Dylan's new movie - preview & clips

Subject: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: outfidel
Date: 15 Jan 03 - 09:58 PM

Masked & Anonymous

Clip #2 features Dylan & the band singing "Diamond Joe".

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 06:14 AM

Outfidel,

When is this being released?

I couldn't get the clip to run. I'll try on my other computer.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: outfidel
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 10:02 AM

Steve - M&A premiers next week (Jan. 22) at the Sundance festival. I know Sony has picked it up for distribution, but I don't know when it will be released in the theatres.

Check out the cast - I'm disappointed they didn't ask me to join! ;)

More M&A stuff

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: DougR
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 02:04 PM

Is L.H. in it?

DougR

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 02:33 PM

"Twenty years ago, he refused to cooperate with the powers that were and parlay his early success into a career."

So it's Dylan in a world where he took a different turning? The singing clip seems a lot better than the acting clip, but that figures.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Big Tim
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 03:00 PM

Really looking forward to it.

Of course LH will be in it, probably wrote it

McG of H: isn't it enough that, although Dylan can't act, he is the greatest singer and songwriter among the living or among the dead!

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: GUEST,RKane
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 03:04 PM

Looks intriguing. Too bad Dylan will look so bad compared to all these top tier actors. Dylan acts about as well as he sings.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: outfidel
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 04:24 PM

> Too bad Dylan will look so bad compared to all these top tier actors

The good news is that he can't possibly look as bad as he did in "Hearts of Fire". And the music should be much better this time too.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Big Tim
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 04:43 PM

Top tier actors are vastly overated: De Niro would swap his niche with Dylan if he could.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 04:55 PM

I got the clips to run. I have to agree, the singing is better than the acting. However, I will watch it, probably when it comes out on video though. It sure is an impressive cast.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 16 Jan 03 - 05:03 PM

But you wouldn't much fancy hearing Robert De Niro give a concert would you?

But it's surprising that Bob Dylan isn't a fair actor - I don't mean a versatile one, but as good at doing a performance of being Bob Dylan when he's acting as when he's singing. He seems to sort of freeze up. Maybe this one will be better, though the clip doesn't really seem to indicate that.

I remember, way back in 1963, the BBC did a play with the then virtually unknown Dylan called "The Madhouse on Castle Street". They just had him wander around with a guitar in between the actors, serving as a kind of chorus. That worked quite well, I seem to remember. However they wiped the tapes and there's nothing left of it.

Still, I think that's the way to use him. With a guitar in his hands he unfreezes. I can relate to that, I'm sure a lot of us can.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: DougR
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 12:57 PM

Big Tim: you got that direct from DeNiro?

DougR

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: GUEST,Bob
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 01:30 PM

The fact is, I've been acting most of my life. Specially when you're around, babe. I had t' plan every word I ever said t' you in advance.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 03:59 PM

I can't believe Bob's acting could possibly be worse that his singing.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Big Tim
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 04:26 PM

Re the De Niro thing: I read it in a Dylan article somewhere and the implication was that De Niro had in fact said something like that.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: GUEST,Bob
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 05:42 PM

Talk's cheap, BigPink, and don't forget...they refused Jesus too. My bet is you wouldn't know a good vocal line if you ran into it while admiring your face in the rear view mirror.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 06:08 PM

Complaiming about Bob Dylan's singing is a bit like complaining that an Elephant can't jump, or that a fiddle doesn't have any bass notes. What he does works, and at its best it's amazing.

He's just not too good at acting without a guitar in his hand. Actually I think he feels embarrassed, and it tells.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 06:17 PM

Probably about right, McGrath. To put it another way, complaining about Bob's singing is bit like complaining that the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy doesn't have enough "sex" in it. Duh! We actually had a Mudcat thread on that once, if you can believe it.

Doug - Well, no, Bob hasn't contacted me yet about being in this latest movie, but he's got a lot on his mind.

- LH

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 06:29 PM

And Mozart was probably a pretty lousy juggler...

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 06:43 PM

I have the sound track to an old movie (Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) he appeared in (1973). He is credited with the music, which is fair. In the movie, he mostly stands around and grins- he seems to specialize in the foolish grin. The movie is bad, which would be expected from the cast (Coburn and Kristopherson).

