You Might Say I’m Unlearned

One thing that you need to know about my viewing of A Complete Unknown was that I saw it with a couple of coworkers from college work-study in the heart of Times Square on Christmas Day. Later on that night, I ate some of the best risotto I’ve ever had at the home of a separate college friend from the same job in Astoria. It was a normal day, before I rung the fallout shelter bell.

-This is not my Dylan post. He’s got an obituary in me. You’ll know it when you read just about half of it.

-If she ever chooses to watch it, Joan Baez is going to laugh and LAUGH at this.

-I don’t want to be impressed by Timothée Chalamet, not again: not after showing up to College Gameday and outclassing the likes of Nick Saban, Pat McAfee (Challengers category) and Desmond Howard. But dammit if there weren’t a few moments when I wondered if it was audio ripped from Dylan himself: I mean Bob Dylan speaking, not the songs. I know that voice anywhere, even well-replicated.

-I watched Chalamet on a roof with a dachshund in a bag, and soon enough, a dachshund will be everywhere. He’ll be hungry; it’s his world. Dune was a waste of all of our time.

-Oh, more companies are in trouble for AI integration? Did they ask for that in the algorithm? Overbaked, overcooked, terrible and worse than that. I don’t have a functioning oven, and I’m all the madder about it.

-No place for “Queen Jane Approximately,” my favorite Dylan song. Fine, understood, but: some of you are living in hell in not appreciating this particular slice of platonic friendship properly, among many other unnecessary adverbs.

-Then again: good thing Blonde On Blonde is not depicted, because woof! There are SO many adverbs on that record.

-Chalamet looks so like Dylan in a few shots, particunotlarly the ones when he’s looking down. Chalamet tends to look down anyway, but right here, the numbers hit.

-Oh, the Knicks won? Mikal Bridges had HOW many? Wemby had HOW many…of which?

-Whenever I watch these types of movies, I pay attention to the guitar-acting. I’m sorry; this is annoying, but because I am a white guy who went to college, I know how to play the guitar. BUT! I can do it better than most of the dudes hanging out in stairwells after midnight trying to keep their crushes awake. Anyway: Bob Dylan is underrated as a guitar player; I think I’m better than he is, of course, but his fingerpicking is fantastic, and Chalamet does a solid job of at least looking like he can hang. Ed Norton’s Pete Seeger leaves a little to be desired in that department, but his earnestness and God-willing-we’ll-get-it-done attitude evokes the guy so well that I can’t be mad Norton didn’t become a world-walking banjo player in six months for this.

-We focus so much on the 1962-1965 Dylan period culturally that we miss what makes him so appealing in so many other ways. Chalamet ought to run this back and do the ’66 tour, or come back a decade from now and play out Dylan’s divorce/Blood On The Tracks period. Go ahead: everybody must get stoned.

-Monica Barbaro can belt. You don’t get to singing like Baez unless you can sing like Baez.

-Fucking hell: that guy has written a lot of good songs. I don’t care if you don’t like his voice; plenty of people have covered him in any number of styles that the notion of “a good song is a good song no matter how sung” holds. Think of the ridiculous number of bands who have covered “All Along The Watchtower” – not featured in this movie, a song Dylan wrote during the most dormant period of his touring life.

-Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash: a particularly inspired choice, made evident during the scene in Newport with the car. IYKYK.

-I was expecting a little more I’m Not There than Ray, but hey: big budget studio biopics typically suck, and this one was better than most.

-Including “I’ll Keep It With Mine” is a move for the real heads. That’s the best Dylan b-side/bootleg cut by a country mile. With apologies to Nico, Bob’s own version is perfect. No, wait, trust me: that song is magnificent.

-Elle Fanning as the Suze Rotolo surrogate was marvelous. That said: What did any woman who hung around Dylan between 1961 and 1964 want out of him, and what could that have shown? I’m bummed the movie passes over his “secret” marriage to Sara. I like that this one generally overlooks tortured genius shit, but it compresses his childhood. Sure: he sold a ton of records between 1963 and 1965. What then?

-Daniel Mullen makes fantastic risotto. I know: I’ve had it.

-Not enough credence is given to how much fun, at the very least, it looked like Dylan was having from 1962 until JFK’s assassination. The folk scene welcomed him, and he was more than happy to be there. Exuberant and vibrant, Dylan had a vision. It got darker after that, but he was resolute in what he needed to do.

-A mouse under my oven, which doesn’t even work anymore, keeps strolling out to say hello. To him, I am Mr. Jones.

-I was there with a Peruvian man and a guy from California. The former lives in Bob Dylan’s homeland of Minnesota, while the latter recently moved back to New York after some years away. Guess whom had to explain Bob Dylan to whom. You’ve got a 50% chance.

-I’ll probably see the Springsteen biopic too because I’m a sucker, but A Complete Unknown does just about as good a job of portraying someone you like as possible, save for Dewey Cox. I don’t like biopics; I think of them as comedies, knowing the errors. This was quite good, all told (“all” doesn’t matter because of Dylan’s legendary evasion. I think of him and Barry Sanders in the same breath).