Based on the book “Dylan Goes Electric” by Elijah Wald, ‘A Complete Unknown’ tracks Dylan’s rise as an artist leading up to his infamous set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, during which he performed live with electric instruments for the first time. The film also stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo (based on Dylan’s former girlfriend Suze Rotolo), Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.
Based on the book “Dylan Goes Electric” by Elijah Wald, ‘A Complete Unknown’ tracks Dylan’s rise as an artist leading up to his infamous set at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, during which he performed live with electric instruments for the first time. The film also stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo (based on Dylan’s former girlfriend Suze Rotolo), Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash. In addition to Chalamet’s Oscar nod, the film is also nominated for best picture, director for Mangold, Norton for supporting actor, Barbaro for supporting actress, adapted screenplay, costume design and sound. Wherever he goes, the 29-year-old French American actor creates a stir and unleashes passions. He has two movies nominated for the best of the year: ‘A Complete Unknown’ and ‘Dune 2’ and he himself is being nominated as best actor for his role of Bob Dylan in ‘A Complete Unknown’. He is without a doubt the biggest star in Hollywood right now.
Q: Big congrats
Timothée Chalamet: Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much.
Q: How did this movie about Bob Dylan come about and why this particular time period?
TC: It came about because there was a wonderful book by Elijah Wald that covered this period and did a really beautiful job of bracketing this moment, this convulsion that happened in Newport 65 and what led up to it. I found it almost like a fairy tale. This idea of a young man, almost a man with no name or changing his name upon arrival with a few bucks in his pocket, carrying a guitar case and a Moleskine notebook with some scrawling in it, landing at the bedside of his hero in a VA hospital in New Jersey to sing him his song. He's traveled all this way to sing. I mean, that this is a true story blows my mind. And to traverse that distance from that moment of that young man arriving to the point where he has become one of the most important cultural figures of the century, all in a matter of four years and between the ages of 19 and what? 23, 24? That's incredible.
Q: Dylan wrote several iconic protest songs; has he influenced your view on political issues, like war?
TC: I think it’s in the nature of his music, the warnings against cult-like figures. And I think that Bob was very true. I won’t speak for him because he’s alive and well in Malibu, but my interpretation is to be just wary of any savior-like figures … Anyone who says they have a solution, be wary. That’s also the message of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune.
Q: How has his message changed you?
TC: The truth is, I’m not interested in how it changed me or explaining how it changed me, as much as I know it did. The way it was done wasn’t academic, and so much of the pressure in Hollywood or show business is people want to know where you’re at.
Q: How do you deal with the fame since you made ‘Call Me by your name’?
TC: The scenes you see in the movie or in the Pennebaker documentary ‘Don’t Look Back,’ those are things I could just relate to almost viscerally. I would say the process of what I’ve gone through in the last seven years, it’s almost something that happens to you as opposed to what’s happened from you. The point being, it’s not really interesting to talk about because there’s no conclusion I’ve made. The only conclusion I’ve made is to keep my head down, the way Bob did after he made ‘Blonde on Blonde’ and he disappeared after the motorcycle accident.
Q: I heard that you speak Spanish?
TC: I do love speaking other languages. In fact, languages are part of my memory now. I love to speak other languages. I am fluent in French and English, but I do also speak Italian and Spanish as I learned at school. Languages are a window to other cultures.
Do you have a favorite Spanish author?
I like to read a lot. One of my favorite books is ‘The Book of Disquiet’ by Fernando Pessoa. I truly recommend it. I would say Borges as well.
Q: He's Dylan. He's Bob Dylan. With all of the preparation you've had to do over these years for your performances, could it be any more daunting and challenging than to play a legend like Bob Dylan where you were also performing with the instrument and actually singing? How did you go about that?
TC: Well, yes and no. It was daunting because it was Bob Dylan. And no, because at the beginning of the process, I wasn't in the Church of Bob the way I am now, the way I'm a humble disciple now. The years I got to prepare for this role is unlike the time I've had for any other role. So, at some point it stopped becoming work and it just became a process of osmosis and just living in the material, living in the world of the sixties. When it came time to shoot with Edward Norton and Monica and Elle and Boyd, we were constantly throwing around little facts or tidbits or video clips or letters we were finding about these characters from the period. And yet, we weren't really academic about it. And that's kudos to James, who's sitting here on my left. He really had his eye on the fact that this is a story. It's a fable. If you want to listen to the real music, you listen to the legend that is Bob Dylan or the legend that is Joan Baez. We were humble interpreters trying to bring life to something very special that happened 60, 70 years ago.
Q: How did your visits to Minnesota inform your portrayal about doing?
TC: Well, they were hugely informative. And again, I don't think they were informative in an academic sense. I wasn't trying to excavate the exact places he walked or understand what homework was assigned on a specific day. I really just wanted to put myself in the environment, the weather, the roads, the iron ore of it all that gives him that grit in his voice, that to this day makes it so surprising and impressive that he wrote songs like North Country Blues, or Rocks and Gravel and stuff that was beyond a 19- or 20-year-old at the time. Again, it was a process of osmosis. It wasn't anything prescriptive.
Q: Do you feel like you maybe even have a little bit more of an understanding of who Bob Dylan was trying to be then or now, or in between?
TC: I think Bob is focused on his rhythm, his art in a sense, and sort of had the wherewithal, the mystic wherewithal, as Edward just put it, to not feel the need to explain himself. That's why in the few Q&As we've done for this movie so far, where people maybe, I don't want to say slight but are questioning about behavior towards other characters in the movie. I always think it's important to note that from the start, he's engaged with his art. He doesn't feign total engagement with other characters. He's about his work and his music and getting to the crux of why or how or who, the man who's alive and well in Malibu today actually would be very strange to do, these in American pop culture like Bob or Frank Ocean, these people that are as talented as they are unknown, no pun intended, leave them be.
By María Estévez
Correspondent writer
