It was fucking iconic.

[Sean Fennessy]

Great line. Great line.

[Mallory Rubin]

Incredible.

[Sean Fennessy]

And then there's also just like the very typical, like, this is the establishment and what he's doing is wrong and it's way beyond what anyone should do in an artistic way space that's in every one of these movies. And the other thing is just like this movie got refashioned to be a love triangle. And I'm not totally sure that that stuff ultimately works, but I'm curious what you guys think.

[Mallory Rubin]

Oh, my God. I have so many thoughts on everything you both just said. Okay, the pod's like, 10 hours, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, we just started. This is actually a live telethon for Bob.

[Mallory Rubin]

That would be great. Sign me up if we ever need.

[Sean Fennessy]

He'll be performing at the end. Okay.

[Mallory Rubin]

On the love triangle front. So obviously that's true. Sylvie Joan Bob. And despite those parts of the movie, not always gripping us and grabbing us the way that other parts do. I will say that when they're singing It Ain't Me Babe and she is watching, it fucking shattered me. Like, it destroyed me. It was devastating. When she's watching. When Sylvie is watching him sing, the times they are a change in. And this is the figure who, when everyone else was like, sing the classics, right? What folk music is, is a tradition that we pass on and share. Silvie was the one who said to him, well, the old songs, like, had to be new once. Play your songs. And then she watches him sing. The times they are a change. In one of the best moments of the movie in general, we'll talk about some of our favorite musical numbers. So I'll come back to that. But the piece of paper, the scrap of paper that she found with a verse from that song. And she has to confront the fact that he would not share that with her, but shared it with the world. Like, those parts of it were, I thought, very emotionally impactful over. Although thematically, the Sylvie Joan Bob love triangle is just a parallel to the folk rock love triangle. That's the real love triangle in the movie. And it's. You know, I thought the movie was effective in that sense. Sense of, like, drawing the parallels and saying, like, it's a. It's a story about expression and passion and temptation and, like, understanding his compulsion for constant reinvention through that lens. Like, where are you being pulled in a given moment in time and saying to everyone around you who you form a connection with at any given point, there's going to be something after you, and there's going to be something.

[Chris Vernon]

It's the same thing he was saying to, like, music fans. As soon as you're into Highway 61, I'm on to something else. As soon as you're into Blonde and Blonde, I'm on to something else. I'm gonna disappear. I'm gonna come back. You think I'm, you know, this iconoclast. What happens when I become, like, a devoutly religious singer? You Know, like, he's always confounded and sometimes maddeningly ways.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

What we expect of him.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah. And I think, like, to the point about being an. I mean, that's obviously one of the great joys of the movie. And I think it. It had to be there. Like, you can't. You can't make a Bob Dylan movie in a world where Don't Look Back exists.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

And then be like, he's a nice guy.

[Chris Vernon]

He's a cool guy.

[Sean Fennessy]

You just.

[Mallory Rubin]

You just simply couldn't do it.

[Chris Vernon]

The nice thing that they did is they capture him also being a funny asshole.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

You know, could be cruel, could be a little bit nasty.

[Mallory Rubin]

And very honest. And this gets back to what you were saying early earlier about, like, opportunity, but just also ambition. And the fact that, like, people talk a lot about. I mean, it's very difficult to say any. There's nothing new to say about a Bob Dylan song. But, like, part of what's always fun in perpetuity to talk about is just how, like, he makes you feel at a given moment in time. Right. And one of the things that I think, even if people have very different relationships to his music that recurs is, like, the truth, the honesty, the wisdom. Right. Like, the guitar picks not dipped in honey, it's dipped in acid. Like, the asshole is part of the draw. Like, the gall to say those things out loud and then sing them to the world. I loved the, like, the moment when, like, he and Silvia walking down the street, I think maybe when they're on the way to see before they hit the theater to see, like, Now Voyager. And he says, you know, there's that, like, about being a freak, right? And she's like, are you a freak? And he's like, I hope so. I loved that. Right. And he's like, you can be beautiful, you can be ugly. Like, you can't be plain. And I think that sometimes. And I have this tendency, too, and, like, the compulsion to talk about the. You know, the church of Bob Dylan and, like, sermons, but not preachy ones like you. You know, the fact that one of the things I love about Don't Look Back and that incredible documentary is, like, the moment where they're. Like, the crowd was silent, and that was amazing. Like, people sat in awe to listen to him. It wasn't like, screaming, Right.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, part of that is because of what you were just describing, which is that in 6263 Newport Folk Festival, he was the only person singing new songs. So they were listening to the words because they were not songs that they had heard 100 or 200 times before. And so there was this sense of revelation. There was this messianic moment because it was about arrival. I don't know. I still think there's like, definitely some rote stuff.

[Chris Vernon]

Here's a way to ask the counter of this. Did he bang Joe and Baez the night of the Cuban Missile crisis? Is that in Chronicles?

[Sean Fennessy]

Did he drop a bomb on her? Is that what you're saying? Did he. Fidel the button?

[Chris Vernon]

Did he throw Khrushchev's boot at her?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, I mean, that's an interesting. That's an interesting device to talk about is, you know, that they. It's. I thought that the film shows some restraint in that respect. For example, we don't go to the march on Washington, a place famously where.

[Chris Vernon]

You see it in tv, though.

[Sean Fennessy]

We see it on tv, but, you know, Bob and Joan performing there. Like, we don't go there and try to recreate that sequence or anything.

[Chris Vernon]

And then Forrest Gump walks by.

[Sean Fennessy]

Exactly. But we do have the Cuban Missile Crisis. And, you know, someone watches on TV and they run downstairs and they run down to the cafe and, oh, right on time. Bob Dylan singing Masters of War just so happened to be singing. Just as we all lived in fear and strangers were throwing each other through the streets. It's like, it's really ginned up stuff. Not that the Cuban Missile Crisis was not an absolutely terrifying moment in American history, but it's when you start bending time around a person's mythos that I get a little bit queasy in these movies. And so I, I don't. That's. That is a rare case where they did something that I was like, this is too much.

[Chris Vernon]

There's going to be a lot of like, he actually didn't do that then. And this is. Why is he playing.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think you kind of need to.

[Chris Vernon]

Bringing it all back home. Songs like, he's writing them, but the album's already out. Like, there's. There's definitely moments like that. I did not think of that for one second while I was watching the movie. I was never like, well, you know, I. I was. I was like, pretty affected by almost all of it. And. And, you know, like, I gotta say, I mean, I would be the first person to be like, why is this movie about, like, his two girlfriends? Like, he changed the world. Like, I think we could make. You know, I found that I. I found Elle Fanning to be really affecting. I found Mark. Barbara was incredible.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was shocked, shocked.

[Mallory Rubin]

Unbelievable.

[Chris Vernon]

And I thought he had, like, legitimately, really electric chemistry with both of them. With everyone.

[Mallory Rubin]

With Woody, with Pete, with Jesse. Like, with everyone.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's it? That's all you want to say about. You have nothing else to say about women? That about does it on that front, not desire. Yeah, I mean, I think I was.

[Chris Vernon]

Do you want to talk about red rooms? There's women in that, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

There certainly is. You know, Joan is such an interesting figure in their history. You know, they're still friends. They still have this relationship. She's talking in no direction home so amusingly about him, or she's just like, God, he was such a bastard, wasn't he? It was so great, but I hated him. But I loved it.

[Chris Vernon]

There's scenes in Don't Look Back where she's singing a song. Grossman's sitting in the hotel, like, reading some papers. Dylan is typing and drinking coffee and smoking, and she's just like, you should finish this song that I'm playing.

[Mallory Rubin]

Like, that was a good one.

[Chris Vernon]

And then, like, their banter and their interaction. I'm like, to your point, Mal, it's like, in a weird way, like, I don't think you can actually recapture the crazy, intimate moments we have of Bob Dylan's life at a time when that was not common.

