Joan Baez and Bob Dylan might have left their relationship behind in the early 1980s, but the latter artist’s 2024 biopic, A Complete Unknown, has dragged that star-crossed connection back into the public spotlight, as biopics are wont to do. Forgotten, undiscovered, and, in some cases, fake tidbits from Dylan’s life have become popular once more in the wake of the star-studded film featuring Timothée Chalamet and Edward Norton.
Videos by American Songwriter
Figures like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Suze Rotolo died years before A Complete Unknown ever came to be. But upon the film’s December 2024 release, Dylan and Baez were still very much kicking. The fact that both artists are alive to share their feelings about—and, in Dylan’s case, help create—this biopic makes the film all the more interesting and relevant.
True to either form, Dylan and Baez’s reactions to the Bob Dylan biopic perfectly encapsulate their opposing attitudes and careers.
Joan Baez Reacts To Bob Dylan Biopic With Her Character’s Actor
Bob Dylan has seemingly lived many different incarnations over the years, but the 2024 biopic A Complete Unknown centers around his early days of cutting his teeth and establishing himself as a folk music hero. It’s unsurprising, then, that fellow folk artist Joan Baez would play such a pivotal role in the movie. Baez helped Dylan enter the scene in the early 1960s, having established a successful career as a musician and activist in her own right. Around this time, Baez’s celebrity usurped Dylan’s.
Of course, history would show how that changed in the following years. Dylan went electric in the mid-1960s, transcending genre and gaining a one-way ticket to international acclaim. Baez, on the other hand, preferred a hands-on role in the scene. She was an activist as much as she was a singer, and her belief that Dylan took an opposite approach eventually led to the dissolution of their relationship. The pair effectively estranged from one another following a disastrous reunion tour in the early 1980s, and that was the end of it.
Monica Barbaro, who plays Baez in the Dylan biopic, called Baez to discuss the film. “She was really not fussed about the film,” Barbaro told The Guardian. “Truly. I think I was more concerned on her behalf than she was for herself. I was sort of saying, ‘You deserve your own biopic!’ So many biopics with different chapters of your life!’ And she said, ‘I’m just sitting in my backyard watching the birds.’ You know? I lived it. I did it.”
Baez’s indifferent response to her former colleague’s biopic is a testament to her entire career. The folk singer eventually traded her guitar for a painter’s easel and has pursued visual art and social justice causes ever since.
The Film’s Leading Man’s Reaction Is Just As Revealing
While it’s to be expected that Bob Dylan would play a larger role in the development of his biopic than Joan Baez, who, for all intents and purposes, played a supporting role in the film and Dylan’s life. Still, the two artists’ differing reactions to the movie are fascinating testaments to the differences in their personalities. Dylan, for example, maintained an opaque, somewhat mysterious presence throughout the film’s production.
He never spoke to Timothée Chalamet, the A-lister who plays Dylan in A Complete Unknown. When Dylan provided creative input, some of his suggestions included putting scenes in the film that never happened in real life. The songwriter took creative liberties, kept his distance, and stayed true to the legacy and never-ending development of his artistic lore.
As Baez put it in her cutting ode to Dylan, “Diamonds and Rust,” Dylan has always been good with words and keeping things vague. Except, unlike in her song from 1975, Baez has no use for that vagueness now.
Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Leave a Reply
Only members can comment. Become a member. Already a member? Log in.