Inside The New Dylan Biopic: “Bob liked what I was doing and saw that I didn’t have an agenda.”

Director James Mangold speaks to MOJO about getting Bob Dylan’s input on upcoming biopic A Complete Unknown and Timothée Chalamet’s performance as a young Dylan.

Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown

by Bob Mehr |
Published on

WHAT I’M ALWAYS looking for,” says James Mangold, “whether I’m making a western, or an Indiana Jones movie, or a Wolverine movie, or a Bob Dylan movie, is a fable of some kind.” The director – whose credits include the Academy Award-winning Johnny Cash biopic Walk The LineFord v Ferrari, and various big budget Hollywood franchise films – is discussing his forthcoming Dylan project, A Complete Unknown. The movie, set to open on Christmas Day in the US and on January 17 in the UK, stars Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, and an ensemble cast that includes Ed Norton, Elle Fanning and Nick Offerman.

Mangold, who penned the script with screenwriter Jay Cocks – based on Elijah Wald’s 2015 book, Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, And The Night That Split The Sixties – says his chronicle of Dylan’s early career follows the arc of a classic tale.

“The idea of this 19-year-old with a few dollars in his pocket arriving in New York to meet his dying hero Woody Guthrie, having written a song for him, and through that meeting Pete Seeger, and finding his way into clubs in New York, and within two years ascending to a point of taking over the entire folk movement… that was really interesting to me as a fable.”

Crucially, Mangold’s vision resonated with the film’s subject. “When I first met Bob,” recalls Mangold of conferring with his subject, “one of the first things he said to me is, ‘What’s this movie about?’ And I said, It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota, who runs away to the big city, leaving behind all his friends and all he knew, reinvents himself, makes new friends, makes a new community, takes it over, and then starts to choke to death, and leaves. And Bob smiled at that. Because I feel like that is the story. And that intrigued me because I knew I could make a movie about that.”

Mangold notes that Dylan’s direct involvement with the project – a lucky break, due to a pause in his ‘Never Ending Tour’ brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic – helped shape the story even further. “Bob had a tour that he’d just cancelled, and he asked to read the script, and that was the start of our connection,” says Mangold. “He liked what I was doing and saw that I didn’t have some kind of agenda.”

“Then we sat down and had a series of one-on-one meetings, four or five times for at least a half day, just the two of us drinking coffee. And it became a huge opportunity for me to fill in the cracks in the story that the many books about him don’t cover. I felt incredibly honoured to get a sense of his own perceptions of that moment so far away now.”

Mangold is quick to note that A Complete Unknown is not a biopic, but rather a film that focuses on a “moment”, specifically, a five-year period from Dylan’s arrival in NYC in 1961 to his going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.

'Timmy’s incredibly sharp, witty, ambitious, wonderfully odd and cool. I felt he could really embody a lot of things that Bob was.'

James Mangold

“One of the things that I loved about this story is that it’s a younger Bob for most of the movie than most of us have any memory of,” says Mangold. “I felt that gives you a lot more freedom than making a movie compared to the older Bob where it’s so known and completely out there, where you’re competing with not only 700 books, but a dozen documentary films.

Casting an actor to play Dylan proved relatively easy, as Mangold immediately tapped then up-and-comer Timothée Chalamet for the role back in 2020. Chalamet – whose star has risen since then with roles in the hit Dune films – remained the choice, even as production was delayed due to the pandemic and Mangold’s other commitments.

“I thought he was perfect for it from the start and remained so,” says Mangold. “Timmy’s incredibly sharp, witty, ambitious, kind of wonderfully odd and cool. And also, I felt he was hungry for a role like this. Plus, I felt he kind of could really embody a lot of things that Bob was, especially in that early time in his life.”

Mangold says that Chalamet subtly inhabited and evolved the Dylan character, or characters. “There are external consciousnesses which kind of extend to mannerisms and speech, but also wardrobe, make-up, hair, everything,” says Mangold. “But I think what Timmy was always after was growing him from position A to C, but also keeping them all – they’re all the same guy. As Bob sings on his last album, ‘I contain multitudes.’”

Just as Joaquin Phoenix did in his performance as Johnny Cash in Walk The Line, Chalamet does his own singing as Dylan, a decision Mangold said was easy. “One of the key components of a folk song successfully delivered by an artist is the emotional authenticity and connection with the words that fills the void left by less production,” offers Mangold. “Having said that, how could I possibly do that if I’m hitting play on a recording of someone else and Timmy was just moving his lips?”

While the film pivots around Chalamet as Dylan, the cast – which includes Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash – is equally important in telling the story. Mangold says his approach was influenced by the 1985 Best Picture Oscar winner Amadeus, directed by one of his mentors, the late Miloš Forman.

“In Amadeus, Tom Hulce [as Mozart] is the centre of the movie and the wonder of the movie,” Mangold continues, “but it’s the weight he leaves on the king, or Salieri, or his wife, or others and the way he makes so many others feel so mortal, because their work doesn’t quite hold the same candle as his… that was really relevant to me in building the script for [A Complete Unknown]. We need to see how much Dylan affects everyone around him.

“The thing that the movie touches on was that he made so many profoundly influential songs before he even turned 24. Even making the film, it dawned on me just what a motherlode it was, such a profound birthing of brilliant art. And knowing Bob’s own restlessness and his own natural avoidance of being boxed in or categorised, I do think that’s a clear undertow to the story as well. It’s actually a line in the movie: ‘What am I supposed to do? Do they want me to keep singing Blowin’ In The Wind for the rest of my goddamn life?’”

Ultimately, Mangold admits that A Complete Unknown is just one part of the larger Dylan legend. “I don’t feel pressure to define Bob for the ages and all his work over decades. I’m just talking about the moment that this guy blossomed, he became empowered, and then moved on. And where he moved to is either another movie or another writer’s business,” says Mangold, chuckling at the idea of a Marvel-esque Dylan multi-verse filled with sequels and offshoot films. “Well, nothing would surprise me in this world.”

A Complete Unknown will be released in the UK on January 17, 2025.

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