[Sean Fennessy]

It doesn't really try to put any of those moments from Don't Look Back. I didn't revisit Don't Look Back after seeing this. But I don't think that they're unlike.

[Chris Vernon]

Say, hey, it's a lot of it. That's London. He doesn't really exist.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right. He doesn't go to London. Right, right. Okay. Yeah, I think that's a good choice, because some of those moments shouldn't. They shouldn't try to replicate them.

[Mallory Rubin]

Also, every one of those incredible, infamous interviews, you're like, Cate Blanchett really nailed that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, she's. Yeah, she's phenomenal. But, like, the Donovan stuff, for example, where he's just so mean to Donovan, just like, destroys his soul.

[Mallory Rubin]

Donovan got one. He got. He caught one stray in this movie.

[Chris Vernon]

That a lot of people put that video up of, like, Donovan. There's a Don't Look Back scene where Donovan plays a song and then Bob Dylan takes the guitar, and it's like Kobe running through Paul Gasol, where it's like, yes, we're not fucking homies. Like, this is. It's all over now. Baby blue. Like, put yourself in a. In a crypt.

[Mallory Rubin]

Not the same.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, but I've. I've heard also that, like, they were friends and then that he did not mean that to. It's like almost like the. Where the myth and the reality leave.

[Sean Fennessy]

Even if you're potting with me, you know, I might try. I might hit you with one. But it's out of love, man. You know? Hurry, Gurney.

[Chris Vernon]

I didn't care about Joan Baez's interior length.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, I mean, she's obviously a person who I think could withstand a movie like this, too. And we just get a really one perspective of her. But obviously, Timothee Chalamet learning to play guitar, I think, from scratch and singing all these songs is an amazing accomplishment. Joan Baez is one of the signature American singers of the 20th century. I mean, her voice reverberates through an entire generation. And Monica Barbara does a pretty good job.

[Mallory Rubin]

She's amazing.

[Sean Fennessy]

And she didn't sing before this. Like, I saw an interview with her after my screening, and she was like, yeah, I had to learn to sing during COVID I was like, what do you mean, learn to sing? Learn to sing like Joan Baez. So this movie is crazy.

[Chris Vernon]

Actually, one of the first films that I can think of that almost benefited from the delay.

[Sean Fennessy]

I completely agree with that because it.

[Chris Vernon]

Was initially called Going Electric. They were going to start it in 2020, I think, or something like that was the plan.

[Sean Fennessy]

He said in 2019, he showed Ford B. Ferrari to the Telluride audience. And either on the way home, he got the Jaycox script from the president of Searchlight. And he was like, I think you should do this. And he read it on the plane or maybe read it that night and emailed him the next day and was like, I need to do this.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah. So this is a situation where I don't know whether or not, like, if they had shot that in June of 2020 or something, would Timothy Chalamet's stuff all be, like cutaways and, you know, half and half shots or something? But clearly he has spent between playing Paul Atreides and Willy Wonka, like, learned to play guitar.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

Three Lords pretty convincingly to the point where they're actually able to use his guitar playing. There's that one scene. Can we talk about specific scenes and stuff? There's that one scene when he's early in his recording career. I think it's his first session and he's not singing into the microphone, so he has to start the song over. And I'm like, I think he's doing that. That's pretty. That's pretty dope. It's like Watching Tom Cruise play pool in Color of Money, you're like, well, if you can do that, then we can do all sorts of other stuff around you. Being able to convincingly do the thing that this movie is about.

[Sean Fennessy]

And that has gotten me thinking a lot. I'm very curious what the edit of this movie was like, because you mentioned this earlier, that there's. It feels like 60% performance. It feels like a huge chunk of the film is just singing. Yeah. And maybe when they got on set and they realized these kids can really do this, that maybe we should start cutting away at sequences. Maybe there are things that we don't need to do because the movie, and the movie is roughly two hours. Right. It's not some like overstuffed, three hour epic.

[Chris Vernon]

220 maybe.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, 220. So I'm curious about that. I'm not entirely sure I will say. I mean, the thing to me that works the best in terms of the framework and device aspect of the movie is Pete and Bob and Seeger and Edward Norton and what he's doing. And there's a part of me that wanted to host this whole pod, like Pete Seeger just like, hey, I'm Sean Fennessy and this is the big picture. I'm here with Chris Ryan.

[Chris Vernon]

I'm Sean Fennesee and I'm real happy about Juan Soto coming over to Queens.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mallory Rubin just dropped in. Just dropped in to play a tummy for us.

[Chris Vernon]

Buster Olney said that Steve Cohen's gonna regret that contract. We'll see about that. Buster. This song is called Wim Away.

[Sean Fennessy]

If you're.

[Chris Vernon]

No comment.

[Sean Fennessy]

If you watch, you just think 15.

[Chris Vernon]

Years you guys are. It's a marriage.

[Sean Fennessy]

You were gonna try to troll me on Juan Soto. I don't think so, my friend. I. I really like what he's doing in this movie. If you watch Pete Seeger interviews. Pretty close. Yeah, pretty close. That reedy voice and that aw shucks and that stiff posture and the head held high and that kind of like aw shucks morality that Pete Seeger brings to everything. And that clash, you know, like, I think he. To me, I thought the Alan Lomax aspect of it is way less effective.

[Chris Vernon]

I want to get to that.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Chris Vernon]

I have to say, one of the really great underlying tensions to the Seeger Dylan on screen and Chalamet Norton thing on screen is that if you have ever watched any Ed Norton interviews, he really would like to have played Dylan. Like, oh, yeah, he talks about Bob Dylan so much in interviews. Like, people will be like, ed Norton, welcome. You're in the Italian Job. He's like, Bob Dylan, 63, does, like, gets a Telecaster at the West Village guitar shop. And that idea that, like, he kind of missed that window to be able to do that. Although I will make the argument that Mangold could just do the link later, like, come back to this in six years and have another shallow.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was gonna raise that to you guys.

[Mallory Rubin]

That's one of the interesting things about, like, Walk the Line, Dial a Destiny. Logan, he. Mangold is. This is what I really like about his movies, actually obsessed with legacy. Yeah, like, Dial of Destiny worked a lot better for me than I think it did for most people, because I was like, it's kind of like brave and cool to be like, Indiana Jones got old and washed and the world passed him by. And so it's so interesting to pair him with, like, the birth of Dylan, the dawn of Dylan, but just having.

[Chris Vernon]

That other actor be like, God damn it, but that's. Could have been me.

[Sean Fennessy]

That is funny.

[Mallory Rubin]

But that meta aspect is perfect.

[Sean Fennessy]

It plays. Yes.

[Mallory Rubin]

For Seeger because, like, so you were. It will not surprise you to hear this at all. You were completely, reasonably mocking, gently, lovingly mocking the, like, wide eyed, doe eyed, oh, my God, Bob Dylan look on everybody's face in the film. I, like, absolutely loved that part of it because that felt so true to me that that is what would happen when people heard him sing for the first time. Like, who wrote that?

[Sean Fennessy]

I just think cinematically it's boring. You know, it's just not. It's just not good movie making to make you look at someone looking at something.

[Chris Vernon]

It's like Spielberg eyes.

[Sean Fennessy]

But.

[Chris Vernon]

But it. I don't know. It's like not a dinosaur. It's a guy in a West Village bar.

[Mallory Rubin]

So, like, yes, I would say, like, with like, Albert or even Joan for those reasons. It's like you're like, yeah, wow. I would probably look that way too, but less effective. But with Pete and Woody, it. It felt really, like, keen and, like, it tapped into what that would actually have meant in that moment.

