‘A Complete Unknown’ Is a Bob Dylan Movie. How Does It Feel?

Sean is joined by Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin to dig all the way into ‘A Complete Unknown,’ James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothée Chalamet. They discuss, among other things, the musical performances of Chalamet and his costar Monica Barbaro, the supporting performances around the edges of the movie, Mangold’s ability to tackle one of the most central pop cultural figures in American history, the moment the film is trying to capture, and more. Host: Sean Fennessey Guests: Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin Senior Producer: Bobby Wagner Video Producer: Jack Sanders Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:46Sean Fennessey?

  This episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by Amazon Prime. What pairs with a good comedy? The cozy blanket arriving with Prime. What pairs with a nail-biting thriller? Snacks arriving with Prime. What pairs with the big game on Prime Video? That new couch arriving with Prime. Whatever feeling you're after, Prime helps bring it to life with great entertainment and fast shipping that delivers what the moment calls for. From streaming to fast shipping, it's on Prime. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Ads. Ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype? Marketers know that feeling. They optimize for the numbers that look great, impressions, reach and reacts. But when they don't show revenue, well, that's a not-so-great conversation with the CFO. LinkedIn has a

• 1:27Sean Fennessey?

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• 2:04Sean Fennessey?

  I'm Sean Fennessey and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show about the jugglers and the clowns when they all did tricks for you.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Damn you!

• 2:14Sean Fennessey?

  The Susie Rotolo and Joan Baez of my life. Chris Ryan and Mallory Rubin. Jeez. What's happening, guys?

• 2:21Speaker 04

  We never did too much talking, anyway.

• 2:23Sean Fennessey?

  Not until today. Today, we are talking about A Complete Unknown, which is the new docu-drama about Bob Dylan. About Bob Dylan in a very particular period in his life, a critical period in his life, between 1961 and 1965, when he came to New York and ultimately went electric. This movie is directed by James Mangold.

• 2:43Speaker 03

  Big Jim.

• 2:44Sean Fennessey?

  It is co-written by Mangold. I believe he did a rewrite of a script by the great J. Cox.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 2:50Sean Fennessey?

  This movie, of course, stars Timothy Chalamet as Bob Dylan.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  Boy, does it.

• 2:54Sean Fennessey?

  Listeners of this show know that I have been deeply concerned about this movie for some time. And I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. I know Mallory is also essentially on a par with me in terms of Dylan fandom, a mega-fan. Chris Ryan...

• 3:10Speaker 03

  Very big Bob Dylan fan.

• 3:12Sean Fennessey?

  How would you put yourself in the hierarchy?

• 3:15Speaker 03

  I think that he was like a really formative person for me, but other, maybe, acts from that time period have eclipsed him in terms of my, like, constant interest and returning to it.

• 3:26Speaker 04

  You're more of a Pete Seeger guy.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  But I was gonna say that this movie marks what is a pretty reliable, every five to seven years, there is a Dylan revival because of a film or a documentary that comes out, or a book, or an appearance. And this is the great gift of Dylan fandom, is that you can kind of leave it for a few years, and then something will happen where you're like, "Well, it looks like I have to go listen to a 10-hour chronological playlist of his work from 1960 to 1970."

• 3:52Speaker 04

  10 hours, so deeply abridged.

• 3:54Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, that ain't much.

• 3:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 3:56Sean Fennessey?

  Mal, why don't you talk about your fandom appreciation, how you came to love Dylan?

• 4:01Speaker 04

  Sure. I would say he is the most important man in my life, other than the two of you.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  What's up, Adam?

• 4:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, Adam. What about Barry?

• 4:09Speaker 03

  Jesus Christ.

• 4:09Speaker 04

  And Barry Rubin, who of course introduced me to Dylan. Yeah, I was trying to like, think back and identify the exact moment in time where I really fell into the discography. And I don't, I can't tell you the exact year, but I'm, I am certain that I just stumbled upon Biograph in my dad's living room. Like, that is definitely what happened. And it was early high school for sure. And also then Love and Theft had come out in 01. And that double whammy of realizing like the depth of music and history and decades of exploration that awaited. And also that there was something brand spanking new, featuring to this day, one of my favorite songs of all time, Mississippi. And now we're two, two decades further down the road.

• 4:54Speaker 04

  And that is still true for anybody who stumbles upon Dylan today. There's something brand new waiting and there's just now even more history. So right away, he became my favorite and that has lasted. He is my favorite musician. He's my favorite writer. He's my favorite poet. He's certainly my favorite character in film or documentary. Uh, and I just think that he's the absolute best. And so because of that, I, like you, was incredibly nervous about the movie. I would describe my, uh, anticipation level as active dread.

• 5:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Speaker 04

  And so I look forward to exploring why that proved to be ill-founded.

• 5:34Speaker 03

  Number one, I'd ever had a doubt, first of all, for a complete unknown.

• 5:36Sean Fennessey?

  You never had a doubt?

• 5:37Speaker 03

  No, I had strong, I was long this movie and we'll get into whether I was right or wrong. Just to piggyback off what Mal was saying, like, I do want to say that one of the things that this film does very well, and one of the things I think is the most rewarding part about being a Dylan fan, is that you get to do three different things at once. You have the work itself, so you can just revisit these albums and live in them and they mean different things to you at different points in your life.

• 6:02Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 6:02Speaker 03

  You have like the absolute, uh, like two universities worth of scholarship and writing and thinking and documentary filmmaking and people who spent all their time on Reddit analyzing like Dylan. And the Dead shows and stuff like that. But then you also have like this incredible wealth of stuff that Mal mentioned biograph. But for me, it was bootlegs, the first bootleg series, which I think came out in 89, but was like a huge part of when I first started working at record stores at the end of high school. That would get played a lot. And it was my first glimpse into listening to someone becoming what they were about to be. So like basically listening to the creative process take place.

• 6:44Speaker 03

  And that was like my first introduction to the idea that like, like a Rolling Stone does not just happen. It's like it's 18 takes of it and it's a waltz with a piano. And then accidentally a guy comes in and starts playing an organ and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. I didn't know that's how art got made.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:02Speaker 03

  So you get to see that, you get to listen to that, obviously, but to actually see some of it dramatized was one of the great pleasures of this movie.

• 7:10Speaker 04

  Very similar to how I feel getting to watch Chris put together a Talk the Thrones outline. All the stages.

• 7:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 04

  Of discovery.

• 7:18Sean Fennessey?

  Also deeply influenced by Rambo and.

• 7:21Speaker 03

  Mostly composed in the bathtub.

• 7:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  What about you? What was your, what was your origin story with Big Bob?

• 7:27Sean Fennessey?

  It's similar to yours. I'm just a little bit older than you. So Time Out of Mind becoming a phenomenon, you know, many years after, I think most people had felt like Bob's best years were behind him. That was a huge comeback for him, that record. It was, you know, Grammy celebrated, he'd done an unplugged around that time. And so he was very much back in the consciousness in a mainstream way after a long, I mean, roughly like 82 through 95, it's this very quiet period. And that's really my adolescence. And so up to that point, I think a lot of kids who were big readers, as we all were, who were, I was deeply interested in music and had a simultaneous hyper obsession with the contemporary and hyper obsession with trying to like cram in as much knowledge of the past as possible. And if you listen to a lot of classic rock, he just recurs.

• 8:11Sean Fennessey?

  Like if you listen to a Byrde's record, his songs are all over the place. If you listen to the Beatles, his influence is all over the place. If you start reading about the construction of popular music, and especially rock and roll in the 60s. He just looms so strongly over all the writing. And so, yeah, I mean, same for me. He's my favorite writer. I can listen to songs that I first heard when I was 11 and still be kind of untangling them.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:33Sean Fennessey?

  Finding new meanings and new appreciation for them. Just have a very big emotional relationship to the music. And it's one of the few things I've remained uncynical about in my life. And I think it's one reason why I think this movie scared me a little bit, you know? And it's, I think there have been, you know, to your point, Chris, like, a lot of really good films about who he is, or what he is, or using his music in compelling ways, or using him as a performer in compelling ways. He's been in some of the best concert films of all time, some of the best documentaries ever made. He has been in great westerns, you know, he's made his own movies, like, he, he is, he is meaningful to movie history, too. And there's never really been something like this, which is extremely Hollywood and standard.

• 9:13Sean Fennessey?

  This is very straightforward, and we know now, after like roughly 20 or so years of this framework, kind of typical and cliche riddled style of movie making. So I'm a fan of Mangled.

• 9:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, same.

• 9:28Sean Fennessey?

  I think it's interesting that he chose to do this movie because, of course, he made Walk the Line.

• 9:33Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 9:33Sean Fennessey?

  Which was a big success, won Reese Witherspoon Academy Award. Most people felt Joaquin Phoenix pulled off a performance of a person who is unreplicable in Johnny Cash. And you've got a very similar challenge with this movie with trying to personify someone who is as much living mythology as he is just a guy.

• 9:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:54Sean Fennessey?

  In somebody's house right now. And, you know, in the aftermath of Walk the Line, he made, like, Walk Hard came out. And Walk Hard detonated this format forever, like, and that movie is so clearly inspired by the success of Walk the Line. And I gotta give Mangled credit for just like not here in the footsteps. Because he kind of just commits like every sin all over again in this movie. And so I want to use that as like an entree into talking about whether you guys like the movie or not, because you can like the movie because of those things, you can like the movie in spite of those things, or you can reject it because of those things. I think those are kind of your choices. So where did you land on A Complete Unknown?

