Dont Look Back: Exploring all of Bob Dylan’s movie appearances
Recently, Timothée Chalamet brought Bob Dylan to life on the big screen with a starring role in James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown. Of course, he isn’t the first to attempt to portray Dylan on film, and he certainly won’t be the last. In 2007, Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There featured six actors—Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and Marcus Carl Franklin—each playing a different facet of Dylan’s persona. Dylan’s influence also looms large over the Coen brothers’ 2013 film Inside Llewyn Davis, while Hayden Christensen’s character in the 2006 Edie Sedgwick biopic Factory Girl is loosely based on Dylan, as well.
In addition to that, his music has also been used to striking effect in countless films, including Poor Little Rich Girl, Natural Born Killers, Forrest Gump, Jerry Maguire, The Big Lebowski, Watchmen, My Own Love Song, and, most recently, Reagan, among many others.
Dylan himself has appeared on screen numerous times over the years, sometimes as himself, sometimes as a fictionalised version of himself (perhaps the only version of him that truly exists), and occasionally as an entirely different character altogether. Beyond his dramatic roles, Dylan has also featured as a talking head in documentaries about Joan Baez and Jimmy Carter. His presence is also felt in a range of concert films, including The Other Side of the Mirror, The Concert for Bangladesh, The Last Waltz, Trouble No More, Hard to Handle, and MTV Unplugged.
To go with his Nobel Prize in Literature, Dylan has won both an Oscar and a Golden Globe for the song ‘Things Have Changed’, which he wrote for Curtis Hanson’s 2000 movie Wonderboys. So proud of the honour was he that Dylan gave the Oscar statuette pride of place on stage every night of every tour from the time he won it at the start of the century, right up until the end of 2019. One night in Manchester, in 2002, he even held the statue aloft and paraded it for all the crowd to see after he had finished playing ‘Things Have Changed’.
It’s no wonder that Dylan was so excited to win such an award. His lifelong obsession with cinema can be traced back to the time he spent in the Lybba Theatre in his youth in Hibbing, Minnesota, a theatre run by his uncles and named after his grandmother. Throughout his career, movie references have turned up in his lyrics and paintings. Whether it’s retelling the story of Gregory Peck’s 1950 picture The Gunfighter in ‘Brownsville Girl’, borrowing lines of dialogue right out of Humphrey Bogart’s mouth all the way through the lyrics on Empire Burlesque or painting stills from films like Kathryn Bigelow’s Loveless or Gordon Parks’ Shaft in his recent Deep Focus artwork series, Dylan’s love of the silver screen is as pure and impactful on his work as his love of old-time blues, folk and rock and roll is.
Every Bob Dylan cinematic appearance:
Dont Look Back (D A Pennebaker, 1967)
The first glimpse at Dylan on screen and the birth of the cinéma vérité style. Shot by legendary D A Pennebaker, who Dylan came to know as “the eye” for the way the directors camera followed his every move, the film chronicles the folksinger’s final all-acoustic tour of the UK in 1965. The filmmaker captures Dylan at his mercurial best. His casual genius is on display for all to see in scenes both alone or with Joan Baez, Bob Neuwirth and Alan Price. No matter who is on screen with him, though, it is impossible to take your eyes off Dylan for even a moment.
Featuring legendary scenes of Dylan sparring with Donovan, Time journalist Horace Judson and late-night revellers in his hotel room who have caused a disturbance by throwing a glass into the street (“I don’t care who did it, I just wanna know who did it!) as well as fantastic early concert footage from the tour, the film is eminently watchable and endlessly fascinating as the young Dylan is endlessly cool and quotable thanks to quips like “I’m glad I’m not me!”, “be groovy or leave, man!”, “I’m not angry, I’m delightful!” and “give the anarchist a cigarette!” to name just a few.
Eat the Document (Bob Dylan, 1972)
Eat the Document is the cinematic cousin of Dylan’s only novel, Tarantula. Just like his book, the film is an unintelligible speed-freak mess from a bygone age and of a bygone Dylan. With footage again shot by Pennebaker and Dylan again on tour in the UK, this film captures his mythic 1966 electric tour when Dylan was at war with his audiences all over the world.
