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LAURA TINGLE, PRESENTER: It was one of the most iconic moments in 1960s music - the night Bob Dylan came on stage at the Newport folk festival and played an electric set to the consternation and anger of his audience.
It was a far cry from the folk roots from which he had emerged. Championed by the likes of Pete Saeger and Joan Baez. It is now the dramatic high point of a new movie about Dylan's early years from director James Mangold and starring Timothee Chalamet.JAMES MANGOLD, DIRECTOR: Thank you, great to be here.LAURA TINGLE: The dramatic climax of the film is Bob Dylan's decision to play an electric set at Newport. Why do you believe that was such a significant moment? JAMES MANGOLD: I believe it was a significant moment in retrospect. People look back, afterwards and identify how much the early ‘60s changed. How the late '60s are very different, more raucous, unruly, rock'n'roll, Woodstock, Vietnam, RFK's assassination, the ever-increasing fear of nuclear mutual destruction. That was all really the late '60s and the early '60s were a harbinger of it and I can see people identifying this concert as a kind of turning point. LAURA TINGLE: They were momentous times in the world, but you can only imagine what a strange time it must have been for a young musician who was still only 24 in 1965. Trying to break into the human story and the musician's story was part of director James Mangold's ambition with the movie.JAMES MANGOLD: We have to make a human moment happen that may have historical ramifications but none of the characters are aware in that moment they're making history, and that for me, it was much more important to get the feeling that Bob had to push away the confinements that he had been feeling, and embrace, you know, he had always wanted to play rock'n'roll ever since he was 13. LAURA TINGLE: Bob Dylan has been universally famous for as long as many of us have been alive and universally famous, just as television took the experience to a whole new level. But it was a different sort of fame to that experienced by the Beatles. The lyricism and power of Dylan's poetry galvanised young people. It was political. People saw significance in his every gesture, like this man.REPORTER: I would like to know about the meaning of the photograph of you wearing the Triumph T-shirt.REPORTER: I want to know, it's equivalent photograph, it means something? It's got a philosophy in it.BOB DYLAN: I haven't really looked at it that much.LAURA TINGLE: Fame is still a wild phenomenon to negotiate. The young star of the movie, Timothee Chalamet confronts it himself. Bob Dylan has found his own ways of coping with the immensity of his fame over the years, but a fascinating aspect of this new movie is that it portrays him of something as an invention from the moment he first arrives in New York.LAURA TINGLE: Timothee, your character says that people make up their past, and even when we first see him arrive in New York, he tells people this implausible story about how he used to work in a carnival. Did he feel elusive to you when you were trying to work out how you would play this character? TIMOTHEE CHALAMET: Well, as you so wonderfully put it, this is the interpretation of Bob Dylan. The real man is alive and well in Malibu, California, so he could give you a better answer than I could. James Mangold put together a script that sort of was unconventional, in that it is about a young man, a young artist, whose career takes off quite quickly, who is quite gifted from the jump. And is absent of the tropes of realities and more classic biopics or classic stories of young struggle. LAURA TINGLE: There's a certain Life of Brian madness to Bob Dylan's life in those early years. It's not just screaming girls. People actually thought that he was the Messiah. Do you think that the character you portrayed in the film reflected that madness? Or was it that was what he always was? JAMES MANGOLD: Well, it's probably a little bit of each. You know, we're not the man, so we're only left to make artistic conjecture. It seems to me that it is very possible that a young artist can be completely prepared to deliver gobsmackingly poetic art to a public, but not necessarily be ready for the gigantically adoring response to that art. Those are two entirely different psychological profiles - the ability to handle people considering you a prophet or a Messiah or just a superstar, or just adoring you and the very private, personal, meditative zen like act of making art. TIMOTHEE CHALAMET: I think Jim does that primarily through the eyes of other characters. The wonderful Elle Fanning plays Sylvie Russo, Boyd Holbrook does a wonderful job playing Johnny Cash. Edward Norton, Pete Seger, Monica Barbero plays Joan Baez. Just fantastic. I think that the key to what you're describing is really seeing how Bob Dylan affects those around him in the film, the character of Bob Dylan and seeing what their impact is on him.LAURA TINGLE: Talking about the way that others saw Bob Dylan. Joan Baez certainly has a rather a frank assessment of Bob Dylan during the film. What do you think the other characters do tell us about the Bob Dylan that you're creating in the movie? JAMES MANGOLD: Well, I think that they tell us many things. A movie isn't static, and a role isn't static. It's actually a temporal art form. So you're moving moment to moment through different feelings. One can be in love with someone, and fascinated and even charmed by someone, and think they're a bit of an asshole. These things can all be true and that gives Monica in that moment a chance to play many colours. To be, you know, to be fascinated by his blunt human cruelty, but at the same time, to be completely charmed by it, because she lives in a world of bullshit and endless praise. Too often when we talk about movies in print or even among ourselves, we talk about them as static things. But the characters are one thing in the first ten minutes and another in the middle hour, and another thing in the end, and that's true for all of them if they're alive, in the movie. And so, it becomes hard, because you know, as Bob says, I contain multitudes. LAURA TINGLE: He certainly does and so does the movie. Thank you so much to both of you for talking to us tonight.Bob Dylan has been a universally famous singer and songwriter for a staggering 60 years but there was a time when he was a complete unknown. That period of his life between anonymity and stardom is what fascinated filmmaker James Mangold and he teamed up with Timothee Chalamet to tell the story.
James Mangold Timothy Chalamet I Contain Multitudes A Complete Unknown Film Biopic Young Bob Dylan
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