Our March 16th, 2025, meeting focuses on the film A Complete Unknown (2024) plus three other sources:

First, The Shooting Script for the movie (2024). This script contains scenes and dialogue not included in the released movie, plus we get to see stage directions that help us understand what the film makers were trying to achieve. The released movie shows also that the director and actors were making improvements and modifications as the filming was underway. As I read the Shooting Script, I took notes on differences with the released movie. Here is the pdf of Shooting Script: differences with the movie. A transcript of the movie dialogue, as heard in the released movie, can be found HERE.
Second, the book on which the movie is based, Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric! Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties (2015). This book was our book-of-the-month selection for October 2023 and the Dylan Goes Electric! backpages have lots of good background for the movie and for understanding the what transpired on the night of July 25th, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival. Because of the movie’s release, Wald and his book have gotten lots of attention—and his recent interviews and posts have provided interesting content. Fearing that Alan Lomax was being interpreted as simply against electrified music, Wald wrote a summary of his thoughts on Lomax’s stancem linked HERE. The movie makes it clear that Lomax criticized the Paul Butterfield Blues Band (Bob’s electric set was backed by members of this band plus Al Kooper) as white and urban (by the way, every version of that band I have seen was a mix of white and black musicians). Bob alludes to the supposed contrast between urbanites and “authentic” rural folk musicians in his early music: for instance, at a coffee house he was told “Come back some other day, You sound like a hillbilly, We want folksingers here”, thus putting him on the “rural” side of the spectrum (Talkin’ New York) and he introduces Baby Let Me Follow You Down with the words: “I first heard this from Ric von Schmidt. He lives in Cambridge. Ric is a blues guitar player. I met him one day in the green pastures of Harvard University”. Ric and Bob are here in the class of dominantly younger musicians collecting folk songs not in hinterlands of rural traditions, but rather in cities among other younger musicians like them selves.
Our third source is three chapters from Bob Dylan’s own memoir, Chronicles Volume One (2004), that present Dylan’s thoughts and memories about the period the film represents (1961-1965): Chapter 1. Markin’ Up the Score, Chapter 2. The Lost Land, and Chapter 5. The River of Ice. As I reread these chapters, I kept a running list of thoughts and quotes, with the goal of answering the question, What are the significant events and personal developments of 1961-1965, from Dylan’s perspective? I am in no way criticizing A Complete Unknown through the perspective of Chronicles, but it was a fun exercise. Click here for my notes, entitled Chronicles: Major Themes for the period 1961-1965. And for more reading, check out the Bob Dylan Book Club’s Greenwich Village Curriculum.

In The Philosophy of Modern Song (2022), Dylan writes: “Art is a a disagreement. Money is an agreement.” So in the interest of full disclosure, and whether or not we agree, here is my opinion: A Complete Unknown is a great movie that evokes the spirit of the early 1960s and the arrival of the phenomenon, Bob Dylan. There are five things that make the movie work:
1. It is a love letter to Greenwich Village and an important cultural at an historical moment: the Civil Rights Movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy Assassination, the teenage years of the boomer generation, and the arrival of the Beatles!
2. There is music throughout! 23 songs are on the official album, but 70 on the soundtrack—including 29 Dylan songs. With the lead actors playing and singing their songs live! Bob, Joan, and Pete! Their performances are subtle and astute.
3. Bob enters an amazing ecosystem of supporting actors and actresses: from Woody Guthrie to Pete Seeger to Joan Baez to Sylvie Russo to Johnny Cash to Bobby Neuwirth to Alan Lomax to Albert Grossman, and more: Al Kooper, Tom Wilson, Toshi Seeger.
4. The color scheme, costuming, street scenes and interiors are gorgeous!
5. And, last, there is a key central theme: the mystery of Dylan and the magic and urgency of his creativity, and his devotion to songwriting. This sets up the conflict between writing and performing and personal relationships. Sylvie and Joan both can see his work is, literally, at center stage.
Suze Rotolo writes in A Freewheelin’ Time, page 289: “People say he is so secretive—why doesn’t he reveal more of himself? I never understand what they mean by that. Songs and poems reveal the artist’s core. Bob Dylan is his work. There is a fine line between analyzing lyrics and destroying art. When does parsing words and phrases begin to smudge or erase the magic in them?”
A Complete Unknown is a loving portrait of Greenwich village in the folk era, organized around the arc of Bob Dylan’s arrival in New York City in 1961, his explosive development, and his ultimate collision with the folk music scene. Yes, it employs plot devices like telescoping (events that played out over months are represented by a single evening) and compositing (several individuals represented in one individual). And so the movie becomes true while incorporating many falsehoods!
I found the movie to be a joy to watch—so far 5 times in a theater and 3 at home. I like Michael Glover Smith’s characterization that the movie, though long, is fast paced, moving from one interesting and colorful scene to another.
—Peter White, March 2025

