For almost four years now, the words Timothée Chalamet Bob Dylan biopic have provoked some combination of morbid curiosity and mild dread in the hearts and minds of Dylan fans everywhere. First announced back in January 2020, the James Mangold–directed film, A Complete Unknown, is allegedly set to go into production in early 2024, meaning we’ll all know pretty soon what “Like a Rolling Stone†would sound like if it were instead sung by the vocalist behind “Tiny Horse†(a modern classic, to be clear). As prep, Timmy has spent these past four years completing a journey that’s essential for any 20-something dude who loves Dylan: tweeting lyrics from “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)†and strumming his guitar poolside for a significant other. Unlike other young Dylan fans, though, the Dune star apparently has access to a massive trove of unreleased, early-career Dylan music via the singer’s longtime manager, Jeff Rosen, a producer on Complete Unknown.
“This might earn the ire and wrath of a lot of Bob fans, rightfully,†Chalamet said in a recent interview with Happy Sad Confused’s Josh Horowitz, “but he sent me like a 12-hour playlist of unreleased Bob stuff from like 1959 to ’64. I feel like I’m holding onto gold or something.†Chalamet clarified that some of the music is available to the public via bootlegs like The Minnesota Tapes, but ire is still probably the right word to describe how it feels to learn that Willy Wonka, of all people, gets VIP access to Bob Dylan’s vault, which is presumably more closely guarded than the recipe for Everlasting Gobstoppers. (Sorry, that’s the best Wonka reference I have in me.)
To his credit, Chalamet seems to appreciate the weight of his undertaking in playing Dylan, going so far as to hire the “entire team†that helped Austin Butler get stuck in his Elvis voice. Still, it’s hard to think about this movie without some measure of trepidation. As a figure, Dylan is impossible to pin down — he’s less an easily distilled person than a prism refracting everything around him. Unearthing anything worthwhile about him through film requires a formal engagement with that shiftiness. Todd Haynes’s 2007 film I’m Not There, for instance, is downright experimental, casting six actors (most memorably Cate Blanchett — did she also get Dylan’s secret playlist?) to portray different aspects of the Dylan persona, while Martin Scorsese’s 2019 documentary, Rolling Thunder Revue, incorporated fake interviews alongside real ones to interrogate Dylan’s concept of truth. With all due respect, Mangold — who has made some of the best dad movies of all time, from Cop Land to Ford v Ferrari, in addition to the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line — seems more likely to make the kind of straightforward music biopic that is exactly wrong for the Dylan mythos, even if he insists his vision is more of an “Altman-esque†ensemble piece. Either way, if Mangold wants to earn himself some goodwill from Dylan fans, who will surely have their knives out for this movie, he’d better consider including a track or two from Timmy’s personal stash.