So the first two hours of Scorsese's biopic on Bob Dylan have aired and I was interested in Scorsese's technique of repeatedly splicing in footage from the 1966 England tour where Dylan is booed and jeered for plugging in for the second set of his shows. That footage opens the movie, and then between interviews with Dylan and his contemporaries we are treated to more snips of the controversial tour.
The audiences of course weren't universally turned off by Dylan's transformation. During one post-show exchange among fans, an interviewer asks several audience members what they thought. One person says (and I paraphrase), "I came to see Bob Dylan not a pop band." Another fan immediately retorts, "There aren't many pop bands like that."
For his own part, Dylan seems to take it in stride. At one point, as he and the band climb into a car post-concert, he says out the window, "Stop booing me," but he says it in such a way that seems half-joking. He then comments that even though they're booing him, they're buying up the tickets in a hurry. He concludes his only comments on the booing by saying, "I wish they'd stop booing....It's hard to tune the guitar when they're booing."
Dylan as ever is evasive over questions of his politics and status as "spokesman of his generation."
The movie concludes tonight on PBS at 9:00 p.m.
2 comments:
I was intrigued at Dylan's contemporaries' impression of him as a "shape changer" and "hustler." All told, apparently this adaptability to change and knowing where to seek help and attention aided him greatly. Success would seem to be a combination of talent, luck and knowing who can aid you: from "borrowing" records he would delve into and memorize, to nailing down the right record executives. Dylan learned the folk songs, then shifted to Woody Guthrie, an original songwriter, then to the New York "scene" then over to electric. Adaptability. Overall, I think his turning to his own songwriting helped him rise above and beyond "folk singer" into his more universal appeal. I was also surprised that Arlo Guthrie wasn't interviewed, since Bob Dylan used to babysit him. A fascinating study. I look forward to Part II.
Did he babysit him? I'm reading Chronicles, and the only mention of Arlo (I'm nearing the end of the book now) that I've come across was the part where he goes to Woody's house because Woody said he had a box of songs in the basement -- Dylan says he never got the songs, but that Arlo was just a kid then -- I think he says he was 9 yrs old.
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