Dylan speaks about Booing and Judas!:
San Franciso Press Conference 5 months after Newport 1965, Dylan said, "I did this very crazy thing. I didn't know what was going to happen, but they certainly booed, I'll tell you that. You could hear it all over the place … I mean, they must be pretty rich, to be able to go someplace and boo. I couldn’t afford it if I was in their shoes.” Dylan, much later, tweeted that Newport was a "fiasco".
Dylan to Ed Bradley in 2012: Judas, the most hated name in human history! If you think you’ve been called a bad name, try to work your way out from under that. And for what? For playing an electric guitar? As if that is in some kind of way equatable to betraying our Lord and delivering him up to be crucified. All those evil motherf***ers can rot in hell.”
More on Booing: BOO1, BOO2, BOO3, BOO4.

And for fun: a list of Dylan lore referenced in A Complete Unknown (a broad definition of Easter eggs!) HERE
And an excursion into the movie-within-a-movie Now, Voyager .

For added context: click HERE for a list of the six albums and 55 original songs Dylan had produced with Columbia Records for the same 1961-1965 time period. As Pete Seeger comments to Bob in the movie, “I can see the direction you’re goin’ in. I could see it on the last record.” Bringing It All Back Home, with many electric songs (one side of the album was largely acousitc, one side electric) was released March 22, 1965, 4 months before Newport. Highway 61 Revisted would be released just over a month after Newport. A single from that album, Like a Rolling Stone, was released 5 days before Newport, and the song was already on airwaves.

Several weeks ago, Craig Danuloff of Dylan.FM estimated that there had been over 700 links for reviews, commentaries, and discussions of A Complete Unknown. Below I list links that I found interesting for one reason or another—but just google to find other posts that meet your needs (for instance, I have not posted links to interviews with cast members)!
Archival footage Newport Folk Festival (thanks to Brit Eisnor)
Scene comparisons Newport & A Complete Unknown
Jeff Slate with Elijah Wald
Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage (Mangold: the movie as fable)
A plea for more detail—political causes & protest leaders
Henry Bernstein on Substack
John Nogowski essays: HERE and HERE
Max McCoy on 7 secrets of creativity from Bob
Bob Dylan’s Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie
Bob Dylan’s speaks about Woody Guthrie
Podcasts:
Definitely Dylan’s Laura Tenschert, Rebecca Slaman, & Brit Eisnor
Laura Tenschert & Michael Glover Smith
Erin Callahan & Michael Glover Smith
Dylan sweeping the country (includes references to Allison Rapp, Rebecca Slaman, & Ray Padgett)
Interviews with the director, James Mangold:
Gilbert Cruz, host of the Book Review Podcast
Marc Maron, WTF (after a 40 minute rant on walnuts) includes Mangold’s meetings with Dylan & the “table read”
Four key scenes with director Mangold
Interviews:
Producer Peter Jaysen
Flagging Down the Double Es conversation with Terri Thal, (married to Dave Van Ronk & Dylan’s first manager)
Stories of visiting Woody Guthrie when he was hospitalized:
Jahanara Romney (formerly Bonnie Beecher) & Guthrie’s daughter Nora
Bonnie Beecher
Barry Kornfield
Arlo Guthrie
Nora Guthrie
Woody at Greystone
Pete Seegers talks about Woody
What the movie got wrong according to Rolling Stone