I thought that Renaldo and Clara sucked on ice. There was a lot of footage of bored, effete people sitting around twittering nonsense about their star signs. The concert footage - which was the potentially interesting part - was butchered by atrocious cutting. There was no comprehensible plot or even theme and the whole sorry exercise was cursed by feeble script/improvisation, crap direction and incoherent editing. It was the most effective evidence I have ever seen to persuade me that musicians should stick to what they are good at. Somehow, whe shortened version was so badly edited that it made even less sense than the long version. How did they do it? At least the long version included a superb (chilling) in concert
performance of "Tangled up in Blue". The whole thing should have been re-edited into a watchable film of Dylan concert footage. I love Bob Dylan, but you have to be a hard core fan to sit through garbage like "Renaldo and Clara" twice. Now, can anyone tell me how I can get to see "the "Hard Rain" TV documentary?
By the way, that tall, blond guitarist who is obviously the band leader onstage is Mick Ronson. I met him in Cologne a few years ago and he was a lovely, charming, unaffected bloke. Sadly, he died of cancer some years ago. He was better known as the guitarist in David Bowie's earlier days and for his brilliant arrangement of "Life on Mars".
Good news about the bootleg series though Steve. Thanks for posting it.