[Sean Fennessy]

So to me that you just put your finger on something that I wanted to point out. It works so well in the opening scene when he sings a song to Woody. When he sings a song to Woody. To Woody when he's in the hospital bed in Jersey and Pete is looking at him. And it's the thing, you know, it's the thing that Pete literally says where he's just like, I'm watching the future unfold before me in the form of this Minnesotan kid. They nailed it. Like, they got the thing that I needed, which was like, you look at this person, you hear their voice. You see the conviction and the creativity. And you're like, he is. He has arrived.

[Chris Vernon]

He is him, but then he is mother.

[Sean Fennessy]

But, like, they do it like 13 times in the movie. You know, at a certain point, I just thought it was a little bit overstated because we all. We're already in our seats for the Bob Dylan movie. You know, we're already here. I am seated to genuine.

[Chris Vernon]

I kind of also wondered whether or not just in the practicalities of filmmaking. I'd be very interested to hear Mangol talk about this. I don't know if he's going to come on the show. But, like, the. It feels like they shot the Newport stuff, like, in a block, probably, right? Like, over the years they have, like that. They have that crowd and they can do that a certain amount of those. Same thing, probably for the cafe and the smaller venue shoots. And it did get me wondering, like, I guess, what else would you shoot? It's either the band or it's people watching the band. People watching the band. You have to convincingly be like, these people are having their fucking grape squeezed right now. Like, Bob Dylan is playing Masters of War. Like, they're losing their minds. So there's not that much, like, I wonder, would you have been like, into, like, if they had cut away from the reality of the moment to show, like, news footage of, like, the things happening in the streets? Like, I kind of like keeping it audience and Dylan, you know, even if it is repetitive.

[Sean Fennessy]

And I. I'm not a filmmaker and I don't have like a here's what would have been better take on that. I think it's just that there was like an over reliance on a tactic that you see in all of these movies, which is that they shove this concept down your throat because they don't know what else to do because he is inherently a musician and not an actor. And so there's nowhere else to go in the movie, which just kind of limits it to me as a movie experience. But, you know, when the songs. When you're playing hard, Brain's gonna fall or whatever, like, that's. That's. That's the song, you know, that's a song that can change lives.

[Chris Vernon]

So let me ask you, did you find yourself coming aside from obviously, like, there's half a dozen to a dozen musical performance in this, where everybody just is like, I'm fucking taking my shirt Off.

[Sean Fennessy]

But they're not, though. That's the thing, too. Until we get to the final sequence. I'm sorry to cut you off.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

But it's only at the final sequence where there's any meaningful action happening. I guess Sylvie kind of storms off. But, like, aside from that. Oh, well.

[Chris Vernon]

So this is my. I mean, take my. Like, I'm storming out just because I'm like. He's singing, girl. North Country. This is good. Yeah. Did you like or even prefer Bob Dylan goes into a party. Bob Dylan wanders into an Irish bar. Bob Dylan does, like, everyday shit.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did like that.

[Chris Vernon]

Bob Dylan quickly cleans up an apartment before his girlfriend gets home.

[Mallory Rubin]

That was quite amazing.

[Sean Fennessy]

Mal pointed out one of the more interesting sequences, which is sort of like his. The early stages of his meeting with Sylvie and them going and catching a movie and then talking in a diner. That was like, a legitimately dramatized period of his life that I haven't seen in that way before. And so that, like, that is an exploration of, like, who this kid was and whatever it was. 62, 61. And I guess I could have used a little bit more of that. A little bit more of, like, a deepening of the relationships between those characters. I think I would have liked to have seen a couple of more quiet moments between Bob and Pete. Like, what did they actually talk about?

[Chris Vernon]

Or how did that relationship decay? You know?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. And they make it seem like it's just because of the creative decision making that Bob had. But, you know, Pete's got a lot of, like, unexplored jealousy there, too. And that's not really interrogated at all. Like, Edward Norton's face is doing a lot of work there. And he gives a very good performance, but nothing is really, like, unpacked.

[Mallory Rubin]

I wanted to ask you guys about that, actually, on the tracking the Seeger part of the shared arc, but also just the Seeger arc. Then there's the scene where they're all sitting around the table prepping for the festival and, you know, quite concerned. Right. About what will happen and what will happen.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

As he plays these new songs.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah. And Pete is the Dylan defender in that scene. Right. And then, of course, we have a couple moments between them at the shirt shop.

[Sean Fennessy]

Wonderful stuff. I like that scene. Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

Genuinely wonderful stuff. But there's not too much time with Pete between him saying, like, well, would it really be so bad in the room full of the sentinels defending the folk revival and him in one of the great mythical moments in music history. Considering grabbing the ax. Right. Did that feel. Did you feel like we needed a couple more beats of connective tissue, or is there enough to understand about what Dylan represented for achieving Seeger's dream, for realizing Seeger's dream of the folk revival reaching the masses, to just, like, inherently get that. That being jeopardized would be, like his life's work and ambition crumbling in real time.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a. This is a very interesting conversation. I'm not sure if it's a good conversation for a movie podcast about the Bob Dylan movie, but the ultimate philosophical friction between Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan is that Pete Seeger is like, I am a product of and a vessel for a civic cause that I want to help change the world by speaking and singing honestly about the struggles of those who have less than. Which is the most noble thing in the world. And Bob Dylan does do that for a period of time. He does it from his perspective, out of empathy for the human condition, not because he wants to be a part of a movement, but he does it all the same. And so Pete adopts him and uses him in a way, with nobility, I think, but uses him to further his own philosophy.

[Chris Vernon]

He's the megaphone.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Mallory Rubin]

He brought the shovel. Everyone else had teaspoons. Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

So we get to the end of that time, and Bob Dylan is like, I am a flame that can't be held. I have to go explore other sides of my creativity, and it's okay to turn into the self and to explore what I want and what I think will make the most for me and hopefully will give people something that they want. And Pete is left to feel like, really, he basically gets left behind in 1965.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah. He's on public access television and is.

[Sean Fennessy]

A tragic figure in many ways. This is both true in real life and in the movie, even though Pete Ziggur is fondly remembered as an American hero by some. But, like, what is right? What is actually. Like, what is the right path? Like, Bob is confronted by this conversation by Pete at the end of the movie, but there's no discussion because Bob will not have the discussion.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah. I think that you're touching on something that I was trying to get at, which is not the counterfactual of what James Mangold could have done. It's More that in 2024, what matters is these songs. And what people will care about in 50 years are these songs. And so this movie is a platform for. For these songs in all their different stages, live in an apartment, in a bathtub, in the studio, whatever. In 2060, if we're all still here, we will not be talking about how Pete Seeger felt about being slightly used in the. Not on a mass level. Right. And I think that this movie is leaning into the idea that, yes, the drama probably comes from should he or should he not go electric at Newport? Who should he spend his romantic time with? Did he live up to Woody's dream of an American song? But what we really want to spend our time on is showcasing this music in the best possible circumstances. And that is like the movie you get versus the movie you want. Basically, the movie we might want is one that maybe digs in a little bit more to. Yeah, maybe I'm just details and stuff like that. And like the kind of like the trends and the currents of the West Village at that time. And I wanted more Bobby Neuwirth. I wanted more Mike Bluefield. I wanted more Al Cooper. I wanted more sessions. And what records was he listening to?

[Sean Fennessy]

What my understanding is that the original script is more that because it's more attuned to the Elijah Walt book, which is much more of a music book and not a biographical movie or a biographical story. It's about the creation of sound and the decision making around plugging in. Which I think for nerds and historical fans would have been exciting. But it's obviously not like a movie that Searchlight wants to make either. You know, there needs to be some star aspect to it. I don't know. What do you think?

[Mallory Rubin]

So one of my favorite moments in the movie, I just was like, this is incredible. Is the hard cut from the raucous I've discovered, like my siren whistle. We're making Highway 61 Revisited Studio Session into sad, lonely Pete and his banjo saying, I can't see you in that little magic box. And we are just in two, completely different moment in times. And so that conversation in between the two of them in Newport at the end, when Pete goes to tell the story, the fable of the teaspoons. And Albert's like, we get it.

