The wild TV show Bob Dylan pitched with ‘Seinfeld’ writer Larry Charles
Despite being one of the most famous artists on the planet, Bob Dylan doesn’t often extend his scope beyond music. The iconic singer-songwriter has a few books to his name, including his most recent essay collection, The Philosophy of Modern Song, plus some scattered film and television appearances across his seven-decade career. But other than his disastrous 1978 film Renaldo and Clara, Dylan hasn’t helmed many creative projects outside of music himself.
Apparently, it’s not for lack of trying. In the early 1990s, Dylan wanted to create his own television show and approached Seinfeld writer and future Borat director Larry Charles to help him bring his ideas to life. “He’d gotten deeply into Jerry Lewis, and he wanted to make a slapstick comedy,” Charles said on Pete Holmes’ You Made It Weird podcast in 2014. “He wanted to star in it, almost like a Buster Keaton or something.”
Charles’ first meeting with Dylan was appropriately wacky. The pair met in the back of a boxing gym that Dylan owned when one of Dylan’s assistants asked if they wanted any drinks. Charles ordered a cold drink, while Dylan wanted something hot. A relatively mundane coffee order soon became a litmus test for Charles to pass.
“So they bring a hot coffee for him, like a cappuccino, and they bring the ice coffee for me, and they put them together in the middle of the table, and he immediately grabs my ice coffee and starts drinking my ice coffee,” Charles explained. “And I’m watching him drink it, and I’m not touching the other thing. I don’t want the other thing. And finally, he almost finishes my drink, and he goes, ‘Why aren’t you drinking your drink?’ And I’m like, ‘You’re drinking my drink.’ And he laughed, and that broke the ice. It’s like a test. Like, he drank my drink. How would I react?”
Dylan wanted to utilise the cut-up technique for the show, similar to the work of William S. Burroughs. “We’d take scraps of paper, put them together, try to make them make sense, try to find the story points within it,” Charles said. “And we finally wrote … a very elaborate treatment for this slapstick comedy, which is filled with surrealism and all kinds of things from his songs and stuff.”
Eventually, it was time to pitch the show to HBO. Charles recalled that Dylan spent most of the pitch meeting staring out the window, apparently disinterested in the show that he and Charles had laboured over. “I probably was having a nervous breakdown and didn’t realise it, but I wore pajamas everywhere I went,” Charles added. “I was so comfortable. It was great. [Bob] shows up for the meeting at HBO in a black cowboy hat, a black floor-length duster, black boots. He looks like Cat Ballou or something. He looks like a Western guy who’s carrying six guns.”
Much to Charles’ surprise, HBO actually agreed to greenlight the series. Whether it was because the pitch was successful or simply because HBO wanted to work with Dylan, the slapstick comedy was on… at least until Dylan lost interest a few minutes later.
“We go out to the elevator — Bob’s manager Jeff, my manager Gavin, me and Bob – the three of us are elated we actually sold the project, and Bob says, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore. It’s too slapsticky,'” Charles concluded. “He’s not into it. That’s over. The slapstick phase has officially ended.”
Listen to Charles discuss Dylan’s slapstick comedy down below.
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