If you were wondering just how many Bob Dylan songs Timothée Chalamet learned and performed in the upcoming Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, a new featurette previewing the film provides that answer.
Videos by American Songwriter
As Fred Berger, one of the biopic’s co-producers, revealed in the video, “There are 40 songs in the movie that [Timothée] performs. On guitar, on harmonica, and singing live, take after take after take.”
Chalamet also noted in the promo, “It was important for me to sing and play live, because if I can actually do it, why should there be an element of artifice here? And I’m proud that we took that leap.”
Meanwhile, Elle Fanning, who plays a character partly based on Dylan’s early girlfriend Suze Rotolo in the film, shared her admiration for Chalamet’s portrayal, including the music performances.
“I had goosebumps,” Fanning said in the featurette. “You can see how much love and how hard he’s worked and how much he cares about getting this right.”
In another segment of the promo, director James Mangold revealed that he and Chalamet had spent “five years working on this movie together.”
More About A Complete Unknown
As previously reported, A Complete Unknown is scheduled to premiere on Christmas Day. According to a description posted on a website affiliated with Searchlight Pictures, the film, which is set in the New York City music scene of the early 1960s, “follows 19-year-old Minnesota musician Bob Dylan’s meteoric rise as a folk singer to concert halls and the top of the charts.”
The summary also notes that the movie culminates with Dylan’s “groundbreaking electric rock and roll performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965.”
Besides Chalamet and Fanning, the film features Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Elle Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash.
The Other Actors Also Performed as Their Characters in the Movie
The new featurette pointed out that Norton, Holbrook, and Barbaro also performed live as their respective characters in the film.
“Getting to learn and play the music itself was a huge hook for me,” Norton said. He added, “There’s an energy and chemistry to the interaction between a performer and a live audience that’s just different.”
Holbrook, meanwhile, said of the task of performing as country legend Cash, “It’s a true feat to do his songs. It was a process.” Chalamet then noted, “Boyd somehow made it his own. It feels just as authentic and true as Johnny Cash, but sort of brings his own energy to it.”
Barbaro admitted she didn’t have much experience playing music or singing before being Cast as folk icon Baez.
“I didn’t play guitar,” she said. “I could kind of play the ukulele and I’d sing in the shower. That was pretty much where I started this. … Much of working on the music gave me so much insight into who she was and what the time was like.”
Specific Dylan Songs Featured in A Complete Unknown
The various trailers and preview videos that have been released to promote A Complete Unknown have featured footage and audio of Chalamet performing at least seven Dylan songs. They are “Like a Rolling Stone,” “It Ain’t Me Babe,” “Maggie’s Farm,” “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” “The Times They Are a-Changin’,” “Girl from the North Country,” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall.”
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