The surreal day in 1972 when Harry Dean Stanton and Bob Dylan went for a jog : “Bob’s an unusual guy”
For all his illustrious musical talents, Bob Dylan has never really had the acting chops to lift his career to the next level of the silver screen.
And no: Timothée Chalamet playing him in a questionable biopic doesn’t count towards that. In this case, we’re talking about the admittedly rare times in which Dylan has wandered in front of the camera of his own volition, to varying degrees of success and acclaim. Renaldo and Clara was his directorial debut, Masked and Anonymous was a rather strange comedy western romp – and, well, the less said about Hearts of Fire, the better.
But despite certain filmic misfires, all of those movies paled in comparison to the western masterpiece that was 1973’s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, in which Dylan offered his services both on the big screen, playing the character of Alias, and penning the soundtrack, from which the classic ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ was spawned.
Yet amid the sweltering heat of Durango, Mexico, and the watchful, ruthless eye of director Sam Peckinpah, Dylan had to find some form of solace and companionship in his castmates. Within that roster, he stumbled across the legendary Harry Dean Stanton – and whether it was because they felt each other to be kindred spirits, or just that they had a lack of anything else to do, they set out on a run.
Of course, you could say a lot about the two men wanting to actually see the part of the world they were working in – with its stunning cathedral, classic architecture, and sacred art, the city of Durango is certainly a place where you can take in many sights when on a leisurely stroll, but one of the more unusual visions would be spotting Dylan and Stanton jogging side by side.
It was difficult to tell whether the actor recalled this time with a sense of fondness or shared confusion about why they took up their impromptu running club, as he later said: “Bob’s an unusual guy. We went jogging during the shoot [for Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid], about half a mile from where Sam Peckinpah was shooting, and we ran into his shot. Sam might have thrown something at us after that.”
Naturally, no director in the prime of their creative metamorphosis wants their art form to be ruined by two wayward stranglers, but that’s kind of what came with the territory when you had Dylan in the mix. In many ways, the songwriter’s own elusive tendencies gave the film a certain air of prestige – and away from the heat and the fighting, a star was born.
But back on the path of the jogging group, it seemed that in one way or another, Dylan made a lasting impression on his Hollywood pal. To this end, Stanton agreed to star alongside him in Renaldo and Clara some five years later, with its warbling almost four-hour runtime telling every inch of the story of the singer’s life.
Maybe Stanton got more than he bargained for when he originally signed up to go on a simple run, but that was symbolic of everything with Dylan – he may not look like much from the outside, but the deeper you delve into his storytelling mind, the harder and harder it becomes to ever truly leave him behind.
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