[Chris Vernon]

Seven in the morning.

[Mallory Rubin]

Seven in the morning. I'd like sleep. Very funny. Very amusing.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think Norton is fantastic in that scene.

[Mallory Rubin]

Oh, my God. I mean, Norton is tremendous throughout the entire movie. Like, I thought he was sensational. Again, the whole cast was great. I think what you said a few minutes ago is inarguably right. Like, there's nothing. Even though we get a couple moments of, like, which guitar do you want? And this, like, illusion almost that there's a potentially different outcome than the One that we know not only happened because it happened, but is inevitable because of who this figure is. There was still the tension in that conversation. When Bob puts on the shirt and sits down, is like, can someone just bring me a cigarette? And actually does, despite having rolled his eyes at Pete when he saw him in the street previously, want to hear him out. Like, want to give him, like, the grace of having that conversation. And I loved the way that that scene was structured. Because the thing, even if this is not really what happened, and the conversation could never have led to a different outcome, the thing in the movie's dramatization of that moment that swings it, the thing that leads Bob Dylan to get up and put his boots on and his tight pants on and walk out is like, I sent you my record. Did you even listen to the songs you're telling me not to sing? And so it's like, how could you possibly, no matter what that person had done for you? Like, I think the movie. I'm really interested in what the movie says not only about adoration and adulation, but, like, contempt. Because I think. And I think it does this deftly, actually. I don't think that the movie wants to tell us or. Or believes that Bob Dylan had contempt for folk music or Pete Seeger or the people in the room at the banquet who were like, why didn't you bring your guitar? It's like contempt for the idea of standing still.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah. And I almost feel like in the. In the reality of the film, maybe not in historical reality, that Dylan was rejecting the fact that Pete was trying to compromise. You know what I mean? Like, the line. There's some line in there where he's basically like, if you just do it one more time, if you just play acoustic one more time for us. And it's almost like if it's just one, then it actually doesn't matter. If it was like, no folk music is this. You are a folk singer. We built you. You can't go anywhere. That would be one thing. But instead you're like, I know that I can't stop what's about to happen, but if I could just get, like, five more songs from you that make it so that this can then live into next summer and we can sustain this movement. And it was almost like the. The middle ground is what he rejected. That's how I. That's how I read that scene was like, him trying to. Him trying to. Like, he just didn't want to compromise at all. But you're right. Like, that's a great Moment in a film. The film. I wish it had more moments of tension like that.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

More moments of, like. There's, like, this kind of artistic conversation. And this idea about artistic purity happening. But I think it's like, we gotta get to the next song, you know? Like, that's sort of where the movie's engine takes it.

[Mallory Rubin]

So I started reading the book. I had never read this book. I'm about 25% in, so I haven't finished it yet. But, I mean, it is fantastic.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's really good.

[Mallory Rubin]

Holy shit. The writing is, like, unbelievable. And it's just so interesting.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's not Wall's first Bob Dylan book.

[Mallory Rubin]

He's a true scholar. Boy, you can tell. But I loved this. This is from the intro, actually, but I loved this paragraph that kind of sums up their relationship and what it represented. Seeger is a central figure in this narrative. Because the story of Dylan at Newport is also the story of what Seeger built, what Newport meant to him. And the lights that dimmed when the amplifier sucked up the power. It is about what was lost as well as what was gained. This is like. This is what made me think about what you just said here about inner. About intertwining ideals and dreams that never quite fit together. And about people who tried to make them fit and kept believing they might. Like the idea that this was always sort of an illusion. That this could be lasting.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

And so if you're holding onto something that you knew was always going to be a moment instead of forever, like, how could you invent? How could you explore? How could you grow? How could you try? How could you do all the things that are elemental to who Bob Dylan is as a figure?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I think. I think one of the things that he is rejecting, too, is just the idea of expectation from any direction. And so the, you know, religiosity of Lomax and Folkways and that those institutions I think he just found useful for a time. Yeah. But ultimately, as suffocating as anything coming in the opposite direction that would seem, he would be opposed to politically. Because they both represent a kind of conservatism that he's not interested in.

[Chris Vernon]

Well, to your Chalamet. We can talk about Chalamet. But to your point about the portrayal of Dylan is a little bit of a prick. It's like one of my favorite little moments is when he's flirting with El Fanning at the. The hootenanny in the Harlem Church. And the woman's like, shh. And he's just like, you know, like, I'm. I'm trying to get laid. Like, it's not about, like, this sort of, like, piety to, you know, oh, these guys. Are they playing traditional, like, folk? No, I don't care. Like, I'm trying to pick up this girl.

[Sean Fennessy]

One of the only people that he bends the knee for is Johnny Cash, which is a very interesting thing that is very accurate. Like, if. If you read Dylan's writing in Chronicles, if you listen to him in interviews to this day, he has this abiding respect, and he's almost, like, intimidated by Cash in a way. And so Cash is portrayed by Boyd Holbrooke in this movie, who has been Chris's number one boy for going on 10 years. What did you think of Cash?

[Mallory Rubin]

How to compare specifically to his musical renderings in Justified.

[Chris Vernon]

I've been a long time fan of this guy, as is James Mangold. So he's been used multiple times by Mangold. I. I think I put in their document a picture of Warren Buffett, because Berkshire Hathaway has been seeding. We've been spreading the investment across many years since. Yeah, I think he. Look, that's a. That's a really hard part to play. And Joaquin Phoenix did a pretty damn good job of it. But what he does is he's the only person in this movie is cooler than Bob Dylan.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

And Bob Dylan and Timothee Chalamet know it. And I think their correspondence is perhaps a little bit more intimate than their in person meetings. Like that in person meeting outside of the motel where Boyd's got a box of Bugles and is crashing his car back and forth.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's what it's like with me and you off Mike.

[Chris Vernon]

But that is the best scene in the movie.

[Mallory Rubin]

Very sad.

[Sean Fennessy]

You want a Bugle dropping the coke?

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah. The cast does a great job. I mean, do you. Do you feel like we've done Chalamet here?

[Sean Fennessy]

Like, I, at this moment in time, think he's gonna win best Actor. I think he is now just fully confirmed as the. The movie star of his generation. I don't. I really don't think there's, you know, Amanda and I, I think, had Margot Robbie at number one when we did the list last year because of the incredible success of Barbie. Margot Robbie, I think, is, like, getting close to 35.

[Chris Vernon]

He's 28.

[Sean Fennessy]

28. Doing all the right things. I hated Wonka and I hated that he did that. But for his movie stardom, it was the right move. The Dune thing has just paid off magnificently. And now he's making a period piece with the Safdies. So he's really, he has four quadranted movies in such a phenomenal way. And now in the event that he does win best actor, he's the youngest best actor winner ever, supplanting Adrien Brody when he won for the Pianist.

[Chris Vernon]

And you'll be to Michal and May's brutalist. That's the question.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't know. God willing, Brady Courbet is still making movies at that point. But it's very rare in this century for someone to be able to pull this off, to be able to play all these different kinds of parts and to maintain this kind of allure. But he's also doing things that Leonardo DiCaprio did not do going on college game day.

[Chris Vernon]

I don't want to be too overzealous about this, but I have to say the, the, the, you know what the logical way to have done this is like he did an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple's YouTube and he was very, very like pious about Dylan and.

[Sean Fennessy]

His like he has been throughout this whole tour.

[Chris Vernon]

And so I was kind of like, this is going to be one of those things where it's like, did he accidentally like forget to drop the Dylan voice when he's doing interviews? And is this going to be like a little bit too. The Austin Butler too safe? Yeah, a little bit. And then when he did Game Day, I was like, Lisan Al Gaib.