• 10:33Speaker 03

  I actually found it to be probably a little bit less formulaic than maybe you're describing it. Like, I think it's actually more or less a very, very, very long music video. Like, the lack of dialogue in this film and the lack of really particularly dramatic scenes, there's like half a dozen, maybe, and because if you know anything about Dylan, or even if you're just using the logic of like, well, I know it, I know that he actually does go electric, so this is sort of a moot point. Like, you just wind up immersing yourself in the power of that music, and there are a lot of parts about it that I think are going to be mocked, but I'm almost like, well, what did you think people were doing when they saw Bob Dylan the first time? They were probably staring at him.

• 11:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 03

  Because they were like, holy shit. You know, he's, and so even if there are factual or historical inaccuracies in the film and in an effort to like build up dramatic tension or something like that. I found myself basically like unmoved the entire film, never itching, never being like, when is this over? Or when they, when do they get to Newport, or when does he meet Mike Bloomfield? I was like, I am so happy to be going on the magic carpet ride. I think from the moment it starts in the back of a station wagon, you're like, holy shit, dude, this is great. Like, and I, and I fully acknowledge that Queen fans might have felt that way about Beauty and Rhapsody, and Elton John fans might have felt that way about Rocketman, and I did not. I was like, this sucks.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  But for this, for Bob Dylan, for something I care about, I think they did a really credible job of creating, is it a Hall of Presidents feeling? For sure.

• 12:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 03

  I don't care. Like, I like going to Disney every once in a while.

• 12:14Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 12:14Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think, Mel?

• 12:15Speaker 04

  Um, this is my favorite movie in a long time.

• 12:21Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 12:22Speaker 04

  Even though I don't, and Chris and I saw it together, and we talked about this right after with Joe. We all saw it together. I wouldn't necessarily call it a movie.

• 12:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 12:31Speaker 04

  And that's obviously something I'm interested in discussing with you both today, but I was absolutely riveted watching it. Like, my eyes were as wide as Scoot's the entire time.

• 12:44Sean Fennessey?

  You moved as much as him as well.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, I know. Every time Boyd came on screen, I was like, ah, elbowing Chris. And he's like, yeah, I know.

• 12:51Sean Fennessey?

  Boyd Holbrook, who portrays Johnny Cash in the film.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  Boyd does he.

• 12:55Sean Fennessey?

  You have plenty of opportunity here today.

• 12:57Speaker 04

  Boyd does he. Um, you know, as we've already alluded to, it's hard to think of too many people in the history of music, or really any aspect of culture, who have not only made the impact that Bob Dylan made, but have been like chronicled to the length that Dylan has been chronicled. And so like, part of what I was nervous about was just like, why? Right? What will we, and especially because I think this period in particular, 61 to Newport and 65, is one of the most studied and interrogated and pored over stretches of musical history. Now, I am a Bob Dylan lover, but I can't claim to be a music historian like you are.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  And yet, even I know a lot about that period in time and what this represented.

• 13:44Sean Fennessey?

  This was my complaint when the movie, when I first heard about the movie, is I was like, this is the least interesting time to me. This is the one I least want the docu-drama about, because it's the one with no mystery.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  Right. And so the combination of, and I do think like, one of my critiques of the film, which again, I loved, is that I think you start to really feel that in the third act. I thought the first hour or 45 was way stronger than the closing stretch, because you start to feel the inevitability of reverse engineering against the quote-unquote "purpose" of the film. But ultimately, I think for us, sitting in the seats, and for the people who are making it, the purpose of the film is to just spend time with one of the most consequential figures in the history of the world. And the performances were unbelievable. Like, Timothy Chalamet was uncanny and un-

• 14:30Speaker 04

  Unbelievable as Bob Dylan in a way that, I mean, I love Timmy. I think he's a great actor. And when the trailer came out for the movie, I was like, oh, what is happening here? What is happening here? What have they done? And watching it, I was, again, just like completely swept up in the magic of enjoying the thing. I think like when it, when it ended, Chris, you know, we were looking up at the credits rolling and it's screen after screen after screen of song, right? And you were observing like, like, you know, just is Dylan gonna get like a screenwriting credit? Right? Cause so much of the script of the movie is in fact the songs. But I ended up loving it. I think it, it was, it was an inversion of what I anticipated.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  I thought the songs would play second fiddle to an attempt to interrogate an unknowable figure. And that was just simply not the case.

• 15:18Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't even try.

• 15:20Speaker 04

  I loved that about it. No.

• 15:21Sean Fennessey?

  Doesn't even, it's, it's the most fascinating thing to me about, about the movie. And I, I most, I definitely am not as enthusiastic as either of you guys. I think I like it way more than I thought I would.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:29Sean Fennessey?

  And there were a couple of times where I just like burst into tears while they were singing. Where I was just like, this is, this is incredible. And it's, it is that thing you're talking about with Queen, where just like hearing those songs so loud and them nailing the performances.

• 15:43Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:43Sean Fennessey?

  Is just, it just took me over. Like, and I, I can never sit in a movie like that and be like, this isn't good. You know, like it, it is, it is impactful.

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:51Sean Fennessey?

  But, you know, the, I don't know, I, I'm still, I'm totally stumped on this movie in so many ways about how I feel about it because do I, did I want a Bob Dylan movie that, was it going to attempt to interrogate what he was up to and to unpack his psyche and his motivations? Or do I want something that just sort of, you know, burnishes the myth a little bit? And then otherwise just platforms the music? What would have been better? I, I, I don't know. I don't know. I do think it's interesting that like, there's really no meaningful exploration of the interiority of Bob Dylan at all.

• 16:28Speaker 03

  Yeah. So I, you know, you mentioned, uh, Walk Hard as like this comparison point. And Jim Mangle basically like kind of being like, I, I'm fuck it. I'm doubling down. To me, the, uh, very useful comparison point would be I'm not there for this film, which I know we're gonna talk about Dylan on screen in a little bit, but I can't resist talking a little bit about Todd Haynes's 2007 movie before that. Because this, Todd Haynes's conception of this story, not necessarily this specific story, although there is the Cate Blanchett section is essentially the. Second half of this movie, you know, the polka dot shirt essentially. That's the kaleidoscopic like way of doing this. That's the like, he's unknowable.

• 17:08Speaker 03

  So we have to shatter the urn and piece it back together through all these postmodern storytelling devices. And I think that I just really responded to Mangold being like, straight up. I'm just gonna like, look this thing in the eye. And there may not be like, a core here. Like, I may not get to the like, is this guy an act of self-creation? Does that matter? How did you treat woman? Like, I don't, yeah, there's an unknowability to that. And to some extent, like, that's not Shalit May's fault, but it was almost like watching someone's game tape, like, where you're like, oh, my God, this guy, this guy is really-

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Timmy would appreciate that.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  And I'm sure he would. But it's like, this guy fucking learned how to play guitar for five years. Like, he can do this in a master shot, and you don't have to like, dub in stuff and everything. Let's get as much of that up on screen as possible. And that is gonna be a very worthwhile experience in a movie theater.

• 18:01Speaker 04

  So I did a thing that I've never done in the history of podcasting about movies. I went to a screening, and then I reached out to the studio and was like, I have seen the movie, but I, can I please see it again?

• 18:15Sean Fennessey?

  I was so amazed that you told me that earlier this week.

• 18:17Speaker 04

  I just like, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. And so the second time that I went, there was a panel after the film with Mangold and the cast. And one of the things, this is what you were just saying, made me think of this-

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Shalit May's just furious about the seating and the CFP.

• 18:34Speaker 04

  He's like, I thought we were hearing about-

• 18:35Speaker 03

  How is Boise State getting this by?

• 18:37Sean Fennessey?

  Max, if you stop talking over me.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  One of the things that Mangold said, and I'm paraphrasing here, but was, like, he really pushed back against the idea that the film is about the fact that Bob Dylan is an enigma. And he said, in essence, like, you can't play a question mark. I can't tell Timmy to play a question mark. And we know him through the songs. He gave us all these songs. Like, what more do we want than what he told us about himself in the songs? Now, I like, really don't agree.

• 19:09Sean Fennessey?

  At all.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  At all with that. But I found that to be such a fascinating perspective. And the fact that we're like, I don't agree with that, even though you made the movie. Is to me, part of the proposition and part of the reason why, even though Bob Dylan has been in people's lives for so long and studied at such length, it's worth making a movie like this. Because just as he is a figure defined by reinvention, that's why I'm not there. This movie does it with one actor, but in a very different tone, right? In sensibility, but it's the same thesis in a way, right? It's like when we see the envelope or the notebook with Zimmerman on it, there's not a single moment, other than Sylvie, the Sue's stand-in, saying, "Are you gonna tell me

• 19:55Speaker 04

  anything about your past?"

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Or the sister being like, "Oh, I guess he wasn't really in a carnival."

• 20:00Speaker 04

  Right? It's just there as one more fact on the ground, right? One more bit of context to say, "Well, before we even got to the period where everyone was studying how he reinvented himself, this was an inevitability. This is who he is at his core. It's why when Seeger is driving him to his log cabin, built by his own hands, and they're talking about the idea of being a folk singer, he's like, "Well, the modified," right? Before any of this actually even happens. And so like, why is the movie called A Complete Unknown? Well, of course, I mean, that's a lyric in the song that we're building toward. This is a period in his life where he became famous. I love that moment where he's writing the letter to Johnny. He's like, "I'm famous. Famous. I'm excited for some of Chris's voice work today."