But it doesn’t reach the heights of intrigue which grabbed you from the first moments of Dont Look Back, partly because Dylan was unsatisfied with the edit offered up by Pennebaker and took on the task himself, alongside filmmaker friend Howard Alk. By the time Dylan got the film together, he was a very different man from the one in the picture, and the world in which it was released was a much different place. Notable for its scenes of strung-out Dylan taking a trip in a cab with a sprightly John Lennon and, of course, the legendary “Judas” moment at the Manchester Free Trade Hall.
The film has never officially been released on home video, although a version has been restored by The Bob Dylan Centre and resides on site in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
Dylan’s first movie acting role was in the minor part of Alias (“Alias what?”, “Alias anything you please”). He was not initially slated to star in the film, but a part was carved out for him by director Sam Peckinpah at the request of Dylan’s friend and long-time admirer, Kris Kristofferson, who was playing the titular Billy the Kid. Peckinpah famously struggled with the studio for control of the picture, but his director’s cut vindicates his vision for the film and is one of the great westerns from the tail end of the genre’s golden era.
Dylan’s character is stilted and awkward, but his charisma is magnetic, and his presence lights up his scenes, including one where he gets to show off his knife-throwing skills. James Coburn, Kristofferson, Katy Jurado and Richard Jaeckel do the heavy lifting where the acting is concerned, but the film is also notable for its soundtrack, which was written and performed by Dylan and includes the all-time classic ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ – which is the emotional backbone at the climax of the film – as well as various versions of ‘Billy’ and a host of excellent atmospheric instrumentals.
Renaldo and Clara (Bob Dylan, 1978)
At over four hours long, this is Dylan’s most mystifying movie by far. Made up of semi-improvised scenes shot backstage and out on the road during 1975’s legendary Rolling Thunder Revue, some slightly more scripted scenes, co-written with playwright Sam Shephard and interspersed with incredible concert footage from the tour (and not just by Dylan, another highlight includes a staggeringly powerful live rendition of ‘Need a New Sun Rising’ by Ronee Blakley), this movie is ultimately, and unfortunately, a mess. It can be a slog, and it can be hard work to get through at times, but it’s worth all the effort for the moments where the mist moves away and the mood and magic mesh together and the music makes up for any shortcoming in the acting and non-acting.
Influenced by Marcel Carné’s 1945 Les Enfants du Paradis, Renaldo and Clara was critically panned at the time of its release and received only a short theatrical run. Aside from a rare couple of airings on the television – always in the dead of night when no one is watching – the movie has never had a home release, and likely never will. The film should be praised for its ambition, though, and its scope, and is notable because it offers an exceedingly rare sighting of Dylan’s then-wife, and muse, Sara, as well as appearances from Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Allen Ginsberg, David Blue, Larry Sloman and Roberta Flack.
Hearts of Fire (Richard Marquand) and Getting to Dylan (Christopher Sykes) (Both 1987)
“I always knew I was never going to be one of those singers who won no Nobel Prize. Is that what you call it, Nobel Prize?” Dylan’s character Billy Parker ironically intones early in this picture.
It’s so bad that it’s great. Hearts of Fire is as camp as Dylan ever got and is a lot more fun than it has any right to be. Starring Rupert Everett and Fiona alongside Dylan, it’s hammy, it’s silly, it’s over the top, and it’s under-baked, but it’s an easy way to lose an hour and a half.
The accompanying BBC documentary film from Christopher Sykes, Getting to Dylan, is a fascinating watch, as well. Featuring an extended and revealing interview with Dylan, on location shooting Hearts of Fire at the time, who spends almost the entire conversation distractedly sketching Sykes while he talks, and a behind the scenes glimpse of Dylan catching up with fans in between shoots, as well.
“You done good, boss.”
Catchfire (Dennis Hopper, 1990)
Directed by and starring Dylan’s old pal, and Rolling Thunder Revue alumni Dennis Hopper, the film also boasts a cast that includes Jodie Foster, John Turturro, Dean Stockwell and The Merchant of Menace himself Vincent Price.