[Mallory Rubin]

Totally. Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

This is a music, this is basically a musical about a guy from the 60s. How are we gonna get the fucking homies to come out? And it's going on game day and being a true ball knower and now. And since then, I was just telling Mal, like he did this clip with Entertainment Tonight and he's like, she, this woman's like, hi, we're from Entertainment Today. He's like, I know. And they're like, what? And he's just like, I'm responsible for a lot of your engagement. I like, I'm always smashing the heart button. And they're like, okay. And he just plays along with everything they're asking him. They're like, we saw you on game day. He's like, yeah, I don't, I don't really want to be an actor. I want to be a sportscaster. Acting is like an on ramp to sportscasting. And I'm just like, you got it, man. You got it. The whole world's in your hands.

[Mallory Rubin]

Like, what do we think the actual current power ranking is for his heroes between Bob Dylan and Bill Simpson.

[Sean Fennessy]

And Bill.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah, who's one and who's two currently?

[Sean Fennessy]

I mean he's.

[Chris Vernon]

Is Bill reckoned with this at all?

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't think so.

[Chris Vernon]

That's what makes him him, you know.

[Sean Fennessy]

Because Bill won't acknowledge. He doesn't read the comments, doesn't look at his mentions. Has Timmy been in his mentions?

[Chris Vernon]

Do we know if Bill had a choice?

[Mallory Rubin]

Like went on Kimmel, right. And was like serious.

[Chris Vernon]

If Timothee Chalamet was like, I want to do a two hour sit down with Bill Simmons and instead Drake May was like, I will do 15 minutes on Zoom. Brought to you by Right Guard. Who would Bill pick? Oh my God.

[Sean Fennessy]

I think we all know the answer to that question. This is the sound of your ride home with dad after he caught you vaping. Awkward, isn't it? Most vapes contain seriously addictive levels of nicotine and disappointment. Know the real cost of vapes?

[Chris Vernon]

Brought to you by the fda.

[Sean Fennessy]

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[Mallory Rubin]

Marc Jacobs.

[Sean Fennessy]

This episode is brought to you by aws. Amazon Q Business is the new generative AI Assistant from aws. Many tasks can make business slow, like wading through mud.

[Chris Vernon]

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[Sean Fennessy]

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[Chris Vernon]

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Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for [e-mail] learnmore is there anything else you want to say about Chalamet beyond just this is a incredibly difficult to achieve performance that he achieved.

[Mallory Rubin]

I mean, I don't know that I have anything to add. I just thought it was like mesmerizing. Honestly, I don't have anything close to the level of familiarity with the other contenders for best actor this year that you guys do, obviously. But I certainly believe that he should win.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, it's Colman Domingo, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Colman Domingo and Sing Sing Ralph Fiennes in conclave.

[Mallory Rubin]

Ralph Fiennes is the great local life.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, Adrien Brody and the Brutalist and pr. Probably Daniel Craig and Queer would be my guest for the lineup. Strong field, lots of well known people. Brody, of course has won before. The Craig movie is not Beloved Sing Sing is still a smaller film. And then you've got Ralph Fiennes, who the best. All three of us greatly admire and who has a It's time narrative. This is related to the film. Like, will this movie be commercially successful? Because if it is, then the chances of best actor really increase, in my opinion.

[Mallory Rubin]

No idea.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't either. I have no feel.

[Chris Vernon]

I haven't seen any tracking on it.

[Sean Fennessy]

I have no feel for it.

[Chris Vernon]

My guess is that this is going to do very well. My guess is that this is a movie that people who are not like, I'm plugged into movie media and thinking about discourse about movies are like, that's earmarked. That's Christmas day or day after. My mother, who cannot really leave the house is like, I would really like to see a complete unknown in a theater. That's.

[Mallory Rubin]

There you go.

[Chris Vernon]

That's. And like, that is the kind of thing that was like, I think Kamala is going to win because my mom's voting for her. But, like, I think that, like, that's not like, accurate, but you know what I mean, where it's just like, people who don't fuck with movies a lot are like, the four I'm seeing this year, this is one of them.

[Mallory Rubin]

There is something in that, like, again, kind of like meta sense about. About going to the theater to see this, that obviously it's not the same as seeing Bob Dylan in concert, but it's approximating that thing of sharing the music with the crowd. So I do think that there will be a lot of people who feel that urge to go say, like, I want to. And it was fun in the screenings. Like, there was a lot of laughter, you know, at the acid wit. Like the. Everybody. Everybody was very respectful. There was no loud singing, but there was like, you know, some swaying in the seats. All the people were moved. Um, so, yeah, I do think people. And I. I think the thing about it just feels like there's going to be so much out in the world out in the. The ether about the Chalamet performance, that that will then drive even more people who are maybe on the fence to try to see it sooner. I think the thing that was so great about the performance, in addition to just like the awe that you felt watching him play guitar and play the harmonica, the posture, the way he carried himself with the actual singing, it was, I thought, in a way that is like, not always the case in a biopic. The just right calibration of obviously you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Are trying to imitative. And his own voice yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

This iconic thing. But it definitely sounded like Timothee Chalamet was unmistakably Timothy Chalamet's game.

[Sean Fennessy]

It's a good choice to try to get close to the register, but not mimicry.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Which when I watched the trailer, I was like, oh, he's not even trying to do mimicry. Like, this is not close. But then when you feel accumulatively, when you hear all the songs, you see that it's like he's doing the best he can. He can't get to the raspy, reedy place that Bob had that was like, no one really ever sang like that before.

[Chris Vernon]

He also just doesn't smoke 42 Marlboros a day.

[Mallory Rubin]

I think it was north of 80.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

He sounds like him. Also, the one. He's in that, right, like, sweet spot way when he's speaking. Just the way that he says, like, you know, your. Your songs are like oil paintings in.

[Chris Vernon]

A dentist that's in the trailer. And I think that's when people were like, we have Houston, we have a problem.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yes.

[Chris Vernon]

Because, like, if the whole movie is this guy talking like this, and that is actually.

[Mallory Rubin]

But then in the.

[Chris Vernon]

Really offset by Joe Baez being like, what are you talking about?

[Sean Fennessy]

Shut the fuck up.

[Chris Vernon]

Trying to make you coffee. Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

Great stuff.

[Sean Fennessy]

What was your favorite song performance? Do you have one, Chris?

[Chris Vernon]

My favorite is the moment where they're doing Highway 61 Revisited and he's experimenting with the show, the kazoo kind of thing, mostly because it is the, like, most naked. Chalamet is as Dylan. As Dylan is kind of becoming who he is. But he's, like, laughing at a guy making a face whose face we never see. And he's like, you're killing me. Like, I'm going to lose it. Like. And it's all the banter that if you listen to the bootleg series, you get a lot of these alternate takes where, like, Hammond or Wilson are like, hey, man, keep trying that. Or somebody's like, I can't remember how this ends. Or that's all I got. And just to get a little bit of that. Chasing Mercury on screen was great. So that's probably my favorite.

[Sean Fennessy]

I like that one. What about for you?

[Mallory Rubin]

Can I do, like, five or six?

[Chris Vernon]

How about two or three? Yeah. You didn't do a real.

[Mallory Rubin]

I mean, there were, like, three dozen.

[Sean Fennessy]

Songs in the movie. There were a lot. I asked you when you went a second time to make a list of every performance.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

And she did.

[Chris Vernon]

You got.

[Sean Fennessy]

You got close, man. You got Almost every song.

[Mallory Rubin]

I got a lot. Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

How did you do that? Were you writing throughout the movie or did you watch the credits and writing.

[Sean Fennessy]

You just remembered?

[Mallory Rubin]

I, When I left the first time, I was, like, panicked that I wasn't going to be able to remember all of them. So the second time I was really, like, trying to, while still, you know, allowing myself to be swept up in the movie. Pair moments in the chronology of the film with when we heard the, the music. Uh, but also just again, because the, the musical moments were so good, it was pretty, like, easy to remember them. We already talked about song to, to Woody. I, I think that. And I was young when I left home. All kind of pairs, like, early moments where really quickly I realized I was gonna have a great time watching the movie. And like, I, I, you just sort of do. It's like, oh, right, the, the. The prophet has arrived. Um, I thought that Blowing in the Wind.