• 20:42Speaker 04

  But I think that despite what the director and maker of the movie is saying, it is also an acknowledgement that this is a figure who, in some way, will forever defy the level of interrogation that he invites.

• 20:56Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. So the one thing that I think the movie is very confident in doing, which I think is a real credit to it, because it didn't have to do it this way, and a lot of times when you have movies that are executive produced by living artists, you don't see this, but this movie is very steadfast in pointing out that Bob Dylan is an asshole.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:12Sean Fennessey?

  You know? And especially at this time in his life.

• 21:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 21:15Sean Fennessey?

  That he is, has a complicated relationship with the women that he seduces or that he spends time with, that as an artist, he is defiant of people who took care of him and put him on their shoulders, that he is willing to come Kind of like mangle history in an effort to go forward. You know, one of the best things and worst things that I've done since I saw the movie was I rewatched No Direction Home, which is Martin Scorsese's documentary, sort of archival documentary about this exact period. It's the same time, it's 61 through 65. And that movie is just amazing if you love Bob Dylan, because you have so many of the key people who were in his life at the time. Suzie Petolo, Dave Van Ronk, you know, friends from Minnesota, like people in 1997,

• 21:59Sean Fennessey?

  explicitly explaining what Bob was like. And Bob's in it too, and Bob gives one of the longest interviews he's ever given. He gives tons of great information. But throughout that entire documentary, you get the sense that like Bob Dylan was a real opportunist. In fact, I think someone calls him that at a certain point, that even though he is this touched, like almost like angelically, God gifted thinker and writer, that he was like, I want to win. Like him being wanting to be famous, him wanting to ascend

• 22:29Speaker 03

  For sure.

• 22:29Sean Fennessey?

  above whatever the expectations of a traditional folk singer would be are so interesting. And I give the movie a lot of credit for not shying away from that.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:36Sean Fennessey?

  For not trying to valorize him. Because Bob Dylan is like, I'm not a protest singer. This isn't, these songs are not about that, there's something different. And so I respect that they did that. It still doesn't resolve. It's the only thing that it kind of like confirms to me.

• 22:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that he definitely moved too fast for culture to keep up with. And so by that logic would move too fast for a movie to capture. Todd Haynes actually had this really good quote when he was asked about casting the six different actors, where he said, "The minute you try to grab hold of Dylan, he's no longer where he was. He's like a flame. If you try to hold him in your hand, you'll surely get burned."

• 23:15Speaker 03

  James Bangle was like, "I'm gonna move out Indiana Jones."

• 23:19Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? Like, I don't give a shit.

• 23:21Sean Fennessey?

  I killed Wolverine.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, he's like, I think I can do this. And I think what he does. That when I, when I think about why I am gonna go watch this movie again, it's everything that's on the outside of the frame. It's the depth of realization of the apartment, the CBS studios, the control room, the notebooks, the coffee cups, the cigarettes, the wine bottles. Like, I wanna see all the accoutrement. I will go back for Chalamet. He is, it could have gone so, so, so, so wrong, and it doesn't. And he knows it, and that's why he's having one of the great promo runs in American history. Is like, he didn't fuck it up.

• 24:04Speaker 03

  And if he had fucked this up, it would have been one of the all-time flops in, in like, you could ever have. So I, I really do think that there is a kind of, um, he is trying to look at this object straight on. And it is an object that never, ever allowed itself to be regarded that way.

• 24:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, what I wrote down in the notes is just like, Dylan is prismatic, he's not linear. And this is a movie that's trying to tell you a linear story. Todd Haynes does the absolute best he can by, as you say, shattering the urn, trying to give him, you know, sort of multifarious meaning by putting him inside of lots of different people. Because that's how Bob Dylan imagined himself as a shapeshifter. There's like, you know, the Irish love Bob Dylan because Bob Dylan is like a folkloric character. Like, he resembles a leprechaun in so many ways because he's a trickster. But the movie, it, it's like, deep and abiding sincerity is just like a little much for me. Where I'm like, this is the guy who wrote Fourth Time Around just to make fun of Bob Dylan. You know, or excuse me, just to make fun of John Lennon. You know what I mean? Like, he is, he's like a motherfucker.

• 25:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:03Sean Fennessey?

  And it's a little bit, there's a little bit too much. When I say that they're biopic cliches, it's the long holds on people admiringly gazing upon him. You know, it's the like, impressionistic flashes of moments rather than any deeper exploration of a big moment. Like, him writing a song, like, what did we really learn about him writing a song in this movie? That he was like, went over to Joan Baez's apartment one night and did it to like, embarrass her?

• 25:30Speaker 04

  Did you come here to make me watch you write? It was fucking iconic.

• 25:33Sean Fennessey?

  Great line, great line.

• 25:34Speaker 04

  Incredible.

• 25:35Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and then there's also just like the very typical, like, this is the establishment. What he's doing is wrong and it's way beyond what anyone should do in an artistic space. Like it's in every one of these movies. And the other thing is just like, this movie got refashioned to be a love triangle. And I'm not totally sure that that stuff ultimately works, but I'll be, I'm curious what you guys think.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  Oh my God, I have so many thoughts on everything you both just said. Okay, is the, the pod's like 10 hours, right?

• 25:57Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, we're, yeah, we're, we just started. This is actually a live telethon for Bob.

• 26:02Speaker 04

  That would be great. Sign me up if we ever do that.

• 26:04Sean Fennessey?

  He'll be performing at the end.

• 26:05Speaker 04

  Okay, on the love triangle front, so obviously that's true. Sylvie, Joan, Bob. And despite those parts of the movie not always gripping us and grabbing us the way that other parts do. I will say that when they're singing "It Ain't Me Babe" and she is watching, it fucking shattered me. Like it destroyed me. It was devastating. When she's watching, when Sylvie is watching him sing "The Times They Are A Change In", and this is the figure who, when everyone else was like, "Sing the classics", right? What folk music is, is a tradition that we pass on and share.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  Sylvie was the one who said to him, "Well, the old songs like had to be new once. Play your songs." And then she watches him sing "The Times They Are A Change In", one of the best moments of the movie in general. We'll talk about some of our favorite musical numbers, so I'll, I'll, I'll come back to that. But the piece of paper, the scrap of paper that she found with a verse from that song, and she has to confront the fact that he would not share that with her, but shared it with the world. Like those parts of it were, I thought, very emotionally impactful. Overall, though thematically, the Sylvie, Joan, Bob love triangle is just a parallel to the folk rock love triangle. That's the real love triangle in the movie.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  And it's, you know, I thought the movie was effective in that sense of like drawing the parallels. And saying like, it's a, it's a story about expression and passion and temptation and like, understanding his compulsion for constant reinvention through that lens. Like, where are you being pulled in a given moment in time? And saying to everyone around you who you form a connection with at any given point, there's gonna be something after you. And there's gonna be something.

• 27:59Speaker 03

  That's the same thing he was saying to like, music fans. As soon as you're into Highway 61, I'm on to something else. As soon as you're into Blonde and Blonde, I'm on to something else. I'm gonna disappear, I'm gonna come back. You think I'm, you know, this iconoclast, what happens when I become like, a devoutly religious singer? You know, like, he's always confounded in sometimes maddeningly ways.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  What we expect of him.

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, and I think like, to the point about being an asshole, I mean, that's obviously one of the great joys of the movie. And I think it, it had to be there. Like, you can't, you can't make a Bob Dylan movie in a world where Don't Look Back exists. And pretend like he's a nice guy.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  He's a cool guy.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  You just, you just simply couldn't do it.

• 28:37Speaker 03

  The nice thing that they did is they capture him also being a funny asshole. Yeah. You know, could be cruel, could be a little bit nasty, you know?

• 28:44Speaker 04

  And very honest. And this gets back to what you were saying early, earlier about like, opportunity, but just also ambition. And the fact that, like, people talk a lot about, I mean, it's very difficult to say any, there's nothing new to say about a Bob Dylan song, but like, part of what's always fun in perpetuity to talk about is just how like, he makes you feel at a given moment in time, right? And one of the things that, I think even if people have very different relationships to his music that recurs is like, the truth, the honesty, the wisdom, right? Like, the guitar pick's not dipped in honey, it's dipped in acid. Like, the assholery is part of the draw.

• 29:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Like, the gall to say those things out loud and then sing them to the world. I loved the, like, the moment when like, he and Sylvia are walking down the street. I think maybe when, when they're on the way to see, uh, before they hit the theater to see, like, Now Voyager. And he says, um, you know, there's that like, about being a freak, right? And she's like, are you a freak? And he's like, I hope so. I loved that, right? And he's like, you can be beautiful, you can be ugly, you can't be plain. And I think that sometimes, a- and, and I have this tendency too, and like, the compulsion to talk about the, um, you know, the church of Bob Dylan and like, sermons, but not preachy ones. Like, you, you know, the fact that, one of the things I love about Don't Look Back and that incredible documentary is like, the moment where they're like,

• 29:59Speaker 04

  Um, the crowd was silent and that was amazing. Like, people sat in awe to listen to him. It wasn't like screaming, right?

• 30:05Sean Fennessey?

  Well, part of that is because of what you were just describing, which is that in sixty-two, sixty-three Newport Folk Festival, he was the only person singing new songs.

• 30:14Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:14Sean Fennessey?

