Is Bob Dylan Still a ‘Complete Unknown’?
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So, Jim, if you can join me in a three-to-one clap for sync purposes, that would be... See, I'm already thinking, why is it useful for us both clapping at the same time? Wouldn't you just want me going three, two, one? Because your sound person is going to have two claps at the same time, and that's only going to confuse them. Anyway, that's my... Mr. Mangold. Yes. Oscar-nominated director. We got him here. Right. All right. Here we go. Intro now. Intro.

I'm Gilbert Cruz, editor of the New York Times Book Review, and this is the Book Review Podcast. I'm talking to some of the people behind this year's Oscar-nominated films, and today I'm here with James Mangold. James has had a truly wide-ranging career directing westerns like 310 to Yuma...

Superhero films such as The Wolverine and Logan. You don't want to do this. Classical sports dramas like Ford vs. Ferrari. And action adventures like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny. What are you doing here? Rescuing you!

In 2005, he released Walk the Line, a film about the life of musician Johnny Cash. And this year, he tackles another American master. His film, A Complete Unknown, which looks at Bob Dylan and his formative years in early 1960s New York City, received nominations for, among many others, Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay.

And it's a heart. It's a heart. It's a heart.

James Mangold, welcome to the podcast. It's great to be here. It's great to have you here. So, A Complete Unknown. It's adapted from Elijah Wald's 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric. And that book, of course, is about Bob Dylan, but it's also about a lot of other stuff. It's about the folk movement. It's about Pete Seeger. And it's about these big culture shifts that are taking place in the 1960s. I wonder if you could talk to me about

how you take that nonfiction book and then you turn it into a James Mangold film. I first took a hold of this project when I got wind of Elijah's book and Jay Cox had been adapting it. He continued to work on it after I came aboard for a bit. And then I stepped in and started writing myself as well. And Elijah's book,

It is a very factual and meticulous recounting of the events and personalities that led up to Bob's electric performance at Newport in '65, and was, of course, incredibly instrumental in what we were laying out. Movies just don't have the running time to adequately dramatize that much life. Right.

By really focusing on this period, five years, let's say, between 60 and 65, Elijah's book gives you a kind of focus for what could be a screenplay and a film that is not as easy to find when someone's writing a kind of full biography that starts at birth and ends at death or a Nobel Prize or wherever the book leaves off. I had a kind of idea from the moment I read Wald's book that you could write

You could structure a screenplay along the lines of what Peter Schaefer did with Amadeus, in which you make it less...

your fundamental goal to somehow unlock the simple Freudian secret of the central character. I don't really know what I learned about Mozart watching Amadeus other than he was phenomenally talented. But I do know that I learned a lot about how we feel, we mortals feel about people with immense talent.

And I thought that my strategy became, as I landed as a writer on the movie, was to try to expand the role of the supporting players in the movie. This seemed to me to be the story of a family. And Newport 65 was a kind of like a Thanksgiving run amok in which the prodigal son ends up getting in a fight with dad and driving away. And that if you didn't come to work,

understand his connections to Joan, to Sylvie, um, uh, Suze Rotolo, to Pete Seeger, if you didn't understand these personal relationships better, none of it would ever make sense. And that meant I also had to get into more of the private life and friendships, rivalries, and feelings of Dylan's life. So when did you first actually meet Bob Dylan? When I first met Bob Dylan, um...

Was when I wrote and handed in a draft that went into areas I was told I shouldn't go and his management team. Like personal stuff. Is that what it was? Personal. Yes. Just getting into his romantic life and personal stuff. Yes. I, I, there was tension from them. Not, it wasn't like a freak out, but it was just like, I don't know about this. And that's when COVID hit in early 2020 and the movie kind of ground to a halt and

And about a couple months later, I think in February or March, I got a call from his manager, Jeff Rosen, and he said, so Bob's tour was canceled for COVID. And so he asked to read your script. And I went, okay. And Jeff said, and he did. And he likes it.

And he'd like to sit down with you. And what then happened during COVID was a series, I think of three or four times we sat down together for at least a half day, a session,

And covered anything and everything I could possibly ask him or he could offer me about this period. And his whole attitude was really warm and collaborative. And I have to say, although I was nervous going to the first meeting, I was kind of at ease within seconds and felt that he once again was a character who was surprising me.

That must have been an incredible contrast. He is someone who many, as the movie alludes to, regard as unknowable. He is someone who has often come off as a little bit keeping people at a distance. You know, to hear that he was just sort of relatively open with you about this period in his life is surprising. I mean, it's great for you. It's quite surprising to hear. Yeah, but it also was illuminating because...