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: bob jr
Date: 17 Jan 03 - 09:19 PM

Dylan has a guitar in his hand for most of "Renaldo and CLara" and its a load of garbage...he has a guitar for parts of "Hearts of Fire" and still looks very very uncomfortable...I am a HUGE fan of Bobs with a guitar...but not in a movie..even the documanteries are kinda dull.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 01:30 AM

"Pat Garret & Billy the Kid" is an odd movie...partly because Kristofferson was miscast...partly because it was cut all to hell before its commercial release...and partly because most of the music was transferred holus bolus out of the scenes it was intended for and put incongruously behind other scenes, with one exception: "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" was left exactly where it was supposed to be. There are some rather striking scenes in the movie here and there, but the whole thing doesn't hang together well. There's some good acting in it here and there too. It was orginally intended to give "Alias" (Dylan) a much larger role, but that did not happen as planned, so he really is just there as a cameo figure. As always, I find him visually interesting, but that's just me, right?

The record is quite enjoyable, and has a real authentic feel to it. They were filming on location in Mexico, a country Bob and I both seem to be fascinated by, and the music was composed there on the spot as far as I know.

I would be pleased to see a video of Bob having a cup of coffee at Wendy's or writing a letter to Albert Grossman or doing pretty well anything. Bob is family to me. I don't care whether or not he can act all that much. With music stars, most of them end up on film sooner or later. That's the way of things. For some neat movies, check out Willie Nelson in particular. The man is utterly classic, one-of-a-kind, whether or not he's carrying a guitar.

Now you talk about people who can't act...how about Elvis? Ye Gods! Of course, he was stuck with almost universally dreadful scripts to work with, but still...

As for Hearts of Fire, Bob was the only thing even remotely worth watching in that turkey. AAAARGHH! I watched it once.

- LH

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 03:28 AM

LH,

I was thinking the same thing about Willie, you beat me to it. Oh yeah, apparently he can't sing either.

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: Little Hawk
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 10:12 PM

Yeah, right! And the Pope ain't Catholic... :-)

- LH

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: outfidel
Date: 18 Jan 03 - 11:43 PM

On rec.music.dylan, someone posted a funny story about the Masked & Anonymous screenplay, which Dylan supposedly wrote under a pseudonym.

When Christian Slater was on Jay Leno last summer, he said that Bob did in fact write the screenplay. Slater told an anecdote about improvising a single word of dialogue at the end of one of his lines and how Bob came up to him after the take and said, "Instead of saying that word, could you just breathe instead?"

Slater told Leno, "You don't change Shakespeare and you don't change Bob Dylan."

Subject: Roger Ebert review
From: outfidel
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 03:50 PM

Check it out...sounds like M&A is a cinematic classic. ;)

A review by Roger Ebert

PARK CITY, Utah--"Do you consider yourself a photographer?" asked Tom Bernard. He is the co-honcho of Sony Classics. I held up my camera and shrugged. "Good," he said, "Dylan wants a photographer backstage right now. Come with me."

This is like hearing that George Bush wants to meet a liberal, While photographers for People, Entertainment Weekly and Premiere were surging against the barricades, Bernard led me backstage to the Green Room at the big Eccles Center. There are two premieres every night at Eccles. Big stars come and go. Only Bob Dylan inspired a media riot. His new movie "Masked and Anonymous" was premiering, and two days earlier the volunteer ushers were warning me, "It's gonna be crazy."

Consider. Dylan has never made a hit feature. He is indeed the fountainhead of half the popular music of the last four decades, but the flow has long since reached the sea. Yet it's clear he's the biggest star at Sundance. Bernard and I made our way through the backstage gloom to the Green Room. The door opened. I looked inside, and it was like a Jack Davis drawing for Mad magazine--one of those drawings where dozens of stars elbow each other for floor space.

I saw (in alphabetical order) Bob Dylan, John Goodman, Daryl Hannah, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Penelope Cruz, Laura Elena Harring, Val Kilmer, Mickey Rourke and Christian Slater. All but Hannah appear in the movie. A star-studded cast, you say? Ah, but the movie also stars (in alphabetical order) Jeff Bridges, Angela Bassett, Steven Bauer, Bruce Dern, Ed Harris, Shawn Michael Howard, Reggie Lee, Cheech Marin, and Chris Penn.