  So they were listening to the words.

• 30:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:17Sean Fennessey?

  Because they were not songs that they had heard a hundred or two hundred times before.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 30:21Sean Fennessey?

  And so there was this sense of revelation. There was this messianic moment because it was about arrival. I don't know. I still think there's like definitely some rote stuff in this movie, guys.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Here's a way to ask the counter of this. Did he bang Joan Baez the night of the Cuban Missile Crisis?

• 30:35Sean Fennessey?

  Um.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Is that in Chronicles?

• 30:36Speaker 04

  That's.

• 30:37Sean Fennessey?

  Did he, did he drop a bomb on her? Is that what you're saying? Did he, did he fidel the button?

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Did he throw Khrushchev's boot at her?

• 30:48Sean Fennessey?

  Well, I mean, that's an interesting, that's an interesting device to talk about is, you know, that they, it's, I thought that the film shows some restraint in that respect. For example, we don't go to the March on Washington, a place famously where.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  We do see it in TV, though.

• 31:02Sean Fennessey?

  We see it on TV, but, you know, Bob and Joan performing there. Like, we don't go there and try to recreate that sequence or anything.

• 31:07Speaker 03

  And then Forrest Gump walks by.

• 31:08Sean Fennessey?

  Exactly. But we do have the Cuban Missile Crisis and, um, you know, someone watches it on TV and they run downstairs and they run down to the cafe and, oh, right on time, Bob Dylan singing Masters of War, just, just so happy to be singing, just as we all lived in fear and strangers were throwing each other through the streets. It's like, it's really ginned up stuff. Not that the Cuban Missile Crisis was not an absolutely terrifying moment in American history, but it's when you start bending time around a person's mythos that I get a little bit queasy in these movies. And so I, I don't, that's, that is a rare case where they did something that I was like, this is too much.

• 31:47Speaker 03

  There's gonna be a lot of like, he actually didn't do that then and this is, why is he playing?

• 31:52Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think he kinda needs to jump a lot of that stuff.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Bringing it all back home songs, like he's writing them, but the album's already out, like, there's, there's definitely moments like that. I did not think of that for one second while I was watching the movie. I was never like, well, you know, I, I was, I was like pretty affected by almost all of it and, and you know, like. I gotta say, I mean, I would be the first person to be like, why is this movie about like his two girlfriends? Like he changed the world. Like I think we could make, you know, I found that I, I, I found L. Fanning to be really affecting. I found Mark Barba was incredible.

• 32:23Sean Fennessey?

  I was shocked, shocked.

• 32:24Speaker 04

  Unbelievable.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  And I thought he had like legitimately really electric chemistry with both of them.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  With everyone, with Woody, with Pete, with Jesse.

• 32:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  Like with everyone.

• 32:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:35Sean Fennessey?

  That's it? That's all you want to say about, you have nothing else to say about women? That about does it on that front.

• 32:40Speaker 04

  About desire.

• 32:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, I think. I was.

• 32:44Speaker 03

  Do you want to talk about red rooms? There's women in that, right?

• 32:48Sean Fennessey?

  There certainly is.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:49Sean Fennessey?

  You know, Joan is such an interesting figure in their history. You know, they're still friends. They're still, they still have this relationship. She's talking in No Direction Home so amusingly about him, where she's just like, God, he was such a bastard, wasn't he? It was so great, but I hated him, but I loved it.

• 33:04Speaker 03

  There's scenes in Don't Look Back where she's singing a song. Grossman's sitting in the hotel, like reading some papers. Dylan is typing and drinking coffee and smoking and she's just like, you should finish this song that I'm playing.

• 33:18Speaker 04

  He's like, that was a good one.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  And then like their banter and their interaction, I'm like, to your point, Mal, it's like, in a, in a weird way, like, I don't think you can actually recapture the, the crazy intimate moments we have of Bob Dylan's life.

• 33:31Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  At a time when that was not common.

• 33:34Sean Fennessey?

  It doesn't really try to put any of those moments from Don't Look Back. I didn't revisit Don't Look Back after seeing this, but I don't think that they're unlike, say, Haynes.

• 33:42Speaker 03

  It's a lot of it, that's London.

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 33:44Speaker 03

  And he doesn't really go to London.

• 33:44Sean Fennessey?

  Right, he doesn't go to London. Right, right, okay. Yeah, I, I, I think that's a good choice because some of those moments shouldn't, they shouldn't try to replicate them.

• 33:52Speaker 04

  Also, every one of those incredible infamous interviews, you're like, Cate Blanchett really nailed that.

• 33:58Sean Fennessey?

  She's, she's, yeah, she's phenomenal. But like the Donovan stuff, for example, where he's just so fucking mean to Donovan, just like destroys his soul.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  Donovan got one, he got, he caught one stray in this movie.

• 34:07Speaker 03

  That, a lot of people put that video up of like Donovan, there's a Don't Look Back scene where Donovan plays a song. And then Bob Dylan takes the guitar and it's like Kobe running through Pogge's Hall where it's like.

• 34:18Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  Fucking homies like this is it's all over now baby blue like put yourself in a in a crypt.

• 34:25Speaker 04

  Same.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Uh but I've I've heard also that like they were friends and then that he did not mean that to it's like almost like the where the myth and the reality leaf.

• 34:34Sean Fennessey?

  It's like pottin' with me, you know, I might try, I might hit you with one, but it's out of love, man, you know, you're hurdy gurdy, man, it's a good, it's a good tune.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  Joan Baez's interior life.

• 34:43Sean Fennessey?

  Well, she, I mean, she's obviously a person who I think could withstand a movie like this, too. And we just get a really one perspective of her, but obviously Timothy Chalamet, learning to play guitar, I think, from scratch and singing all these songs is an amazing accomplishment. Joan Baez is one of the signature American singers of the 20th century. I mean, her voice reverberates through an entire generation. And Monica Barra does a pretty good job.

• 35:07Speaker 04

  She's amazing.

• 35:07Sean Fennessey?

  And she didn't sing before this, like I saw an interview with her after my screening and she was like, I had to learn to sing during COVID. I was like, what do you mean, learn to sing? Learn to sing like Joan Baez? So this movie is crazy.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Actually, one of the first films that I can think of that almost benefited from the delay.

• 35:23Sean Fennessey?

  I completely agree with that.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Because it was initially called Going Electric, they were gonna start it in 2020, I think, or something like that.

• 35:31Sean Fennessey?

  He said in 2019, he showed Ford v Ferrari to the Telluride audience and on the, either on the way home, he got the Jay Cox script from the president of Searchlight. And he was like, I think you should do this. And he read it on the plane or maybe read it that night and emailed him the next day and was like, I need to do this.

• 35:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, so this is a situation where I don't know whether or not, like, if they had shot that in June of 2020 or something, would Timothy Chalamet's stuff all be like cutaways and, you know, half and half shots or something? But clearly he has spent between playing Paul Atreides and Willy Wonka, like, learn to play guitar.

• 36:08Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, three lords.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Pretty convincingly to the point where they're actually able to use his. Guitar playing, there's that one scene, um, can we talk about specific scenes and stuff?

• 36:19Sean Fennessey?

  Sure, yeah.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  There's that one scene, uh, when he's early in his recording career. I think it's his first session and he's not singing into the microphone, so he has to start the song over. And I'm like, I think, I think he's doing that. That's pretty, that's pretty dope. It's like watching Tom Cruise play pool in Color of Money. You're like, well, if you can do that, then we can do all sorts of other stuff around you being able to convincingly do the thing that this movie is about.

• 36:42Sean Fennessey?

  And that has gotten me thinking a lot. I'm very curious what the edit of this movie was like, because you mentioned this earlier that there's, it feels like 60% performance. It feels like a huge chunk of the film.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  At least.

• 36:54Sean Fennessey?

  Is just singing.

• 36:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:55Sean Fennessey?

  And maybe when they got on set and they realized these kids can really do this, that maybe we should start cutting away at sequences. Maybe there are things that we don't need to do because the movie, and the movie is roughly two hours, right? It's not some like overstuffed.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's like two.

• 37:12Sean Fennessey?

  Three hour epic.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  Two twenty, maybe?

• 37:13Sean Fennessey?

  Okay, two twenty.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  Two fifteen?

• 37:15Sean Fennessey?

  So I, I'm, I'm curious about that. I'm not entirely sure. I will say, I mean, the thing to me that works the best in terms of the framework and device aspect of the movie is Pete and Bob and Seeger and Edward Norton and what he's doing. And I like, there's a part of me that wants to, wanted to host this whole pod, like Pete Seeger.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  As Pete's manager?

• 37:34Sean Fennessey?

  Just like, hey, I'm Sean Finacy and this is the big picture. I'm here with Chris Ryan.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  I'm Sean Finacy and I'm, I'm real happy about Juan Soto coming over to Queens.

• 37:43Sean Fennessey?

  Mallory Rubin just dropped, just dropped in, just dropped in to play, play a team for us.

• 37:47Speaker 03

  Buster Oldman said that Steve Cohen's gonna regret that contract. Well, we'll see about that, Buster. This song is called Wimway.

• 37:58Sean Fennessey?

  If you, if you.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  You're no comment.

• 37:59Sean Fennessey?

  If you watch.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  You just, you just think 15 years, you guys are, it's a marriage.

• 38:03Sean Fennessey?

