Timothée Chalamet Goes Electric In Bob Dylan Biopic Trailer
A new trailer of A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic, has just been released. As we’ve reported, Timothée Chalamet is playing the role of Bob Dylan in the film….
A new trailer of A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan biopic, has just been released. As we've reported, Timothée Chalamet is playing the role of Bob Dylan in the film. The cast of the James Mangold-directed film also includes Monica Barbaro (Top Gun: Maverick) as Joan Baez, Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Boyd Holbrook (Narcos) as Johnny Cash and Elle Fanning (Super 8) as "Sylvie Russo," who Deadline says is based on Dylan's ex-girlfriend Suze Rotolo. (That's Suze Rotolo walking with Dylan on the cover of his 1963 classic album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan).
In the trailer, we see Chalamet as Dylan coming to New York, while we hear the actor's rendition of "Girl From The North Country" (from The Freeweheelin' Bob Dylan). Seeger, asks him, "You tramped all the way from Minnesota. Why is that?" "I wanted to catch the spark," Dylan replies.
We also see a scene in a restaraunt where Sylvie says, "I like your songs": we then see him scribbling the lyrics, "How many years can some people exist? Before they're allowed to be free?" Those are, of course, the lyrics to "Blowin' In The Wind." We see scenes of Dylan introducing Joan Baez at a folk club and their romantic and contentious relationship: he tells her, "Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist's office." She responds, "You're kind of an a------, Bob."
We see his ascent to stardom, leading up to his legendary and controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival where he "went electric." In other words, instead of playing traditional folk music, he had a rock and roll backing band, which was seen as selling out to his core audience. We see Chalamet as Dylan performing one of his early rock songs, "Like A Rolling Stone" and we see him complaining, "They just want me singin' 'Blowin' in the Wind' for the rest of my goddamned life."
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Later, we see him saying to Johnny Cash, "I'm not sure they want to hear what I want to play, Johnny!" Cash leans over and whispers in his ear, "I wanna hear it."
The film was based on Elijah Wald's 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric! But you can read Dylan's own account of some of these stories in his own 2004 book, Chronicles, Volume 1. It's not a typical memoir: he focuses on three eras: his arrival in New York leading up to the recording of his debut album, and stories from 1970 and 1989, which take place after the film ends. A Complete Unknown opens in theaters on December 25. Watch the NSFW trailer below.