[Chris Vernon]

Where are we? What number are we at? Just out of curiosity.

[Mallory Rubin]

This is, I'm gonna say technically number. Actual smuggle was something that we had already talked about. Song to Woody. And so I smuggled.

[Chris Vernon]

I was the Ruben smuggle.

[Mallory Rubin]

Blowing in the Wind. When this is like the, the morning after. It's after he smashes Bob and John.

[Chris Vernon]

Can you imagine smashing Joan Baez and then being like, here's my song, Blowing.

[Sean Fennessy]

In the Wind, shades of you on the Skyfall pod, making a turkey sandwich.

[Mallory Rubin]

Unbelievable. I mean, that was just. That was great. And I think it actually particularly memorable because Blowing in the Wind, both inside of his relationship with Joan, where she wants to play it at the concert, and he's like this. But also he just says later, like, they just want me to play Blowing in the Wind for the rest of my life. Right. To have seen, as he was creating it, how just astonishing it was in real time. And the way Joan kind of like, sits behind him on the bed, that was great. You know, I really loved Don't Think Twice. It's All Right, not only because it's one of my favorite songs ever, but the way that it stitched together with where we were in the story in the film, because you're initially hearing Dylan sing it in the studio and you get that who wrote this? He did moment, right? And then it pairs with the iconic photo shoot for the Free Will and album cover. And then we go right from Bob singing it into Joan singing it at the concert, and then into hearing Joan on the radio and that argument with Sylvie and Bob that I just thought that was, like, really, really good.

[Chris Vernon]

She Knew Robbie. You don't sing like that unless.

[Mallory Rubin]

You sure did. She sure did. But I think my favorite was. Was the times they are changing. Like, I thought that was just.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's everyone realizing all at the same time. Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

And that is that. Take it. Like, he didn't do that at Newport. Right. Like, he didn't debut that at Newport.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't think. I actually don't know.

[Mallory Rubin]

And that was in the film Newport 64. And so it's like this pivot point, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. And that. That song is out before then.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah. Well, that album is 64. Yeah. And. But the thing I loved most about that was his response. Like, we get a lot of Sylvie in that sequence. But Dylan's face as the crowd in real time is singing this back to him. And he's like, kind of like maybe not feeling it actually. Right. He's like, what is.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is what have I wrought here happening. Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

I thought that was really exquisite. And the Ain't Me Babe duet was great.

[Chris Vernon]

Did you have any five or ten.

[Sean Fennessy]

More melody that you want to share?

[Mallory Rubin]

There were tons. The music was great. They did a great job.

[Sean Fennessy]

I've always really loved All I really Want To Do. And so him and Joan in Pittsburgh. That was great doing that together. I really liked. I mean, I think the one that. When he's doing a song to Woody, I was like, oh, good. This isn't going to be a fucking disaster, this movie, you know, Like, I. I really was just. It hit me. When the Ship Comes in is like an amazing song.

[Mallory Rubin]

That seems great.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's a very special song in that era for him too, as a writer.

[Mallory Rubin]

I love that.

[Chris Vernon]

I really liked when he. I. I misremembered this. I think he does. I'll Keep It With Mine in. He's like singing it in the bathtub. I thought he was, like messing around with it in the studio, but I maybe miss Marin remember which.

[Sean Fennessy]

Which one?

[Chris Vernon]

I'll keep it with mine. The one that.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yes.

[Chris Vernon]

He's going, yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Is he like on the piano? And I thought.

[Chris Vernon]

I thought he was like. Because that's also in the bootleg series. It's like him kind of never released on an album. Writing that. And then Nico does it later in the 60s.

[Sean Fennessy]

The one thing that is interesting is you mentioned the bootleg recordings. I think the Royal Albert hall performance is my favorite of those. It was kind of monumental when it was released, I guess. Was it late 90s, early 2000s? And that is the same era that the movie ends with where he starts touring the Bring it all back home stuff and Blonde on Blonde and all that starts coming and those recordings are so rip roaring and raw and exciting and this band can't replicate that. And so when part of the reason, when you get to the end of the movie one, I'm just like, the Al Lomack stuff is so cartoonish with like, turn it off and just like fighting the mate. Like, I just. That stuff kind of like bummed me out when I was watching it because I was like, this is such like fake movie.

[Chris Vernon]

I think that that's like a part that's like the. The Cavern run in Top Gun Maverick. Like they have to have something like a dog fight.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, but like that you just described something that's awesome and this part isn't awesome. So I really didn't like that stuff. But also I don't think the band sounds that good. I don't think those performances of those electric songs sound that.

[Chris Vernon]

You don't think they sound that good when you listen to the Newport recordings or you don't think they sound that good in the movie?

[Sean Fennessy]

They sound okay in the movie, but they don't sound as good as the. The acoustic performances in the movie to me. And I have such fond appreciation for those electric recordings that like, that was a rare case where I was like, this isn't as good as stuff like.

[Chris Vernon]

Royal Albert Hall, Manchester are like as good as rock bands have ever sounded.

[Sean Fennessy]

Absolutely.

[Mallory Rubin]

Manchester is fucking insane.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, but there's fucking Loud. Right? Like that's when he's like, yeah, but.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, I mean most of it is good. Like most of the musical performances are.

[Mallory Rubin]

Good just for context. Like what are your favorite Dylan albums actually? Like, do you have a favorite period of his music or kind of dotted throughout his discography?

[Sean Fennessy]

Since college I've felt like the like 72 through 78 is like his masterpiece era. Like I think his writing is at its best in that period of time.

[Chris Vernon]

Not tracks.

[Mallory Rubin]

A lot on the tracks.

[Sean Fennessy]

A lot on the tracks and best album ever made. You know, like the Desire also thing is like non stop perfection and. But you know, you get older and you like get into Saved and you get into all the Christian stuff and start finding ways to appreciate Empire burlesque and you know, like albums that I tried to hear when I was 25 and I couldn't hear it all and now it's on a continuum of interest to me. But I think the 70s stuff is still probably what I like the most. I did, I think in 17, I wrote a piece for the site about the 10 year anniversary of I'm Not There and John Wesley harding, which is 67, and how that's like this odd little. It's like it stands alone. It's like it's not connected to anything. And it's not connected really to the Basement Tapes, which were kind of being made at that time. It's not really connected to the direction that he goes in the late 60s. It's not really connected to Blonde on Blonde. It's like kind of a folk record, but not really. So I. When I was writing that piece, I listened to that album like roughly 300 times. So I have all those songs committed to memory. So I guess that's on my mind too. And what about you? What is your favorite period?

[Mallory Rubin]

Same. Yeah. Blood on the Tracks is my. My absolute favorite. But I mean, because of this movie, I have always loved Free Will and Bob Dylan. But because of this movie, I've been listening to it just nonstop, non stop, really. All of them from. From that, that stretch. But I mean, that's just an incredible album.

[Sean Fennessy]

The first like 14 albums.

[Mallory Rubin]

Yeah. Bringing it all back.

[Sean Fennessy]

They're all good. Yeah. Yeah. What about you?

[Chris Vernon]

His first Going Electric years are to me like kind of like my platonic ideal of what rock and roll sounds like in a lot of ways. So like when you even go back on bootleg and listen to like She's Her Lover now and. And you know, it takes a lot to laugh and I train to cry. It takes a train to cry. Like I'm like. That still sounds like the Oblivions now to me or whatever. So that Blonde on Want's my favorite album. And Pat Garrett and Billy the Kind is my underdog.

[Mallory Rubin]

Fun one.

