The 1985 song Bob Dylan wanted to turn into a movie: “Of all the songs I’ve written”
Contrary to previous decades, the name of Bob Dylan now feels somewhat at home up on the silver screen.
As well as cameos in movies like Factory Girl or the dedicated homage from Hollywood’s finest in I’m Not There, there was the most recent effort at a Dylan biopic with Timotheé Chalamet, which have all worked to make his work feel more cinematic than ever. And, what’s there to disagree with? Across an impressive array of songs Dylan not only writes his own poetic pop fiction, but sometimes jots down his own journey within his lyrics.
Following a teenage obsession with Little Richard’s piano-driven rock ‘n’ roll, Bob Dylan was spellbound by a more lyric-centric and expressive musical style: folk. After modelling his early material on the American folk tradition as innovated by Woody Guthrie, Dylan combined his two favourite genres into a unique brand of folk rock. Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing It All Back Home best represented this pivotal moment.
Much to the dissatisfaction of folk purists at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, Dylan “went electric” during his most inspired run of the mid-60s and continued dancing to his own tune for many years to come. As a true innovator, he drew inspiration from various past and present genres and, for many years, maintained a contemporary sound.
Outside of music, Dylan’s work has been heavily inspired by literature, current affairs and cinema. Following his spell as a prolific protest singer in the early 1960s, Dylan befriended Allen Ginsberg and embraced the influence of Beat Generation literature. However, later works like 1976’s ‘Hurricane’ and 1985’s ‘Clean Cut Kid’ would keep a finger on the pulse of contemporary sociopolitical matters.
As a Nobel Prize-winning lyricist, Dylan’s career has benefitted from compelling and coherent lyrical narratives that have both inspired and been inspired by literature and cinema in near-equal measure. For example, Dylan’s 1986 song ‘Brownsville Girl’ was inspired by the classic 1950 western movie The Gunfighter; meanwhile, the 1965 epic ‘Desolation Row’ drew from several major literary sources.
With the Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid soundtrack to one side, Dylan’s impact on cinema is a little more nebulous. While none of his songs, specifically, have been a direct movie blueprint, his art has been a central and enduring influence on countless filmmakers, including Quentin Tarantino and Martin Scorsese.
If one were to adapt a Bob Dylan song for the big screen, the tangible plots of ‘Ballad of Hollis Brown’ or ‘Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts’ would be suitable candidates. As far as Dylan is concerned, however, his song most primed for the big screen is ‘Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)’.
“‘Tight Connection to My Heart’ is a very visual song,” Dylan told Spin in a 1985 interview. “I want to make a movie out of it…. I think it’s going to go past on the way, but of all the songs I’ve ever written, that might be one of the most visual.”
“Of all the songs I’ve written, that’s the one that’s got characters that can be identified with,” he continued. “Whatever the fuck that means. I don’t know; I may be trying to make it more important than it is, but I can see the people in it.”
‘Tight Connection to My Heart (Has Anybody Seen My Love)’ arrived in Dylan’s 1985 album Empire Burlesque but sadly never made it to the screen. Indeed, the lyrics convey somewhat vivid imagery and fragments of a plot involving the narrator, the recipient, a “hot-blooded singer,” Madame Butterfly and a man in a “powder-blue wig.”
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