  You were gonna try to troll me on Juan Soto? I don't think so, my friend. I, uh, I really like what he's doing in this movie. If you watch Pete Seeger interviews, pretty close.

• 38:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:12Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, pretty close. That reedy voice and that aw shucks and that stiff posture and the head held high and that kind of like aw shucks morality that Pete Seeger brings to everything. And that clash, you know, like, I think he, to me, I thought the Alan Lomax aspect of it is way less effective.

• 38:29Speaker 03

  I want to get to that.

• 38:30Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 38:30Speaker 03

  I have to say, one of the really great underlying tensions to the Seeger, Dylan on screen and Shalhoub Norton thing on screen is that if you have ever watched any Ed Norton interviews, he really would like to have played Dylan.

• 38:44Sean Fennessey?

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Like, he talks about Bob Dylan so much in interviews. Like, people will be like, Ed Norton, welcome, you're in the Italian job. He's like, Bob Dylan, 63, does like, gets a telecaster at the West Village Guitar Shop. And that idea that like, he kind of missed that window to be able to do that, although I will make the argument that Mangold could just do the Linklater, like, come back to this in six years and have another Shalhoub.

• 39:10Sean Fennessey?

  I was gonna raise that to you guys.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  That's one of the interesting things about like, Walk the Line, Dial of Destiny, Logan. Mangold is, this is what I really like about his movies, actually obsessed with legacy.

• 39:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  Like,

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 39:21Speaker 04

  Dial of Destiny worked a lot better for me than I think it did for most people because I was like, it's kind of like brave and cool to be like, Indiana Jones got old and washed and the world passed him by. And so it's so interesting to pair him with like, the birth of Dylan, the dawn of Dylan, and...

• 39:37Speaker 03

  But just having that other actor be like, god damn it.

• 39:39Speaker 04

  But that's,

• 39:40Speaker 03

  Could have been me.

• 39:41Sean Fennessey?

  That is funny.

• 39:41Speaker 04

  But that meta aspect is perfect.

• 39:44Sean Fennessey?

  It plays, yes.

• 39:45Speaker 04

  For Seeger because like, so you were, it will not surprise you to hear this at all, you were completely reasonably mocking, gently, lovingly mocking the like, wide-eyed, doe-eyed, oh my god, Bob Dylan, uh, look on everybody's face in the film.

• 40:01Speaker 04

  I like absolutely loved that part of it because that felt so true to me. That that is what would happen when people heard him sing for the first time. Like who wrote that?

• 40:09Sean Fennessey?

  I just think cinematically it's boring, you know, it's just not, it's just not good movie making to make you look at someone looking at something.

• 40:16Speaker 03

  It's like Spielberg eyes, but, but it, I don't know, it's like not a dinosaur. It's a guy in a West Village bar. So like.

• 40:24Speaker 04

  Yes, I would say like with like Albert or even Joan for those reasons. It's like. We're like, yeah, wow, I would probably look that way too, but less effective. But with Pete and Woody. It, it felt really like keen and like it tapped into what that would actually have meant in that moment.

• 40:44Sean Fennessey?

  So to me that you just put your finger on something that I wanted to point out. It works so well in the opening scene when he sings a song to Woody. When he sings song to Woody, to Woody, when he's in the hospital bed in Jersey.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:57Sean Fennessey?

  And Pete is looking at him and it's the thing, you know, it's the thing that Pete literally says where he's just like. I'm watching the future unfold before me in the form of this Minnesotan kid. They nailed it. Like they got the thing that I needed, which was like, you look at this person, you hear their voice. You see the conviction and the creativity and you're like, he is, he has arrived.

• 41:17Speaker 03

  He is him.

• 41:18Sean Fennessey?

  But then, yeah, he is mother. But like they do it like 13 times in the movie, you know, at a certain point, I just thought it was a little bit overstated. Cause we all, we're already in our seats for the Bob Dylan movie, you know, we're already here. I am seated to, to, to, to genuflect.

• 41:32Speaker 03

  I kind of also wondered whether or not, uh, just in the practicalities of filmmaking, I'd be very interested to hear Mangle talk about this. I don't know if he's gonna come on the show, but like the, uh, it feels like they shot the Newport stuff like in a block probably, right? Like over the years, they have like that, they have that crowd and they can do that certain amount of those. Same thing probably for the cafe and the smaller venue shoots. And it did get me wondering like, I guess what else would you shoot? It's either the band or it's people watching the band. People watching the band, you have to convincingly be like, these people are having their fucking grape squeezed right now. Like Bob Dylan is playing Masters of War. Like they're losing their minds. So there's not that much like, I wonder.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Would you have been like into like if they had cut away from the reality of the moment to show like news footage of like the things happening in the streets? Like I kind of like keeping it. Audience and Dylan, you know? Even if it is repetitive and a bit.

• 42:26Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I, I, I'm not a filmmaker and I don't have like a here's what would have been better take on that. I think it's just that there was like an over reliance on a tactic that you see in all of these movies, which is that they've, they, they shove this concept down your throat because they don't know what else to do. Because he is inherently a musician.

• 42:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:45Sean Fennessey?

  Not a, an actor. And so there's nowhere else to go in the movie.

• 42:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:50Sean Fennessey?

  Which just kind of limits it to me as a, as a movie experience. But, you know, when the songs, when you're playing, heart rate's gonna fall or whatever. Like that's, that's, that's the song, you know, that's a song that can change lives.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  So let me ask you, did you find yourself coming, uh, aside from obviously like there's half a dozen to a dozen musical performance in this where everybody just is like, I'm fucking taking my shirt off. But.

• 43:11Sean Fennessey?

  They're not though, that's the thing too. Until we get to the final sequence, I don't, I'm sorry to cut you off.

• 43:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:17Sean Fennessey?

  But it's only at the final sequence where there's any meaningful action happening. I guess Sylvie kind of storms off, but like aside from that.

• 43:22Speaker 03

  Oh, well, so this is my, I mean, take my, like, I'm storming out just because I'm like, he's singing Girl of North Country. This is good.

• 43:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Uh, did you like or even prefer Bob Dylan goes into a party? Bob Dylan wanders into an Irish bar. Bob Dylan does like everyday shit.

• 43:41Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I did. I did. I did like.

• 43:42Speaker 03

  Bob Dylan quickly cleans up an apartment before his girlfriend gets home.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  That was quite amusing.

• 43:46Sean Fennessey?

  Mal pointed out one of the more interesting sequences, which is sort of like his, the early stages of his meeting with Sylvie and then going and catching a movie and then talking in a diner. Um, that was like a legitimately dramatized period of his life that I haven't seen in that way before. And so that like, that is an exploration of like who this kid was and whatever it was 62, 61. And I guess I could have used a little bit more of that, a little bit more of like a deepening of the relationships between those characters. I think I would have liked to have seen a couple of more quiet moments between Bob and Pete. Like what did they actually talk about?

• 44:21Speaker 03

  Or how did that relationship decay, you know?

• 44:23Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and they make it seem like it's just because of the creative decision making that Bob had. But, you know, Pete's got a lot of like unexplored jealousy there too. And that's not really interrogated at all. Like Edward Norton's face is doing a lot of work there and he's, he gives a very good performance. But nothing is really like unpacked.

• 44:41Speaker 04

  I wanted to ask you guys about that actually on the, the tracking the Seeger part of the shared arc, but also just the Seeger arc then, there's the. Scene where they're all sitting around the table prepping for the festival and, you know, quite concerned, right, about what will happen and what will Bob do.

• 44:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, he plays these new songs.

• 45:00Speaker 04

  Yeah, and Pete is the Dylan defender in that scene, right? And then, of course, we have a couple moments between them at the shirt shop.

• 45:11Sean Fennessey?

  I like that scene, yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 04

  Genuinely wonderful stuff, but there's not too much time with Pete between him saying, like, well, would it really be so bad in the room full of, like, the Sentinels defending the folk revival? And him, you know, in one of the great, like, myth, mythical moments in music history, like, considering grabbing the axe, right? Did that feel, did you feel like we needed a couple more beats of connective tissue? Or is there enough to understand about what Dylan represented for achieving Seeger's dream, for realizing Seeger's dream of the folk revival reaching the masses to just,

• 45:56Speaker 04

  like, inherently get that that being jeopardized would be like his life's work and ambition crumbling in real time?

• 46:02Sean Fennessey?

  This is a, this is a very interesting conversation. I'm not sure if it's a good conversation for a movie podcast about the Bob Dylan movie, but the ultimate philosophical friction between Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan is, is that Pete Seeger is like, I am, I am a product of and a vessel for a civic cause, that I want to help change the world by speaking and singing honestly about the struggles of those who have less than, which is the most noble thing in the world. And Bob Dylan does do that for a period of time. He does it from his perspective, out of empathy for the human condition, not because he wants to be a part of a movement, but he does it all the same. And so Pete adopts him and uses him in a way.

• 46:48Sean Fennessey?

  With nobility, I think, but uses him to further his own philosophy.

• 46:52Speaker 03

  He's the megaphone.

• 46:53Sean Fennessey?

  Yes.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  He brought those shovel. Everyone else had teaspoons. Yeah.

• 46:56Sean Fennessey?

  So we get to the end of that time and Bob Dylan is like, I am a flame that can't be held. I have to go explore other sides of my creativity. And it's okay to turn into the self and to explore what I want and what I think will make the most for me. And hopefully we'll give people something that they want. And Pete is left to feel like, really, he basically gets left behind in 1965.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's on public access television.