[Chris Vernon]

I go back to a lot.

[Sean Fennessy]

Number four. That's the one.

[Mallory Rubin]

Blonde on Blonde is so good, Billy.

[Chris Vernon]

Number four. Yeah. Oscars.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I mean, it was nominated for best drama at the Golden Globes and now I think it has found its way meaningfully into Best Picture. I guess that's cool. You know, it's not in my top 10 movies of the year. I like it. You adore. Is this like a 5 star movie for you?

[Mallory Rubin]

No.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Mallory Rubin]

Again, I don't really think it's a movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, it's just like a sentimental object that you enjoy.

[Mallory Rubin]

I just found it like so engrossing.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Mallory Rubin]

Really, like hypnotic. Yeah. And so I loved the experience of watching it. And then I loved like the very familiar. Well, trod Rabbit Hole sent me back into like. That's just a fun, fun experience.

[Chris Vernon]

It's a gateway drug.

[Sean Fennessy]

We.

[Chris Vernon]

We probably have overused the phrase a great time at the movies to describe things that are. Aren't that good. But for a great time at the movies.

[Sean Fennessy]

Red rooms. A great time at the movies.

[Mallory Rubin]

Believe we said that last.

[Chris Vernon]

I'll see you in the red rooms.

[Sean Fennessy]

A complete unknown pervert in the red rooms.

[Chris Vernon]

Breadwin's. I don't know. I'm. My bad. This literally was that. You know, where it's like, you see Twisters and you're like, that was a great time at the movies. It was like, this is like, yo, dude, this is a really, really good time in the movies. If you like Bob Dylan's music, you will love it. Is that a Best Picture winner?

[Sean Fennessy]

No, I don't.

[Chris Vernon]

I also wonder for you because you have this relationship with the Oscars, specifically, where it's like, what's good for movies and the Oscars versus what I want.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's why I've been banging the brutalist drum, because I'm like, it's both. This is something that's looking back and forward. Something that is incredibly resonant right now, but is an ode to something from the past that I hope more people are interested in in terms of the art of movie making and moviegoing. And also will probably be nominated for a fuck ton of Oscars. Like, that's just. That's ultimately my thing.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

I. I often advocate for mainstream movies like this.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

To get recognized because I think it's good for the health.

[Chris Vernon]

Do you think it's industry, like, boomer masturbation?

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, I think I'm. I'm just like, you guys. I'm willing to make an exception because Bob Dylan is the fucking man.

[Mallory Rubin]

How many cranks? How many cranks are you giving this one?

[Chris Vernon]

Oh, man. Four and a half. Four?

[Sean Fennessy]

Wow.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Does that mean it would take four and a half pumps to achieve?

[Chris Vernon]

Oh, right.

[Sean Fennessy]

So, like, what's the scale here?

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, what's the red rooms?

[Sean Fennessy]

Is like one actually better than five.

[Chris Vernon]

How many red rooms do I want to go into?

[Sean Fennessy]

I give this film seven red rooms.

[Mallory Rubin]

Guys. I mentioned red rooms a lot.

[Sean Fennessy]

I saw it. It's a complicated film with a lot of strong ideas.

[Mallory Rubin]

Is it possible that the three most meaningful things we watched this year were Dune Part two, a complete unknown, and Timmy on Game Day? Just the Timmy trifecta.

[Chris Vernon]

One of their great runs.

[Mallory Rubin]

I have no notes.

[Sean Fennessy]

What else is he doing? He's doing this.

[Chris Vernon]

He's got to make Dune 3.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

That might be a minute though, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I hope he doesn't do Wonka. Too. Jesus Christ.

[Mallory Rubin]

I have not seen Wonka.

[Sean Fennessy]

You saw it.

[Mallory Rubin]

I will at some point.

[Chris Vernon]

I'm not going to see Wonka.

[Sean Fennessy]

You won't watch it.

[Chris Vernon]

I will not.

[Sean Fennessy]

Why not?

[Chris Vernon]

I just have no interest in it. I've never even. I don't even know. Is that roll a doll, right?

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Mallory Rubin]

I do know that he got a custom pair of Wonka dunks because I saw that on sneaker news on Instagram.

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay, great story.

[Mallory Rubin]

Thank you.

[Sean Fennessy]

Any closing thoughts?

[Chris Vernon]

I want to keep talking about Bob Dylan.

[Mallory Rubin]

Oh, my God. I know.

[Sean Fennessy]

We don't have to stop. I mean, I made a list of the movies that he's mean that are meaningful to him and some of them are widely available and others are not. We've mentioned don't look back quite a bit. The di Pennybaker documentary. If people are interested in this period. He captures him at the. During this period. Eat the Document is another Penny Baker documentary that is not widely available. I just bought myself a copy on ebay over the weekend.

[Mallory Rubin]

Will you be doing an unboxing on film?

[Sean Fennessy]

Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Bobby in the Box. That's a good idea.

[Chris Vernon]

Dylan on top. Top that. Let's number. You know.

[Sean Fennessy]

What'd you think of Bob's tweet about the movie?

[Chris Vernon]

Oh, man, I thought it was great.

[Mallory Rubin]

Great stuff.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. Do you think you wrote that?

[Chris Vernon]

I don't know. What's up with his Twitter?

[Sean Fennessy]

Okay.

[Chris Vernon]

It's also a strange time to become a prolific X user.

[Mallory Rubin]

I know. Is he on bluesky?

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't know. But the best thing ever was his SiriusXM show when it would be like Sound of Wind. Rusty.

[Chris Vernon]

So many playlists of his, like Bob.

[Sean Fennessy]

Dylan's To Jimmy Jams Do Jan demo.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

This is a great tune from 1957 at Oklahoma. He's really good. And James Austin Johnson is in this movie very briefly as an emcee at Gertie's. He, of course, is the proprietor of the active Best Bob Dylan impression on Saturday Night Live. He busted it out when Chalamet was hosting.

[Mallory Rubin]

Great stuff.

[Sean Fennessy]

You know, it's nice to stumble upon this little Easter egg too, which is that the Jesse character who's the blues musician who appears on Seeger's public access show is portrayed by Big Bill Morganfield, who is the son of Muddy Waters, who is a hugely influential person on Bob Dylan's musical style. And, you know, Bob could play the blues, like pretty credibly play the blues in that time. And so I like that little bit.

[Mallory Rubin]

That was great. Watching them together was great. Particularly Amused by the offer of the guitar and the refusal. Like, it would be like touching your woman's going, hold it at night.

[Sean Fennessy]

I had no idea where that scene was going when it was happening. That was one of the few times where like, ooh, what's happening, happening here?

[Chris Vernon]

Seager tries to get out of the interview with. With the guy with Jesse.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah, Jesse Pete. Couple of other Bob movies. So that we've got the two Scorsese docs. Right. We've got no direction home required viewing. If you liked this movie. Rolling Thunder Review. One of my favorite movies of 2019, I think it was, which is another kind of like assembly documentary that is a little more fictionalized.

[Chris Vernon]

It's a little bit more indulgent in the Bob Dylan self mythologizing.

[Sean Fennessy]

Absolutely. It's pulling in part from Ronaldo and Clara, which is a movie that Bob made in the 70s that was. I don't know if it was ever formally released, but it's kind of like the ultimate bootleg of Dylan Ology at this point. Last Waltz, of course, he performs at the final concert for the band, also made by Martin Scorsese. We got Masked and Anonymous, the Larry Charles movie that Bob wrote that is abjectly terrible, but is a nice little time capsule of that era. I think it's early 2000s. And then Haynes's I'm Not There, which is a great film that I love. And the difference between that movie and this movie is you've got a lot of people in that movie singing scraps of Dylan songs throughout. But you. The movie closes like so mesmerizingly. I don't know if you remember this with just the harmonica performance of Bob like right in 63 or 64. And this movie's like the opposite. Like, it's like a deluge of Bob, like over and over again on your head. So they're. They're an interesting contrast of styles There any other Bob Dylan, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid?

