The one movie Bob Dylan refused to watch: “I’m never going to see this”
It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Bob Dylan has always been a rather unique character. From his penchant for visiting rock stars’ childhood homes unannounced (he even got detained by police while wandering around Bruce Springsteen’s old neighbourhood) to frequently picking up hitchhikers while wearing a hat to try and mask his real identity, Dylan’s love of various unconventional pastimes demonstrates his odd sensibility. The way that Dylan sees life has helped to shape his career as one of the most successful musicians of all time, even if – to many people – he can’t sing.
Dylan’s voice is far from polished, sure, but the emotion, power, and passion carried by the singer’s vocal performances are never short of impressive. Add his revolutionary songwriting skills on top of that, and you’ve got the perfect formula for musical success. Filmmaking, however, is a different story for Dylan. While various movies have been made about the singer, from Don’t Look Back to I’m Not There and A Complete Unknown, Dylan’s own attempts at screenwriting and directing have been far less impressive.
In 1978, he directed the film Renaldo and Clara, a four-hour-long movie that weaved fiction and documentary. It was a massive flop, and Dylan eventually had the film removed from circulation, but that didn’t stop him from coming up with a rather unhinged idea a few decades later. In 2003, he teamed up with Larry Charles and, using the pseudonym Sergei Petrov, wrote the film Masked and Anonymous. It was a move that could’ve been really fruitful, but instead, Dylan and Charles were met with some pretty dire reviews.
The film came to fruition after Charles reconnected with his long-lost cousin, Jeff Rosen, who happened to be Bob Dylan’s manager. After a few years, Rosen informed Charles that Dylan was interested in making a movie, which led to countless writing sessions. Charles explained to Uproxx, “I spent a solid two years in a cubicle with him writing. I mean, he had unending energy. We would write sometimes for 12 hours a day — writing, talking, working things out, not necessarily always scribbling.”
Eventually, the movie turned into something that they believed was ready to be filmed, and a cast of Hollywood stars were brought in, including John Goodman, Val Kilmer, Penelope Cruz, Mickey Rourke, Ed Harris, and Angela Bassett. Yet, before the movie had even been released, Dylan told Charles, “I’m never going to see this movie.” Unbelievably, after several years of planning the film, employing iconic stars, and playing the lead role himself, Dylan decided he wasn’t even bothered about watching the finished result.
“And I understand that in a way. I don’t really look at my stuff after I’m done either. It’s like, don’t look back. That’s his attitude, and I appreciate that because you can’t really do that much about it,” Charles continued. However, the director is under the impression that Dylan finally got round to the film. “Supposedly, 20 years later, he did watch it, and I was told off the record that he loved it. So that’s as much as I know about that.”
He concluded, “But he told me right off the bat, ‘The people will like this movie if they get a chance to see it, but the critics are probably going to hate it.’ And he was completely right about all that stuff.”
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