From Don't Look Back
Through the initial agency of those lovable imps at Ain't it Cool News, a two-minute clip from writer/director Todd Haynes' fiction film on Dylan, I'm Not There, is seeing the light of day, and all over the internets, from Hollywood Elsewhere to Althouse, bloggers have got something to say. What they've got to say demonstrates a number of things, among them, that anybody who was ever heavily invested in Dylan and his music at any point in time is still likely to feel a sense of ownership of Dylan and what he did/does, which testifies both to Dylan's power as an artist and to how creepy some people are; also that the fact of a major theatrical motion picture devoted to Dylan is, to those people, an indication that Dylan remains pertinent to contemporary popular culture, which also means that they, and their passionate responses to a two-minute clip from said film, are also pertinent to contemporary popular culture.
Having brought up these issues, I must now demur, as they are, shall we say, above my pay grade. I will, however, parse some of the chatter. But first, a personal anecdote.
"Man, you guys are pretty heavy into that conceptual thing, huh?" So Good Rats drummer Joe Franco inquired of my band's keyboard player after a near-disastrous gig in which we opened for Long Island's finest back in 1982 at Dover, N.J.'s, Show Place. The Rats' fans had peppered our set with near-constant requests to "get the fuck off the stage," and the Rats' rhythm section took pity on us and cheered us on from the side of the stage, even to the extent of pretending to enjoy our sub-B-52s-ish number "Monster Island Dance Party." Backstage afterwards, Franco, stumbling for something positive to say about our efforts, offered the above-quoted query.
Which I only bring up because it's exactly what popped into my head when I first heard of Haynes' project, in which six different actors play Dylan at different points in his career. Pretty heavy into the conceptual thing. As was, of course, Dylan himself, as anyone who followed his career with any degree of perception could not fail to notice. One of the most hilarious things about the idiotically-well-liked Factory Girl is its positioning of Dylan as an organic/"authentic" artist against the "fake" Warhol. Yeah, Dylan didn't much like Warhol, that's true, but it wasn't because Dylan, say, enjoyed Grape Nuts more than Warhol did. Not to put too simplistic or potentially distasteful a spin on it, but Dylan concocted the self-reinventing pop artist before Madonna Louise Ciccone had her first period, and this, I presume, contributed to Haynes' impetus to have Dylan portrayed by a variety of actors in I'm Not There. The actor in the clip currently under discussion is Cate Blanchett, and the normally amiable Tom O'Neil's vehement lambasting of what he saw is kind of hilarious. First he tells Blanchett not to bother preparing an Oscar acceptance speech for her work. The Oscar angle is a natural for O'Neil, because Oscar's his thing, which narrows his perspective somewhat as it assumes that anything anybody in the movie business ever does is for the sake of an Oscar.
Now the clip shows an encounter between Dylan—also known as "Jude" at this point in his career, by the movie's lights—and poet Allen Ginsberg. Commenters on Jeff Well's site are trying to place this cinematic encounter against the actual historically-correct time and place of Dylan's first encounter with Ginsberg. Given that the Dylan character is referred to as "Jude" throughout the clip in question suggests that Haynes' account is not overly concerned with historical accuracy. But never mind that for now. O'Neil calls the exchange between the Dylan character and the Ginsberg character "pretentious." Because, after all, what do poets talk about when poets meet? Certainly not about anything pretentious. Like art or poetry. But O'Neil suggests no possible alternative topics for their discussion. (How about chicks? No, Ginsberg didn't dig 'em.) O'Neil's mostly in a tizzy because Blanchett is "absurdly unbelievable." And this strikes me as funny, because what, really, is not absurdly unbelievable, in a certain respect, about a film in which the same character is played by six different actors? O'Neil is already reacting via the Dylan film he wants to see, the Dylan film that reflects his experience of Dylan. Also, O'Neil appears to have never heard of Bertolt Brecht. Or Luis Bunuel. Or Todd Solondz. Or Witold Gombrowicz. Although I suppose that last name's kinda beside the point.
Me, I think Blanchett's a great actress as well as a talented mimic, and that she manages to let an eager, literature-loving kid from Hibbing emerge from behind the shades here. But for Christ's sake, people. It's a two minute clip from an uncompleted film. Imagine if you had never seen Citizen Kane. Imagine, then, if I showed you a rough version of the scene between William Alland and Paul Stewart near the end of the picture ("Sentimental fellow, huh?" "Maybe yes, maybe no.") Imagine if, after that, I asked you to form an opinion of the entire film based on that. If you had any kind of modesty or decency as a person—we're not even getting to the area of critical acumen—you would, um, demur.
But that's what I love about the interwebs. They make people so fucking bold.
You opened for the Good Rats? Amazing...
Seriously...seek out the obscure Dylan Basement Tape outtake that provides the title for the film. It's the single most weirdly impenetrably surreal thing Bob ever wrote, a kind of aural mobius strip that can keep you scratching your head for days over what it means. Or what anything means, for that matter.
I suspect it's more than a tad relevant to whatever artistic ploy Haynes is up to cinematically....
Posted by: steve simels | July 16, 2007 at 09:07 PM
And don't make do with the lyric sheet.
What's on paper can not begin to convey the sheer weirdness of the song as it exists when Dylan sings it through layers of crappy reverb.
This was real atmospherically eccentric low-fi before Robert Pollard made a fetish/esthetic out of it....
Posted by: steve simels | July 16, 2007 at 10:11 PM
Okay, so I think I'm starting to figure this out...your blog is about how other blogs are bad, right?
Posted by: bill | July 17, 2007 at 09:43 AM
Did you miss that "Good New Blogs" post, Bill?
Posted by: WP | July 17, 2007 at 11:20 AM
Ouch! I think my point, such as it is, is still valid, but I have no comeback to that, WP. Good day to you!
Posted by: bill | July 17, 2007 at 11:31 AM
Todd Haynes is a bit of an acquired taste, and I can't see any of the nabobs that populate AICN or Hollywood Elsewhere really sitting down and watching Safe and then reflecting its aesthetic merits. Sometimes the internet seems like a...oh, I don't know what it seems like, except it's ginormous, dark and an acoustic marvel; just a bunch of voices chattering into the void.
Posted by: Ken | July 17, 2007 at 12:21 PM
The responses to this post are pretentious and absurdly unbelievable!
Posted by: Marshall | July 17, 2007 at 11:40 PM
did peppe marchello dig your set too?
Posted by: Koppelman | July 18, 2007 at 07:14 PM
No, he thought we were chickenshit.
Posted by: G. Kenny | July 19, 2007 at 12:31 AM
The next pseudo-intellectual to use the word "absurd" wins a shit-stained copy of 'On The Road' - that, coincidentally, I used to wipe my ass when I was on the road writing poetry and rebelling against the idea of growing my hair out Ginsberg-style.
I love reading big word douche-talk. Please... do continue.
Posted by: Absurd | November 21, 2007 at 03:58 PM
Poverty is the mother of all arts.
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Circumstances are the rulers of the weak, instrument of the wise.
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