In the early 2000s, Bob Dylan predicted his career was nearing its end of public intrigue and celebrity—little did he know how much the 2024 film, A Complete Unknown, would rattle those plans. Two decades before the Timothée Chalamet vehicle came out, Dylan was enjoying the kind of career one might expect from an aging musical icon. He was pursuing his own creative interests, not the fleeting whims of commercial record charts.
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Despite the many awards he received at the time, to Dylan, his status as a “hot” artist was slowly starting to cool. But, of course, he was wrong.
Bob Dylan Had Different Ideas Of His Future Career in 2005
Bob Dylan might have dominated the music scene in the 1960s and ‘70s. But the lattermost part of the 20th century proved more difficult, commercially speaking. As Dylan transitioned into his “Christian era,” critical reception became less enthusiastic. In a 2005 interview with Arts & Opinion, the songwriter described his 1990s experience as having “escaped” the press. “In the early ‘90s, when I escaped the organized media, they let me be,” Dylan said.
“They considered me irrelevant, which was the best thing that could have happened to me. I was waiting for that. No artist can develop for any length of time in the light of the media, no matter who it is. If the media was commenting on every article you wrote, imagine what it would do to you.” The “Blowin’ in the Wind” singer compared the 1990s organized media to the press of the 1960s, which he said “propagated me as something I never pretended to be…all this spokesman of conscience thing. A lot of my songs were definitely misinterpreted by people who didn’t know any better.”
Around the time of Dylan’s interview with Arts & Opinion, he was racking up serious accolades, including the aforementioned Academy Award and several Grammy Awards. When asked if he thought the press might start paying attention to him again, Dylan glibly replied, “No. That time has passed. Once they move away and lose track of you, they’ll never catch up with you again. They’re off searching for someone new to put a label on.”
How ‘A Complete Unknown’ Shook Up The Songwriter’s Plans
Legendary songwriter Bob Dylan might have predicted he could fade into obscurity as we trekked further into the 21st century. But time would eventually prove him wrong. Two decades after his interview with Arts & Opinion, the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, would thrust Dylan squarely back into the spotlight. The star-studded film featuring Hollywood A-listers like Timothée Chalamet as Dylan and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger has reintroduced Dylan to an entirely new listening audience. That even included Chalamet, who admitted to not knowing much about the 1960s folk hero until he landed the job to play him in the 2024 biopic.
Depending on how Dylan chose to perceive A Complete Unknown, he might not have been as involved as he was, choosing instead to prioritize his life of creative obscurity and opacity. But according to filmmaker James Mangold, Dylan rationalized this resurgence of interest in his career by thinking of the biopic not as a biographical film about himself but rather as an ensemble film about the folk revival movement as a whole.
“The reason Bob has been so supportive of us making it is…as in all cases, I think the best true-life movies are never cradle to grave, but they’re about a very specific moment,” Mangold told the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2023. This moment wasn’t just about Dylan. It was about Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, and the other important players who helped propel the unknown vagabond from Minnesota with a nasal drawl and moody demeanor into his status as one of the greatest songwriters of all time.
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