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah, I mean there's. I have a couple that aren't movies but are just like personal experiences. So one thing that if people can find it. I can't remember if it's on PBS's app that they have. The 30th anniversary concert was one of. Was basically my introduction to him. And so that features all these artists who at the time were pretty contemporary, like John Mellencamp and Tom Petty doing covers. And then Dylan comes out at the end and does a set and then does an All Star Jam.

[Sean Fennessy]

So awesome.

[Chris Vernon]

So that features the OJ's doing emotionally yours, which is fucking astonishing. And Neil Young doing just like Tom Thumb's blues, which is incredible. So check that out if you can find it. And what was the other one that I was going to recommend people look for? Oh, G.E. smith from Saturday Night Live. One of the Saturday Night Live band leaders. Did a series of interviews I think with the television Academy, but I can't remember. But he's like him sitting in his apartment sitting for like an hour long interview. Half of it is about is about touring with Dylan. And it is the most insightful, wonderful conversation where he talks about getting hired basically off of SNL and going to meet Dylan at Montana's at like 1am to rehearse all night. And Dylan just being like, you got the gig and then doing the Never Ending tour with Dylan for a while. And it is just an incredible piece of ephemera on YouTube. If you just type in GE Smith Dylan interview, it'll come up.

[Sean Fennessy]

Have you guys ever seen Hearts of Fire? This is a rare film in which Bob Dylan stars a Richard Marquand movie. You may recall him from the Star wars trilogy. He's the lead of this movie made in 1987. He plays a reclusive musician. Once a huge rock star takes a younger female protege played by Fiona while on a tour. She meets a younger, more popular rocker and switches her loyalties. The younger and more popular rocker is played by Rupert Everett. I haven't seen this movie.

[Chris Vernon]

Did we mention Llewyn Davis?

[Sean Fennessy]

We didn't.

[Mallory Rubin]

So great fucking movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

Like Llewyn Davis is a five star movie.

[Chris Vernon]

Yep.

[Mallory Rubin]

That's an incredible movie.

[Sean Fennessy]

And that's obviously a movie that is the most about Bob Dylan without being.

[Mallory Rubin]

About Bob Dylan by the car though.

[Sean Fennessy]

Why?

[Mallory Rubin]

Because I love animals and I don't want to see harm befall them.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's why I see it's also the.

[Chris Vernon]

Inverse of like all the women fawning at Bob Dylan and Incomplete Unknown. Is Carey Mulligan being like, you should.

[Sean Fennessy]

Tape your dick tearing out his soul.

[Chris Vernon]

Yeah.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. I mean, what do you want to say about it?

[Chris Vernon]

It is the other side of this coin. It's the movie that you kind of were looking for inside of this movie a little bit where it's like, why is he like the way he is? And what were the moments in between these moments of singing? And what if Bob Dylan had just basically missed by 5 degrees? And it's one of their great late period films. I read with interest that I think it was in Dan Reilly's GQ piece or I Can't remember. It's around that time Chalamet met with Joel Cohen to talk about how to accurately bring justice to Dylan because he was working with Frances McDormand on French dispatch and I would love to have a recording of that conversation.

[Sean Fennessy]

You think Joel was nice about it?

[Chris Vernon]

I'm sure he was, but he obviously made the movie. He couldn't have made a Dylan movie the way he wanted to make it.

[Sean Fennessy]

Right? Joel Cohen never would have made a complete unknown. That's not of interest.

[Chris Vernon]

He's interested in the guy who fucking missed it. You know, just by like 10 steps.

[Sean Fennessy]

And yet the music in that movie is as close to 1962 at Cafe WA as anything you're gonna hear. So it's a great movie if people haven't seen it. This was great.

[Mallory Rubin]

Had a blast. We gave you our hearts, but you wanted our souls.

[Sean Fennessy]

As always. Come back for more later.

[Chris Vernon]

Seven red rooms. Mallory gave it four out of five cranks. Did we get your official. How many years of Soto's contract will you be giving this movie?

[Mallory Rubin]

Oh, wow.

[Sean Fennessy]

Well, he can have all 15.

[Chris Vernon]

Does he make it past the five year opt out? When he takes Steve Cohen, we're going.

[Sean Fennessy]

To keep that above two through our late 30s. That's what we're all trying to do here at the ringer as we all age slowly.

[Chris Vernon]

I'm Pete Seeger. Steve Cohen bankrupted several industries in order to pay Juan Soto's.

[Sean Fennessy]

Juan Soto dropped in to the 40 man roster. He'll be hitting third in this lineup.

[Chris Vernon]

Heard Juan Soto tore his hamstring in spring training.

[Mallory Rubin]

Do you think that line.

[Sean Fennessy]

That's handle on me. Ricky Bobby. All right.

[Mallory Rubin]

The toilet like still smelling. Is that. Is that about the Mets?

[Sean Fennessy]

That's just. It's just completely unnecessary. It's completely. What's up, you got. You guys are big mad about Juan Soto.

[Chris Vernon]

Not at all.

[Mallory Rubin]

I feel fine.

[Sean Fennessy]

Big, big, bad.

[Mallory Rubin]

I feel fine. I'm mad.

[Sean Fennessy]

You've lost Corbin Burns.

[Chris Vernon]

Better you guys than the fucking Dodgers.

[Sean Fennessy]

Yeah. What are the Phil's going to do?

[Chris Vernon]

The word is. There was a tweet. I can't remember the exact wording, so I'm going to paraphrase. There was a tweet and it was that Dave Dombrowski brought his trunks. No, Dave Dombrowski wants to go swimming, but he brought his swim trunks or something like that.

[Sean Fennessy]

It was Scott Boris and it was an iconic Scott Boris quote. The quote was the Phillies are not yet in the swimming pool, but they're wearing their swimming trunks.

[Chris Vernon]

Uh huh.

[Sean Fennessy]

Which really? Boris the Goat. He is like the heir apparent to Bob Dylan in terms of poetry of the mind.

[Chris Vernon]

Every time you try to put your hands around Scott Boris, it's like a flame.

[Sean Fennessy]

He burns you. Yeah.

[Chris Vernon]

The AAV is going up.

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't know how to rate this movie. I mean, I feel similarly to you. It doesn't really feel like a movie to me. I will watch it again.

[Chris Vernon]

Do you think your dad's gonna go see it?

[Sean Fennessy]

I don't. My dad doesn't care about Bob Dylan. I didn't get him from my dad. Really. My dad is not a meaningfully progressive person.

[Chris Vernon]

If it was a complete unknown, but it was about Duane Allman, was your dad go see it?

[Sean Fennessy]

Fuck yeah. He would be first in line. He would love that. I liked my experience with it. I really thought it was going to be the worst movie of the year for me. And it is not that at all.

[Chris Vernon]

All okay.

[Sean Fennessy]

It didn't betray my interest in Bob at all. So thanks so much, guys. You're the best. This is nice. Twice in one month on this show.

[Mallory Rubin]

I know I'm spoiled.

[Sean Fennessy]

I know you'll definitely be back at some point in the next five years, Mel. I think you can count on that.

[Chris Vernon]

I'm Sean Fenison. This has been the big picture. Thanks for listening. Savann. Available anywhere you get full fees.

[Sean Fennessy]

I was visiting my friend Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin just dropped on in on us. Came here to do a podcast. Thank you to Chris Ryan, thank you to Mallory Rubin for her work here, and thank you to Jack Sanders, who's our video producer here, filmmaker, one of the good men here at the ringer. Thanks, of course, to our producer, Bobby Wagner, who, boy, he is the light of my life. Thank you for listening to the show. We'll see you next time when we. We talk about the little film called Nosferatu. See you then.

[Mallory Rubin]

That's good. Oh, man.