Dylan only makes a short cameo appearance—as a hard-hat-wearing, chainsaw-wielding artist—which is perhaps the only noteworthy or memorable moment in the whole movie.
Paradise Cove (Robert Clapsadle, 1999)
Dylan’s most mysterious movie appearance, if he even appears at all. While he is listed on IMDb as playing Alfred the Chauffeur, none of the movie’s posters lists his name alongside Ben Gazzara’s, Karen Black’s, Laura Theodore’s or Jacob Nathaniel’s, and there is no reference to his association with the movie elsewhere online, either.
Dylan doesn’t feature in the trailer, either, and the full feature is hard to find. Maybe he’s in it, and maybe he’s not, but the whole thing seems just the right kind of weird enough for Dylan to be involved with.
Masked and Anonymous (Larry Charles, 2003)
Cut from the same cloth as his first 21st-century masterpiece, “Love and Theft”, Bob Dylan’s Masked and Anonymous is like Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis for the Civil War obsessed. Dylan’s defining cinematic comment is a film which meanders through a barren musical landscape of corruption, ruin, greed, betrayal, brotherhood and redemption.
With a script by Dylan and Seinfeld co-producer Larry Charles, it’s an obtuse, tragic and comical carnival piece, a trip through the twisted heart of America and features some of Dylan’s best writing, as well as an all-star cast including Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Mickey Rooney, Val Kilmer, Penélope Cruz, Luke Wilson, Angela Bassett, Mickey Rourke, Giovanni Ribisi and Ed Harris as well as cameos from The Pope, Mahatma Gandhi and Abraham Lincoln, who all worked for minimal rates in order to star alongside Dylan. It’s a must-watch movie and one you will need to see multiple times before you can peel back all the layers and figure out what everything either does and doesn’t mean.
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (Martin Scorsese, 2005)
An almost four-hour documentary curated and created by the genius of Martin Scorsese. The documentary covers similar ground as Mangold’s A Complete Unknown, from Dylan’s childhood through to his fabled 1966 motorbike crash, which forced him off the road and almost out of the public eye for the next eight years.
Interspersing footage recorded for Eat the Document with interviews conducted by Dylan’s longtime manager Jeff Rosen, the singer-songwriter is as loose and lucid as he would ever be in a filmed interview as he talks about his upbringing, childhood sweethearts, musical inspirations and aspirations for his career, his attitude to the press, his anxieties and his ambitions. He cracks jokes and laughs a lot, he puts on accents, and he has a twinkle in his ageing eyes the whole time, which lets us know that maybe he is not actually being as honest with us as at first it seems.
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese (2019)
Some 14 years later, Dylan and Scorsese teamed up again to document his fabled Rolling Thunder Revue tour. “I don’t remember a thing about Rolling Thunder” Dylan cracks up early in the film. “It happened so long ago I wasn’t even born!”
If you should take everything he says in No Direction Home with a pinch of salt, then you’d need to take a whole truckload with it for this film. Dylan and Scorsese are messing with the viewers from the very first seconds, with a clip of a magician pulling off a vanishing act to tease that nothing will be revealed, while elsewhere in the film, the talking heads are either completely fabricated characters (Stefan van Dorp) or else real-life figures telling completely fabricated stories (Sharon Stone).
Dylan supposedly stipulated to James Mangold that there should be at least one entirely fictitious scene in A Complete Unknown. It seems that with Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese, he didn’t want there to be anything but fictitious scenes throughout.
Shadow Kingdom (Alma Har’el, 2021)
Part concert film, part fever dream, the Shadow Kingdom is where Dylan permanently resides now, in some distant liminal space on the border between our world and the next one, never fully out of view but also never fully revealed.
Directed by Alma Har’el, Shadow Kingdom sees Dylan re-imagine a selection of his early songs. Shot all in black and white, he is alternately staged in a smoky stopped-time barroom, settled in for an out-of-hours lock-in or lost in some undefinable shadowy space. These are the shadow versions of his songs, and out there, at the last outback at the world’s end and on the last radio, they are always gently playing.
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