Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Reel People: Cate Blanchett, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Fanklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, & Ben Whishaw are Bob Dylan

The Film is I'm Not There directed by Todd Haynes. In the film many characters play Bob Dylan (including Cate Blanchett pictured above) at different points of the artist life.

Dylan was born Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941. Zimmerman/Dylan played and listened to music all the time when he was young. In college Zimmerman started introducting himself as Bob Dylan in college, his inspiration for the name came from author Dylan Thomas. Dylan quit college and began playing music where he eventually got signed by Columbia Records to do a record in 1962. Dylan a fan of Woody Guthrie, soon got labeled as a young Guthrie himself with songs that became deemed as protest songs for their messages. Before long Dylan was involved in the protest movement, especially as songs like "Blowin' in the Wind" became more popular.

While still creating a lot of hits, Dylan married Sarah Lownds in 1965 with whom they had 4 children (one of which is Jakob Dylan lead singer for the Wallflowers and director Jesse Dylan). 1966 Dylan had a severe motorcylce accident which caused him to re-evaluate his busy life, and caused him to disappear from society for a time, although he did release the album that contained the song "All Along the Watchtower" during this time. He reappeared to society when Woodie Guthrie died October 1967 and Dylan performed at Guthrie memorials.

Dylan's music was not received as strongly in the early 70s as in the mid-60s, although he still recorded some famous songs like "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" and "Hurricane" (his only protest song of 70s in response to Rubin "Hurricane" Carter being imprisoned). Lownds and Dylan divorced in 1977.

In 1979 Dylan's music turned to Gospel as he (with much skeptism) became a Christian, writing songs like "Gotta Serve Somebody" (to which Lennon responded with the song "Serve Yourself"). In this stage of life Dylan became good friends with Christian singer Steve Green.

Dylan became involved with Live Aid in the 80s and contributed to the song "We Are The World." In 1986 Dylan married his backup signer Carolyn Dennis.

Dylan has continued to make new music and tour, as well as receiving many honors including Kennedy Center honors, an academy award for the song "Things Change" from the film Wonderboys, and performing before the Pope.

This unique biographical film will certain get attention. It'll be curious to see if specific attention lands upon any of the people (Blanchett, Bale, Gere, etc) for portraying this Real (Reel) Person.

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5 comments:

Kimberly Ann said...

That is a really interesting post...I don't know much about Bob Dylan and I def. did not know that he was a Christian and still making music..seems like an more interesting guy than I had thought.

crackers and cheese said...

In the trailer to Reign Over Me, I thought that Adam Sandler looked like Bob Dylan. Why wasn't he cast? This sounds like an interesting film concept - it could either be laughable or groundbreaking. Cate Blanchett looks awesome.

Anonymous said...

I think the premise of this is interesting but I must say that the cast is the selling point for me.

F.J. Delgado said...

crackers and cheese: I though the EXACT same thing, that Sandler looked a ton like Dylan.

If anyone ever wants to check out a great documentary, check out Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home. Great for Dylan fans or any admirers of documentaries alike.

jasdye said...

dylan strikes me as a type of post-modern impressionist artist, especially during his much-maligned - at the time - rock period (which included "all along the watchtower", "mr. tamborine man", "subtarraenean homesick blues", "like a rolling stone", etc. in the late '60s).

i think C&C is right in that it would have been great to see a comedic actor cast as dylan - who has an acerbic wit about him and has played the clown as often as the troubador. but i don't think looks so much matter to the making of this film (which, from the sounds of it, is also going towards a type of post-modern impressionism).