In his first public statement about the movie, Dylan calls the film “a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport”
Over the past few weeks, Bob Dylan has Tweeted about everything from a Nick Cave concert in Paris to Lon Chaney’s 1927 silent film The Unknown and a supposed interaction with a Buffalo Sabres player in the elevator of a hotel in Prague. In his newest post on the social media site, Dylan turns his attention to the upcoming biopic about his early life starring Timothée Chalamet.
“There’s a movie about me opening soon called A Complete Unknown (what a title!),” he wrote on Wednesday afternoon. “Timothée Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me. The film’s taken from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric – a book that came out in 2015. It’s a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport. After you’ve seen the movie read the book.”
It’s the first time Dylan has publicly commented on the upcoming movie, which also stars Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, and Monica Barbaro. He has been involved since its inception and is billed as the executive producer.
In Brian Hiatt’s recent Rolling Stone cover story on Chalamet, he revealed that Dylan met several times with A Complete Unknown director James Mangold, and went through every line of the screenplay. “Jim has an annotated Bob script lying around somewhere,” Chalamet said. “I’ll beg him to get my hands on it. He’ll never give it to me.”
“I felt like Bob just wanted to know what I was up to,” Mangold said. “ ‘Who is this guy? Is he a shithead? Does he get it?’ — I think the normal questions anyone asks when they’re throwing themselves in league with someone.”
As Dylan wrote, the screenplay for A Complete Unknown was initially built around Elijah Wald’s 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties. It was eventually broadened to begin with Dylan’s arrival in New York City during the winter of 1961 and stretch all the way through the summer of 1965 when he first played with an electric band at the Newport Folk Festival. The movie opens on Christmas.
It’s unclear if Dylan will attend the official premiere or promote the movie in any way besides this one post on X. He wrapped up the 2024 leg of the Never Ending tour at London’s Royal Albert Hall on November 14, and his public calendar is blank for the foreseeable future.
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