We have to remember that so much of what we know about people, particularly famous people, is what we see of them in interviews or in documentaries or on stage. All of these situations are pretenses. All of these situations are pretenses.

dangerous for the person participating in the interview, uh, in the sense that what I say can and will be used against me. Um, and the, I found it really interesting sitting with him where that wasn't on the line and we were having a kind of free ranging conversation where I wasn't scribbling everything down. And I felt that I had a very unselfaware, very honest, uh,

Person in front of me who had just admitted frankly that in some ways he still doesn't understand Much the way you or I or anyone might not remember exactly Why things went down like they did when he was 22 years old makes sense You know many people describe Bob as you said is aloof or enigmatic or arrogant Well, what causes a person to be seen that way?

Are they uncomfortable socially? Are they uncomfortable defining or boxing themselves in or labeling themselves in a kind of interrogatory like this? Or are there other things? If you want to talk about genius, are they only half present in this moment? And is there another part of their brain that's solving a puzzle, a song, a lyric? They're half somewhere else making the very thing we want.

All those questions became interesting things to try and explore and things that I felt like Dylan himself verified for me as kind of...

conditions of being Bob. Don't do this, Sylvie. You wrote a five-minute song about this girl in Minneapolis. Who was that? What happened? You tell me you dropped out of college. I didn't drop out of college. You came here with nothing but a guitar. You never talk about your family, your past, besides the carnival. People make up their past, Sylvie. They remember what they want. They forget the rest. I tell you everything. My folks, my sister, the street I grew up on. Yeah, and I never asked you about any of it. What, you think that stuff defines you? Like,

many people of my age and older, I've thought about Bob Dylan maybe more than I should have, but it really came across how young, how just really young he was when he came to New York, partially because Timothee Chalamet is a young looking man and partially because you really understand like he just left home and here he is all of a sudden. Yeah. He wrote 25 or 30 of the most important songs of the century before he had his 24th birthday.

And Timmy is about five or six years too old to be playing him. So you're kind of, you're really forced to confront how very young Bob Dylan was landing in New York and inventing this persona. It's so interesting, though, that...

I had the exact same reaction when I made Walk the Line with Joaquin Phoenix. When people saw that I'd cast him as Johnny Cash, everyone was like, "He's so young." Because we have all these biases we walk into these movies with. We have the Bob Dylan we know, and that Bob Dylan is a lot older than this kid in this movie.

And we have the Johnny Cash we know. And that, for many, is the guy in the Hurt video or on the Johnny Cash show in the 70s. And it's not necessarily someone right out of their teens. And that's part of the joy of making a movie like this is you're right from the beginning going, I think you're walking in expecting X, but we're going to show you Y.

We're actually exploring something you don't know so much about that's a stone less turned. You mentioned Walk the Line, your film about Johnny Cash. That was adapted from two of his autobiographies. I am also curious about what you've learned about adapting movies.

A work about a real person. How do you tell the story of a life in a way that is sort of legible to people? The way you do it in these two movies are very different in terms of scope. But I have to think there are some things that sort of join them together.

Well, one of the things you do is you have to define your own goals. Movies are bad at dispensing nuggets of factual information. The thing that movies can do that a book can't do in the same way, even a documentary can't do in the same way, is to drop you into this world of

Where the characters are not performing. I mean, the characters, the actors are obviously performing. You know, there is no way when Bob Dylan was, you know, if you watch D.A. Pennybaker's, you know, documentary footage, he knew he was on camera.

All of the behavior you're seeing is by someone who's aware that there are lights and a 16 millimeter camera 28 inches away from their face. Sort of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle of documentary filmmaking. Right. Well, and then when you get to books, you have another interesting principle, which is that the author of a book can actually waffle and say the truth is indeterminate. Some sources say this and some say this.

I actually have to kind of find whatever it is I believe is reality or was the most likely or best dramatic reality and then play that. And I can't play alternates and options and put asterisks on the screen. But all of that is not trying to take shortcuts with reality or truth or responsible factual detail.

It's that your primary goal is another kind of truth, which is you want to make people feel like they were there.

watching something happen in a way that may surprise them because it's not looking backward with this sense of importance. You know, what's it like to watch someone making up a song that's going to be huge when none of them know it's going to be huge? What's it like to be Bob Dylan? Everyone wants to shape you or own you or tell you which song they like better or which one touched them deeply.

All of that stuff becomes really interesting stuff to investigate that you can't necessarily do in the same way these other mediums do it. Let's take a short break and we'll be back with director and writer James Mangold. You thought they were wrong. Can you? You used to. People call, say, once upon a time you're just so fine in your prime.