• 47:22Sean Fennessey?

  And is a tragic figure in many ways. This is both true in real life and in the movie, even though Pete Seeger is fondly remembered as an American hero by some. But like, what is right? What is actually like, what is the right path? Like, Bob is confronted by this conversation by Pete at the end of the movie, but there's no discussion. Because Bob will not have the discussion.

• 47:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that you're touching on something that I was trying to get at, which is not the counterfactual of what James Mangold could have done. It's more that in 2024, what matters is these songs. And what people will care about in 50 years are these songs. And so this movie is a platform for these songs in all their different stages, live in an apartment, in a bathtub, in the studio, whatever. In 2060, if we're all still here, we will not be talking about how Pete Seeger felt about being slightly used in the, not on a mass level, right? And I think that this movie is leaning into the idea that yes, the drama probably comes from should he or should he not go electric at Newport?

• 48:29Speaker 03

  Who should he spend his romantic time with? Did he live up to Woody's dream of an American song? But what we really want to spend our time on is showcasing this music in the best possible circumstances. And that is like the movie you get versus the movie you want, basically. The movie we might want is one that maybe digs in a little bit more to Yeah, maybe I'm just- The details and stuff like that and like the kind of like the trends and the currents of the West Village at that time and I wanted more Bobby Newworth. I wanted more Mike Bofino. I wanted more Al Cooper. I wanted more sessions and what records was he listening to, what bands-

• 49:09Sean Fennessey?

  My understanding is that the original script is more that because it's more attuned to the Elijah Wald book. Which is much more of a music book-

• 49:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 49:17Sean Fennessey?

  And not a biographical movie or a biographical story. It's about the creation of sound and the decision making around plugging in. Which I think for nerds and historical fans would have been exciting, but it's obviously not like a movie that Searchlight wants to make either. You know, there needs to be some star aspect to it. I don't know. What do you think?

• 49:36Speaker 04

  So, um, one of my favorite moments in the movie, I just was like, this is incredible, is the hard cut from The Rockus. I've discovered like my siren whistle. I were making Highway 61 revisited studio session into sad, lonely Pete and his banjo saying, "I can't see you. You're that little magic box." And we are just in two completely different moment in times. And so that conversation in between the two of them in New Part at the end, when Pete goes to tell the story, the fable of the teaspoons and Albert's like,

• 50:21Speaker 04

  "We get it."

• 50:22Speaker 03

  Seven in the morning.

• 50:23Speaker 04

  It's seven in the morning. I'd like to sleep. Very funny. Very amusing.

• 50:26Sean Fennessey?

  I think Norton is fantastic in that scene.

• 50:28Speaker 04

  Oh, my God. I mean, Norton is tremendous throughout the entire movie. Like, I thought he was sensational. Again, the whole cast was great. I think what you said a few minutes ago is inarguably right. Like, there's nothing, even though we get a couple moments of like, "Which guitar do you want?" And this like illusion almost that there's a potentially different outcome than the one that we know not only happened because it happened, but is inevitable because of who this figure is.

• 50:53Speaker 04

  There was still the tension in that conversation. When Bob puts on the shirt and sits down, it's like, someone just bring me a cigarette. And it actually does, despite having rolled his eyes at Pete when he saw him in the street previously, want to hear him out, like, want to give him like the grace of having that conversation. And I loved the way that scene was structured because the thing, even if this is not really what happened, and the conversation can never have led to a different outcome, the thing in the movie's dramatization of that moment that swings it, the thing that leads Bob Dylan to get up and put his boots on and his tight pants on and walk out is like, I sent you my record. Did you even listen to the songs you're telling me not to sing? And so it's like, how could you possibly, no matter what that person had done for you?

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Like, I think the movie, I'm really interested in what the movie says, not only about adoration and adulation, but like contempt? Because I think, and I think it does this deftly, actually. I don't think that the movie wants to tell us or believes that Bob Dylan had contempt for folk music, or Pete Seeger, or the people in the room at the banquet who were like, why didn't you bring your guitar? It's like contempt for the idea of standing still.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, and I almost feel like in the reality of the film, maybe not in historical reality, that Dylan was rejecting the fact that Pete was trying to compromise. You know what I mean? Like, there's some line in there where he's basically like, if you just do it one more time, if you just play acoustic one more time for us. And it's almost like, if it's just one, then it actually doesn't matter. If it was like, no, folk music is this, you are a folk singer, we built you, you can't go anywhere, that would be one thing. But instead, you're like, I know that I can't stop what's about to happen, but if I could just get like, five more songs from you that make it so that this can then live into next summer, and we can sustain this movement.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  And it was almost like, the middle ground is what he rejected. That's how I read that scene, was like him trying to, he just didn't want to compromise at all. But you're right, like, that's a great moment in that film. The film, I wish it had more moments of tension like that.

• 53:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:05Speaker 03

  More moments of like, uh, there's like this kind of artistic conversation and this idea about like artistic purity happening. But I think it's like, we gotta get to the next song, you know, like that's, that's sort of where the movie's engine takes it.

• 53:18Speaker 04

  I, so I started reading the book. I had never read this book. Uh, I'm about 25% in, so I haven't finished it yet, but I mean, it is fantastic.

• 53:26Sean Fennessey?

  It's really good.

• 53:26Speaker 04

  Holy shit, the writing is like unbelievable and it's just so interesting.

• 53:29Sean Fennessey?

  It's not Walt's first Bob Dylan book. He's a true scholar.

• 53:32Speaker 04

  I mean, you, you, boy, you can tell. Um, but I loved this. This is from the intro actually, but I loved this paragraph that kind of sums up their relationship and what it represented. Seeger is a central figure in this narrative because the story of Dylan at Newport is also the story of what Seeger built. What Newport meant to him and the lights that dimmed when the amplifier sucked up the power. It is about what was lost as well as what was gained. This is like, this is what made me think about what you just said here. About inner, about intertwining ideals and dreams that never quite fit together and about people who tried to make them fit and kept believing they might. Like that idea that this was always sort of an illusion, that this could be lasting.

• 54:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 04

  And so if you're holding on to something that you knew was always going to be a moment instead of forever. Like, how could you invent? How could you explore? How could you grow? How could you try? How could you do all the things that are elemental to who Bob Dylan is as a figure?

• 54:27Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I think, I think one of the things that he is rejecting too, is just the idea of expectation from any direction. And so

• 54:36Speaker 04

  Totally, yeah.

• 54:36Sean Fennessey?

  You know, religiosity of Lomax and folkways and that, those institutions, I think he just found.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  You sleep for a time.

• 54:44Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but ultimately as suffocating as anything coming in the opposite direction that would seem that he would be opposed to politically. Cause they both represent a kind of conservatism that he's not interested in.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  Well, to your Chalamet, we could talk about Chalamet, but to your point about the portrayal of Dylan as a little bit of a prick, it's like, one of my favorite little moments is when he's flirting with, uh, Al Fanning at the, the Hootenanny in the Harlem church. And the woman's like, shh. And he's just like, nah, you know, like I'm, I'm trying to get laid. Like, it's not about like, this sort of like piety to, you know, oh, these guys are, are they playing traditional like folk? No, I don't care. Like, I'm trying to pick up this girl.

• 55:21Sean Fennessey?

  One of the only people that he bends the knee for is Johnny Cash, which is a very interesting thing that is very accurate. Like, if you read Dylan's writing in Chronicles, if you listen to him in interviews, to this day, he has this abiding respect. And he's almost like intimidated by Cash in a way. And so Cash is portrayed by Boyd Holbrook in this movie, who is Chris's, has been Chris's number one boy for going on 10 years. What did, what did you think of Cash?

• 55:47Speaker 04

  How did it compare specifically to his musical renderings and justify it?

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Uh, I've, I've been a long time fan of this guy, as is James Mangold. So he's been used multiple times by Mangold. I, I think I put in their document a picture of Warren Buffett. Because Berkshire Hathaway has been seeding, we've been spreading the investment.

• 56:06Sean Fennessey?

  Yep.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  Across many years since.

• 56:07Sean Fennessey?

  He cashed out, yeah.

• 56:09Speaker 03

  Uh, I think he, look, that's a, that's a really hard part to play and, and Joaquin Phoenix did a pretty damn good job of it. But what he does is, he's the only person in this movie who's cooler than Bob Dylan.

• 56:22Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  Uh, and Bob Dylan and Timothy Chalamet know it. Um, and I think their, their correspondence is perhaps a little bit more intimate than their in-person meetings. Like, that in-person meeting outside of the motel where Boyd's got a box of Bugles and is crashing his car back and forth.

• 56:39Sean Fennessey?

  That's what it's like with you, me and you off mic.

• 56:41Speaker 03

  But that is the best scene in the movie.

• 56:44Speaker 04

  Very sad.

• 56:45Sean Fennessey?

  You want a Bugle?

• 56:46Speaker 04

  Dropping the coke.

• 56:47Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, the cast does a great job. I mean, do you, do, do you feel like we've done Chalamet here? Like?

• 56:53Sean Fennessey?

  I'm, I, at this moment in time, think he's gonna win Best Actor. Um, I think he is now just fully confirmed as the, the movie star of his generation. Um, I don't, I really don't think there's, you know, Amanda and I, I think had Margot Robbie at number one when we did the list last year because of the incredible success of Barbie. Margot Robbie, I think, is like getting close to 35. He's.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  28.

• 57:18Sean Fennessey?