Alas, Bob Dylan's need for a photographer was no longer operational. Geoffrey Gilmore, director of the festival, asked the group to leave for the auditorium, and as they filed past me I looked through my viewfinder for Dylan, but could not find him. I did however get photos of Daryl Hannah, Penelope Cruz and Laura Elana Harring, which was considerable consolation.

In the wings of the stage, I finally found Dylan, his hair falling down from within a Billabong knit hat. He wore a leather jacket and a winter scarf and looked as happy as a man unexpectedly delayed on his way to his execution.

As director Larry Charles of "Seinfeld" fame introduced his cast, there was applause for everyone--the atmosphere was electric -- but a roar and then a standing ovation for Dylan, before the movie had even started. Then we all settled in to watch what Charles described as "a work in progress."

It's a work, all right, but progress eludes it. Dylan stars as Jack Fate, a singer once famous, now on the skids, who is recruited by promoter John Goodman to do a benefit concert in a war zone of a Third World nation (downtown Los Angeles supplied the locations).

Dylan travels to the concert by bus, wearing a quasi-military uniform that looks like a khaki version of a Michael Jackson castoff. Once there, he is plunged into a plot involving Angela Bassett as his father's former lover, Jeff Bridges as an insulting journalist, Penelope Cruz as Bridges' wife, and Jessica Lange as Goodman's assistant or wife, I'm not sure which, who is another example of the movie character who is required to smoke all the time in every single scene, as a trait. No one else in the movie smokes at all.

"Masked and Anonymous" can be described as homage, if you are a Dylan fan, or idolatry, if you are not. His character is treated by all the others as an awesome legend. He occupies his scenes like a judge, gazing at the others as if measuring their worthiness to share the frame with him.

How is Dylan as an actor? It is impossible to tell, because he never has dialogue that is more than one sentence in length, never engages in actual conversation with any of the others, and looks enigmatic and/or ridiculous in a second braided and buttoned Michael Jackson castoff and an oversize cow boy hat. A similar costume might be appropriate for the band members at an impoverished southwestern high school.

Charles uses an unvarying strategy to shoot Dylan: Let Goodman, for example, fulminate and expostulate; cut to Dylan; Dylan utters enigmatic one-liner; cut away. Occasionally this format is interrupted by Dylan dead-panning a song, and the songs are indeed good to hear, although it is a little puzzling why he thinks a revolutionary war zone in the Third World needs to hear "Dixie."

"Masked and Anonymous" is one of the oddest movies I have ever seen. Obviously everyone involved in it was besotted, if not mesmerized, by Dylan. All of those big stars must have agreed to their cameos because this was Dylan's first dramatic role since--I dunno, Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" (1973). It's a little sad to see them acting their hearts away in scenes where Dylan sits there like a toad, impassive, unmoving, oracular, waiting for the closeup in which he utters yet another oblique epigram.

The thing that comes across is his lack of generosity. If the party is in your honor, you should make an effort to have a good time. Dylan seems to be appearing as a favor. Whether he wrote his dialogue or someone else did, he might have suggested that Jack Fate be given more dimension, more depth, more humanity, more...words.

As the Goodman character prepares for the big benefit concert, he introduces Jack Fate's warm-up acts, which include a magician, a "rubber woman," a ventriloquist, and celebrity lookalikes of the Pope, Abraham Lincoln, and Gandhi. These last three stand around pointlessly. How much wiser if a celebrity lookalike of Dylan had also been used, and Jack Fate had been portrayed by somebody who came to play?

Subject: RE: Dylan's new movie - preview & clips
From: GUEST,RKane
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:16 PM

I guess the most telling (and damning) statement from the above review is Ebert commenting upon Dylan's lack of generosity showing in such stark relief against the backdrop of everyone else's obvious generosity.

What continues to baffle me are the reasons why those actors who decided to "do it for Bob" (despite an apparently awful script penned by Dylan himself) put themselves in the film. Do they not know how irrelevant this man and his music became shortly after his disappearing from public view after his split from The Band? That the only generation his music is really going to matter to is his/their own? Do they not get how self-absorbed and self-congratulating an exercise this whole thing appears to be?

Combine that lack of generosity with Dylan's obvious egomania (ie thinking that the world should even care about his views on his own fame), and it sounds like yet another "Dylan vehicle" that I will gladly steer clear of, to avoid a wreck of time.