Dylan never wanted to be a folk singer, says James Mangold

So Bob Dylan looks at you in the eye and said: “I never intended to become a folk singer.”

What is it, again?

James Mangold, director, co-scriptwriter and co-producer of “Complete unknown”, had several long meetings with the musical icon when he worked on the film screenplay on him. Mangold hoped to confirm certain things (yes, “Masters of War” was Written in response to the Cuban missile crisis), but especially to understand the singer-songwriter of the renowned temple in a deeper way than standard research could not give in. But sitting with the man himself was a little intimidating, not knowing what would be Dylan’s reaction to his project.

However, said the director: “I had a good time. It was not a kind of meeting in Yalta. He was really happy to talk about this time. And the questions I asked were less focused on the agenda than a biographer to obtain this ultimate quote; I was just there to understand. Thus, they have become prolonged conversations over this period of his life, which I think he had enough distance to be really honest. »»

This period in the film Homes in the four years between the arrival of Dylan in New York and his epic performance of the 1965 Newport folk.

The singer-songwriter was not precious on his own work; For the scene in which the Dylan screen (Timothee Chalamet) launches “Masters of War” in a folk club, “he opened to this page (of the script) and said:” You do not need these verses ”. And he just put XS through them.

By adapting Elijah Wald’s book “Dylan Goes Electric! NEWPORT, SEEGER, DYLAN and the night divided the 1960s “, Mangold and co-series Jay Cocks refused what the director calls for the” crawl “approach. Mangold thinks that Dylan himself wanted to better understand this period of his life, in particular the anger caused by him playing with a rock group in Newport Brouhaha. This tight objective has left a space for the moments lived.

Mangold says films can “give you a palpable feeling of a moment between humans.” I really wanted to look at their interactions, their rivalries, their love, their fears and the music that takes place, all in a way that you (feel) that they did not know that the story was made. They did not know the cultural impact that the songs would have. I wanted the public to feel this, innocence.

“Some people could react if I speak of innocence with a character as hyper-intelligent as Dylan. The discussions about him revolve around an idea of ​​him as a manipulator or enigma. I think that’s halfway. But I think a lot is what We have decided retroactively. I think that these skills – the creation of images, identity creation, art creation – were acquired in the period we are looking at, as opposed to what happens with them. »»

This gives a dimension to the title of the film – beyond the origin of the emblematic song of Dylan, “like a rolling stone” (“how it feels / being alone / without direction at home / as a complete unknown / as A roller stone “), itself a key tick in the chronology of Dylan Gows electric-beyond signifying a new child in town, entering the company. Mangold places the reinvention of Minnesotan Robert Zimmerman, 19, upon his arrival in New York in 1961 on one of the poles of the film. His anonymity granted him the freedom to redo himself in whom he wanted us to believe.

If “a complete unknown” “was a fiction film”, says Mangold, “it would be a story very sensible from a stranger coming to town, creating a new name, meeting the sick king and his first lieutenant, entering their world As a person, then revealing a level of talent by which he suddenly lifts the whole community to heights that they had never known, only to move on and leave them in his wake. For me, it’s such a beautiful fairy tale on self-invention.

“I think of Dylan’s trip to life, which was a series of reinventions, explosions of success, then Lasing of this and reinvention again. So it seemed really happy to focus on a movement of his life this way. »»

But what led Dylan to this other post, to merge people with a final rock with the extreme damage of its guards? Clues could be found in this comment to never intend to become a folk singer, evoking this classic version of the beginning of Bob Dylan, as when he returned to the festival without his rock group, with just his acoustic guitar, and was applauded in Newport.

“‘If I had been able to arrive in New York and have obtained a group, it would have been great,” explains Mangold, signaling the words of Dylan, “” but that’s what happened. Just like an actor Who finds himself in a television program or in the films, it is the concert that I have been broke. And it was just myself.

“It is not that he did not want to be a solo artist; it is that he did not conceive as only A solo artist. He said, “It’s really alone to be a solo act. You come there alone. You are alone in the green room. You are alone on stage. There is no one to look at. He would become jealous of the camaraderie he had seen with people who had groups. »»

Mangold shows it through the admiration of Dylan on the screen of Johnny Cash and Tennessee Three, and the way he lights up when his possible group comrades transform his sound.

“It means that his decision to become electric or to have a group was not purely:” I’m going to turn folk music on his head “. It was a personal desire, as opposed to an intellectual decision on the direction of his art, ”explains Mangold.

So what was Dylan’s global point of view on the project?

“He saw my effort as trying to be faithful to the reality of the historical situation and also faithful to my duty to do something good, juicy, attractive and striking. Because without the second part, without the fact that it holds, you never have the public. There is a magic that occurs where you gain a better understanding through the power of the history and drama of what these people felt that you would only do it if you list the dates and the facts. »»