Bob Dylan gives Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal his seal of approval
Timothée Chalamet’s portrayal of Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s upcoming film, A Complete Unknown, appreciated by Dylan.
Dylan posted on social media on Wednesday, saying, “A Complete Unknown (what a title!) is a movie about me that opens soon.”
“Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”
The story of the movie revolves around Dylan, who was 19 at the time, went from Minnesota to New York City in the summer of 1961,carrying only his guitar.
The movie was inspired on the 2015 book Dylan Goes Electric. The controversy surrounding Dylan’s switch to electrically amplified instruments is examined in Elijah Wald’s book Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties.
Dylan wrote on Wednesday that the book is “a fantastic retelling of events from the early ‘60s that led up to the fiasco at Newport,” and added, “After you’ve seen the movie read the book.”
Chalamet recently opened up to Zane Lowe about feeling connected to Dylan’s story. “I’ve had a life experience, I won’t say it’s weird, but I can relate to some of these things [Bob Dylan] went through,” Chalamet said.
“Bob wanted to be a rock ‘n’ roll star — Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Elvis Presley — that was the sort of, depending on your point of view, the sort of rice crispy pop, rock ‘n’ roll music that was saturated, you know, marketed to kids in the late ’50s. Equally, I wanted to be a big movie actor.”
He continued, “I found my way into these very personalized movies. For [Dylan], it was folk music. He couldn’t keep a rock ‘n’ roll band because they would all get hired by other kids that had more money, literally, in Minnesota. So for me, it was finding a very personal style movie — Call Me By Your Name or Beautiful Boy or Lady Bird or Little Women, Miss Stevens, Hot Summer Nights. Those were smaller budget but very… I don’t know how else to put it… personable movies that started in this theater space. This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it.”
A Complete Unknown hits theaters on Christmas Day.