  28, doing, um, doing all the right things. You know, I hated Wonka and I hated that he did that. But for his movie stardom, it's the right move.

• 57:27Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 57:27Sean Fennessey?

  Dune, the Dune thing has just paid off magnificently. And now he's making a period piece with the Safeties. So he's really, he has. Four quadranted movies in such a phenomenal way. And now, in the event that he does win best actor, he's the youngest best actor winner ever, supplanting Adrian Brody when he won for The Pianist.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  And what will be Timmy Chalamet's brutalist? That's the question.

• 57:50Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, I don't know. God willing, Brady Corby is still making movies at that point. But like, it's very rare in this century for someone to be able to pull this off. You know, to be able to play all these different kinds of parts and to maintain this kind of allure. But he's also doing things that Leonardo DiCaprio did not do. Like going on College Game Day.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  I don't want to be too like over zealous about this, but I have to say like the,

• 58:15Speaker 03

  the, you know what? The logical way to have done this is like, he did an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple's YouTube and he was very, very like pious about Dylan and is like.

• 58:25Sean Fennessey?

  He has been throughout this whole tour.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  And so I was kind of like, this is going to be one of those things where it's like, did he accidentally like, forget to drop the Dylan voice when he's doing interviews? And is this going to be like a little bit too?

• 58:36Speaker 04

  The Austin Butler.

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Too safe? Yeah, a little bit. And then when he did Game Day, I was like.

• 58:41Sean Fennessey?

  Listen, Al-Ghaib.

• 58:42Speaker 04

  Exactly. Totally. Marty.

• 58:46Speaker 03

  This is a music, this is basically a musical about a guy from the 60s. How are we going to get the fucking homies to come out? And it's going on Game Day and being a true ball knower. And now, and since then, I was just telling Mal, like he did this, uh, clip with Entertainment Tonight. And he's like, she, this woman's like, hi, we're from Entertainment Tonight. He's like, I know. And they're like, what? And he's just like, I'm responsible for a lot of your engagement. I like, I'm always smashing the heart button. And they're like, okay. And he just plays along with everything they're asking him. They're like, we saw you on Game Day. He's like, yeah, I don't, I don't really want to be an actor. I want to be a sportscaster. Acting is like an on-ramp to sportscasting. And I'm just like, you got it, man. You got it. The whole world's in your hands, like.

• 59:31Speaker 04

  What do we think the actual current power ranking is for his heroes between Bob Dylan and Bill Simmons?

• 59:35Sean Fennessey?

  And Bill, yeah.

• 59:36Speaker 04

  Who's one and who's two currently?

• 59:37Sean Fennessey?

  I mean, he's.

• 59:38Speaker 03

  Has Bill reckoned with this at all?

• 59:40Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 59:42Speaker 03

  That's what makes him him, you know?

• 59:43Sean Fennessey?

  Because Bill won't acknowledge. He doesn't read the comments. Doesn't look at his mentions. Uh, has Timmy been in his mentions? Do we know?

• 59:51Speaker 03

  If Bill had a choice.

• 59:53Speaker 04

  He like went on Kimmel, right?

• 59:54Speaker 03

  Sincerely, if Timothy Chalamet was like, I want to do a two hour sit down with Bill Simmons. And instead Drake May was like, I will do 15 minutes on Zoom brought to you by Right Guard. Who would Bill pick?

• 1:00:08Speaker 04

  Oh my God.

• 1:00:08Sean Fennessey?

  I think we all know the answer to that question.

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

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• 1:01:43Sean Fennessey?

  Is there anything else you want to say about Chalamet? Beyond just, this is incredibly difficult to achieve performance that he achieved?

• 1:01:51Speaker 04

  I, I mean, I, I don't know that I have anything to add. I just thought it was like mesmerizing, honestly. Uh, I don't have anything close to the level of familiarity with the other contenders for best actor this year that you guys do, obviously, but I certainly believe that he should win.

• 1:02:09Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10Speaker 03

  This Coleman Domingo, right?

• 1:02:11Sean Fennessey?

  Coleman Domingo and Sing Sing, Ralph Fiennes and Conclave.

• 1:02:13Speaker 04

  Ralph Fiennes is the great.

• 1:02:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Adrian Brody and The Brutalist, and probably Daniel Craig and Queer would be my guess for the lineup.

• 1:02:20Speaker 04

  Strong field.

• 1:02:21Sean Fennessey?

  Lots of well-known people. Brody, of course, has won before. The Craig movie is not beloved.

• 1:02:28Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:02:29Sean Fennessey?

  Sing Sing is still a smaller film. And then you've got Ralph Fiennes, who.

• 1:02:35Speaker 04

  The best.

• 1:02:35Sean Fennessey?

  We, all three of us greatly admire and who is, has a it's time narrative. I'm, I'm, this is related to the film, like, will this movie be commercially successful? Because if it is, then the, then the chances of best actor really increase, in my opinion.

• 1:02:51Speaker 04

  I have no idea.

• 1:02:52Sean Fennessey?

  I don't either. I, I have no feel.

• 1:02:54Speaker 03

  Have you seen any tracking on it?

• 1:02:54Sean Fennessey?

  I have no feel for it whatsoever.

• 1:02:55Speaker 03

  My guess is that this is going to do very well. My guess is that this is a movie that people who are not, like, unplugged into movie media and, like, thinking about discourse about movies are like, that's earmarked, that's Christmas Day or Day After. My mother, who cannot really leave the house, is like, I would really like to see A Complete Unknown in, in the theater. That's.

• 1:03:17Speaker 04

  There you go.

• 1:03:17Speaker 03

  That's, and like, that is the kind of thing that was like, I think Kamala's gonna win because my mom voted for her. But like, I think that like, that's not like accurate, but you know what I mean? Where it's just like, people who don't fuck with movies a lot are like, the four I'm seeing this year, this is one of them.

• 1:03:35Speaker 04

  There is something in that, like, again, kind of like meta sense about going to the theater to see this that, obviously, it's not the same as seeing Bob Dylan in concert, but it's approximating that thing of sharing the music with the crowd. So I do think that there will be a lot of people who feel that urge to go say, like, I wanna, and it was fun in the screenings, like, there was a lot of laughter, you know, at the acid wit, like, the, everybody, everybody was very respectful. There was no loud singing, but there was like, you know, some swaying in the seats. You could tell the people were moved.

• 1:04:09Speaker 04

  So yeah, I do think people, and I, I think the thing about, it just feels like there's gonna be so much.

• 1:04:17Speaker 04

  Out in the world, out in the ether about the Chalamet performance, that that will then drive even more people who are maybe on the fence to try to see it sooner. I think the thing that was so great about the performance, in addition to just like the awe that you felt watching him play guitar and play the harmonica, the posture, the way he carried himself, with the actual singing, it was, I thought, in a way that is like not always the case in a biopic, the just right calibration of, obviously you are trying to-

• 1:04:51Sean Fennessey?

  Imitative in his own voice.

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, this iconic thing, but it definitely sounded like Timothy Chalamet. It was unmistakably Timothy Chalamet singing.

• 1:05:00Sean Fennessey?

  It's a good choice to try to get close to the register, but not mimicry.

• 1:05:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Sean Fennessey?

  Which, when I watched the trailer, I was like, oh, he's not even trying to do mimicry? Like, this is not close, but then when you feel it cumulatively, when you hear all the songs, you see that it's like, he's doing the best he can. He can't get to the raspy, reedy place that Bob had that was like, no one really ever sang like that before.

• 1:05:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, he also doesn't smoke 42 Marlboros a day.

• 1:05:26Speaker 04

  I believe it was North of 80.

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Speaker 04

  He sounds like him also, though, when he's, in that right, like, sweet spot way when he's speaking, just the way that he says, like, you know, your songs are like oil paintings in a dentist's office.

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  That's in the trailer, and I think that's when people were like, we have, Houston, we have a problem. It's because like, if the whole movie is this guy talking like this, and that is actually-

• 1:05:47Speaker 04

  But then in the photo that's seen-

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  Really offset by Joe Mias being like, what are you talking about?

• 1:05:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, shut the fuck up.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  I'm trying to make you coffee, yeah.

• 1:05:54Sean Fennessey?

  Um, what was your favorite song performance? Do you have one, Chris?

• 1:05:59Speaker 03

  Uh, my favorite is the moment where they're doing Highway 61 Revisited, and he's experimenting with the kazoo kind of thing.

• 1:06:07Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  Mostly because it is the, like, most naked Chalamet is as Dylan-

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  As Dylan is kind of becoming who he is, but he's like laughing at a guy making a face whose face we'd ever see and he's like, "You're killing me. Like, I'm gonna lose it." Like, and it's all the banter that if you listen to the Bootleg, uh, series, you get a lot of these alternate takes where like, um, Hammond or Wilson are like, "Hey, man, try, keep trying that," or somebody's like, "Uh, I can't remember how this ends," or "That's all I got," and you, just to get a little bit of that chasing mercury on screen was great. So that's probably my favorite.

• 1:06:46Sean Fennessey?

  I like that one. What about for you?

• 1:06:48Speaker 04

  Can I do like five or six?

• 1:06:50Sean Fennessey?

  How about two or three?

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  Wouldn't it be a Mal pod?

• 1:06:51Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:53Speaker 03

  You didn't break the wheel.

• 1:06:54Speaker 04

  I mean, there were like three dozen songs in the movie.

• 1:06:58Sean Fennessey?