In A Complete Unknown, you have scenes of Bob Dylan picking out different parts of songs that we all know will become some of the most famous songs ever written. I'm wondering how you approach the challenge of visualizing this sort of creation, given that it's so internal. You try to forget about the very thing you're bringing up and try and go, what did this song come from? What is it saying about him?

I tried not to kind of hit each song with a highlighter pen visually so that it felt like important moment in rock history here. You know, Timothy in high school, I think, had an acting teacher. I love this quote he told me, you know, that musical theater is just acting on pitch. Hmm.

I only heard this from him as we were doing interviews together, but I had a very similar philosophy, which is that the music is dialogue. The music is Bob's most personal expression. They are monologues of personal outlook for the lead character.

And he is making them up as we watch him and his personal life, his struggles, his ambition, his fears, what he's learning about the world. All of it is, is funneling into this sponge of his mind and coming out as fragmentary pieces of beautiful writing. And, and,

What I think we had to do in putting that on the screen was to make it feel unimportant and let the words and the power of the music and Timmy's performance make it important in the moment. You know, you had a somewhat easy time naming this movie Timmy.

with a line that came from one of the most famous rock songs of all time. But I think it is interesting and somewhat surprising to some people to walk into a movie that they think is going to be a

a regular biographical film and walk out feeling as if they still don't understand this man, that they are used to having the psychology of famous people explained to them through movies. And that's certainly not what happens in this maybe because it's not possible with this particular person.

Or is it even desirable? I mean, so many people wax on about the tropes of biographical films. Well, one of the biggest tropes is just reducing the person to a kind of simplistic trauma or event in their life that changed everything. When, of course, we're all so much more complicated than that. And our psychologies are such a stew of so many things.

But what if the thing we don't understand, we just don't want to understand, which is that he's actually different. That he's just a different kind of person than you or I. And that it's not from trauma. It's not from abuse. It's not because of a chemical imbalance. It might just be because he's built different.

or socially awkward or invested in the interior life. He's an introvert whose career puts him on stage. All these things are interesting explanations that may not satisfy the kind of, you know, rosebud clarity that people have come to expect from a biographical film. But I kind of think that

Honestly, I think Timmy's playing it right there. I'll give you an example. There's a scene when he's walking with Elle Fanning early in the film and they're on kind of their first date. What are you doing tomorrow? I told you my schedule. Oh, yeah, painting. And she moves to kiss him goodnight on the cheek. I met my mom in the afternoon. Call me there? And Timmy did this thing where he kind of pulls away as she kisses him, almost like it scared him a little.

And it wasn't something we discussed before he did it, but it made so much sense when he did. And what does that mean? Do I need to explain that? Does intimacy create anxiety for this character?

Maybe the actor playing him intuitively felt it might. And is that an answer or do we need it? Do we always need it to be a kind of literary answer where we unlock something by telling a specific story? If you ask me, I'm asking you, Bob's been touring 60 years. He's written 55 albums.

much of it deeply personal or political. And yet we complain that he won't tell us what he thinks. It is kind of odd. And my suspicion is that because his writing is so damned interesting and creates new questions, we get a little bit perturbed that he won't give us a kind of answer on what that song meant. And I don't think that's fair to him.

I don't think we hold other artists to that standard. I just think his art is so evocative and perplexing that we want more answers and he won't give them. And maybe that's our problem. Do we always need answers? Can we live in question? I'm very uncomfortable with uncertainty. So maybe I'm part of the problem. Yeah. But art is extremely successful in uncertainty. Landing on

A dramatic plane exactly where you knew it was going to land may be reassuring, but it's also kind of uninspiring and uninforming. I certainly don't think that's what anyone thinks you did in A Complete Unknown. Now that you've spent so much time in Bob Dylan land, I'm going to ask you the hardest possible question I can, which is, of all the songs he has written, what is your favorite?

I'm so disappointing with this answer, um, because so I've listened now, I mean, I've lived in his world with his music and not just the albums, but the outtakes and the box sets and the unreleased and the, um,

Blind Willie McDowell is a great song, a kind of epic song, that if I could have put a song of his at the end of the movie, meaning of Bob singing it, if I was going to do that, I would have put that song. I find it kind of an epic Dylan song. Hear that undertaker's bell, honey, can't sing the blues. Blind Willie McDowell.

James Mangold, thank you so much for joining the Book Review Podcast. It really has been a pleasure to talk to you about A Complete Unknown. Have me back. It was a joy. Thank you.