6 September 2003
Lagoon Cinema

BOB DYLAN WRITES A MOVIE with Seinfeld producer Larry Charles starring Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Penelope Cruz, Mickey Rourke, and Dylan himself. It features bit parts by Giovanni Ribisi, Val Kilmer, Ed Harris and Luke Wilson. When I heard this, I wet myself I was so excited.

But, oops! I did it again, getting worked up for nothing because this movie blows. I wonder, how can this be? I am so naive to think that a group of actual geniuses won't flop?

I'm pretty sure that the idea behind Masked & Anonymous is a good one, even if this particular experiment is unwatchable. Charles and Dylan wanted to translate one of Bob's crazy-epic-songs into a movie creating a hilarously-wacky-crazy-epic-song-movie. Listen to one of Bob's crazy-epic-songs, like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" from Bringing It All Back Home, and you'll hear exactly the kind of song that his movie is supposed to be. "115th Dream" tells about Bob's adventure through a dystopian New York, running from pseudo-historical scene to p-h scene in a vaguely Forrest Gump kind of way. Its a good song, and there is no concrete reason why a Dylan-(h-w-c-e-s-m-)dream-saga-film shouldn't work.

The problem is that filmmaking demands an organizational precision that is anathema to good music. For example, the movie pioneer Sergei Eisenstein raised the planning of his films to an almost Joycean standard, drawing graphs of his movie's plotlines and correlating scenes, themes, and scores in an absurd bit of structuralist idealism. While life may have changed a bit since the early days of the Soviet Union, filmmaking is still basically the same process.

Actually, I think Goodman's presence here proves that the Coen Brothers were the template for this disaster. Like Eisenstein, the Coens painstakingly plan their films, sketching (with a pencil) each scene (and sometimes each shot) by hand. The end result is almost always damn good. Its unfortunate that Bob's improvisational musical style is exactly the wrong thing for this kind of epic movie. Sure, winging it might work for people like Christopher Guest, but he starts with a good ensemble cast, shoots 50 hours of video, and then edits it down to 2. Frankly, that's a lot of work. In the end, movies are just too complicated for a musician like Dylan, or a TV guy like Charles. There is too much to think about, what with dozens of actors and cameras all vying for attention, and it takes a real power-mad dictator to direct this kind of movie. Sitting in the theatre for this was like watching Dylan try to rock out with a symphony orchestra. "Bob," I'd like say, "you just don't make a very good power-mad dictator."

On the other hand, you have to respect Dylan and Charles for trying this out. OK, so Dylan's screen presence makes Lyle Lovett look like Jack Nicholson, but at least we know that now. Like The Beatles or Miles Davis, Dylan has always been one of those restless hit-or-miss artists, constantly changing his act the second he gets something right. His most famous transformation was his first, when he went from acoustic to electric (and pissed off a bunch of folkies), but he's been reincarnating himself just about every decade since he started playing. Is his music as good now as it was then? Who cares. At least its new and different. Compare that with the Rolling Stones playing the same song for 40 years.

Nutritional Equivalent: Chocolate Chip Foie Gras