  There were a lot. I asked you when you went a second time to make a list of every performance and...

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  She did.

• 1:07:03Sean Fennessey?

  You got, you got fucking close, man. You got almost every song.

• 1:07:07Speaker 04

  I got a lot, yeah.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  How did you do that? Were you writing throughout the movie or did you watch the credits and write them down?

• 1:07:11Sean Fennessey?

  You just remembered?

• 1:07:12Speaker 04

  I, when I left the first time, I was like panicked that I wasn't gonna be able to remember all of them. So the second time, I was really like trying to, while still, you know, allowing myself to be swept up in the movie, pear moments in the chronology of the film with when we heard the, the music. But also just again, because the, the musical moments were so good, it was pretty like easy to remember them. We already talked about Song to Woody. I, I think that and I was young when I left home, all kind of pear.

• 1:07:40Sean Fennessey?

  At the beginning, yeah.

• 1:07:41Speaker 04

  Early moments where really quickly I realized I was gonna have a great time watching the movie. And like, I, you just sort of do, it's like, oh, right, the, the prophet has arrived. I thought that Blown in the Wind.

• 1:07:53Speaker 03

  Where are we? What number are we at? Just out of curiosity.

• 1:07:56Speaker 04

  This is, I'm gonna say technically number one, because that dual smuggle, that dual smuggle was something that we had already talked about Song to Woody and so I smuggled.

• 1:08:04Speaker 03

  The Ruben smuggle?

• 1:08:06Speaker 04

  Blown in the Wind, when... This is like the morning after.

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  It's after he smashes.

• 1:08:12Speaker 04

  Mom and Joan.

• 1:08:13Speaker 03

  Can you imagine smashing Joan Baez and then being like, here's my song.

• 1:08:16Sean Fennessey?

  Shades of you on the Skyfall pod, making a turkey sandwich.

• 1:08:21Speaker 04

  Unbelievable. I mean, that was just, that was great. And I think it actually particularly memorable because Blown in the Wind, both inside of his relationship with Joan, where she wants to play it at the concert, and he's like, fuck this. But also, he just says later, like, they just want me to play Blown in the Wind for the fucking rest of my life, right? To have seen as he was creating it, how just astonishing it was in real time, and the way Joan kind of like sits behind him on the bed. That was great. You know, I really loved Don't Think Twice, It's Alright, not only because it's one of my favorite songs ever, but the way that it stitched together with where we were in the story in the film, because you're initially hearing Dylan sing it in the studio, and you get that, who wrote this? He did moment, right?

• 1:09:06Speaker 04

  And then it pairs with the iconic photo shoot for the Free Will and album cover. And then we go right from Bob singing it into Joan singing it at the concert, and then into hearing Joan on the radio and that argument with Sylvie and Bob. That, I just thought that was like really, really good.

• 1:09:24Speaker 03

  She knew Robbie? You don't sing like that unless you're.

• 1:09:27Speaker 04

  She sure did. She sure did. But I think my favorite was the times they are changing. Like, I thought that was just.

• 1:09:33Sean Fennessey?

  That's everyone realizing all at the same time.

• 1:09:36Speaker 03

  And that is, that take, like, he didn't do that at Newport, right? Like, he didn't debut that at Newport.

• 1:09:41Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think, I actually don't know.

• 1:09:43Speaker 04

  And that was in the film Newport 64, and so it's like this pivot point, right?

• 1:09:47Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, and that song is out before then.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that album is 64, yeah. And, but, the thing I loved most about that was his response. Like, we get a lot of Sylvie in that sequence, but Dylan's face as the crowd in real time is singing this back to him, and he's like. Kind of like maybe not feeling it, actually, right? He's like, what is?

• 1:10:14Sean Fennessey?

  What have I wrought here?

• 1:10:15Speaker 04

  Happening?

• 1:10:15Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  I thought that was really exquisite. And the Amy Babe duet was great.

• 1:10:22Speaker 03

  Did you have any?

• 1:10:23Sean Fennessey?

  Five or 10 more, Mallory?

• 1:10:24Speaker 03

  Remaining songs?

• 1:10:26Speaker 04

  There were tons. The music was great. They did a great job.

• 1:10:29Sean Fennessey?

  I've always really loved All I Really Want to Do. And so him and Joan in Pittsburgh.

• 1:10:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was great.

• 1:10:35Sean Fennessey?

  Doing that together, I really liked. I mean, I think the one that, when he's doing a song to Woody, I was like, oh, good. This isn't going to be a fucking disaster, this movie. You know, and I really was just, it hit me. When the ship comes in is like an amazing song.

• 1:10:48Speaker 04

  That was great. That scene was great.

• 1:10:50Sean Fennessey?

  That's a very special song in that era for him too, as a writer.

• 1:10:53Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 1:10:54Speaker 03

  I really liked when he, I misremembered this. I think he does, I'll Keep It With Mine, and he's like singing it in the bathtub. I thought he was like messing around with it in the studio, but I may be misremembering.

• 1:11:05Sean Fennessey?

  Which one?

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  I'll Keep It With Mine, the one that.

• 1:11:07Sean Fennessey?

  Yes, yeah, is he like on the piano?

• 1:11:09Speaker 03

  That's what I thought. I thought he was like, because that's also in the Bootleg series. It's like him kind of.

• 1:11:14Sean Fennessey?

  Never released on an album.

• 1:11:14Speaker 03

  Writing that, and then Nico does it later in the 60s.

• 1:11:19Sean Fennessey?

  The, one thing that is interesting is, you know, you mentioned the Bootleg recordings. I think the Royal Albert Hall performance is like my favorite of those. It was kind of monumental when it was released. I guess, was it late 90s, early 2000s? And that is the same era that the movie ends with, where he starts touring the Bring It All Back Home stuff and Blonde on Blonde and all that starts coming. And those recordings are so rip roaring and raw and exciting. And this band can't replicate that. And so when, part of the reason when you get to the end of the movie, one, I'm just like, the Alan Lomack stuff is so cartoonish with like, turn it off and just like.

• 1:12:00Speaker 03

  Getting in fistfights.

• 1:12:01Sean Fennessey?

  Like, I just, that stuff kind of like bummed me out when I was watching it. Because I was like, this is such like fake movie bullshit.

• 1:12:06Speaker 04

  My least favorite part by far.

• 1:12:07Speaker 03

  That's like the cavern run in Top Gun Maverick. Like, they have to have something, like a dogfight.

• 1:12:14Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, but like, you just described something that's awesome and this part isn't awesome. So I really didn't like that stuff, but also I don't think the band sounds that good. I don't think those performances of those electric songs sound that great.

• 1:12:25Speaker 03

  You don't think they sound that good when you listen to the Newport recordings? Or you don't think they sound that good in the movie?

• 1:12:30Sean Fennessey?

  They sound OK in the movie, but they don't sound as good as the acoustic performances in the movie to me. And I have such fond. Appreciation for those electric recordings that like, that was a rare case where I was like, this isn't as good as-

• 1:12:43Speaker 03

  Royal Albert Hall and Manchester are like, as good as rock bands have ever sounded.

• 1:12:47Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely.

• 1:12:47Speaker 04

  Manchester is fucking insane.

• 1:12:50Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, yeah. Um, but there's a lot to choose from.

• 1:12:53Speaker 03

  And that's play fucking loud, right? Like, that's when he's like, yeah.

• 1:12:55Sean Fennessey?

  But yeah, I mean, most of it is good. Like, most of the musical performances are good.

• 1:12:59Speaker 04

  Well, just for context, like, what are your favorite Dylan albums, actually? Like, do you have a favorite period of his music, or kind of dotted throughout his discography?

• 1:13:10Sean Fennessey?

  Since college, I've felt like the, like, seventy-two through seventy-eight is like his masterpiece era. Like, I think his writing is at its best in that period of time.

• 1:13:20Speaker 03

  The tracks.

• 1:13:20Speaker 04

  Blood on the tracks.

• 1:13:21Sean Fennessey?

  Blood on the tracks and-

• 1:13:22Speaker 04

  Best album ever made.

• 1:13:23Sean Fennessey?

  You know, like, the Desire also, I just think is like, non-stop perfection.

• 1:13:30Sean Fennessey?

  And, but, you know, you get older and you like, get into Saved and you get into all the Christian stuff and start finding ways to appreciate Empire Burlesque and, you know, like, albums that I tried to hear when I was twenty-five and I couldn't hear at all and now it's on a continuum of interest to me, but I think the seventies stuff is still probably what I like the most. I did, I think in seventeen, I wrote a piece for the site about the ten-year anniversary of "I'm Not There" and John Wesley Harding, which is sixty-seven, and how that's like, this odd little, it's like it stands alone, it's like it's not connected to anything and it's not connected really to the Basement Tapes, which were kind of being made at that time.

• 1:14:14Sean Fennessey?

  It's not really connected to the direction that he goes in the late sixties. It's not really connected to Blonde on Blonde. It's like, kind of a folk record, but not really. So I, when I was writing that piece, I listened to that album like roughly three hundred times. So I have all those songs committed to memory, so I guess that's on my mind too. And what about you? What is your favorite period?

• 1:14:30Speaker 04

  Uh, same, yeah. Blood on the tracks is my, my absolute favorite. But, I mean, because of this movie, I have always loved Freewill and Bob Dylan, but because of this movie, I've been listening to it.

• 1:14:40Speaker 03

  Just nonstop.

• 1:14:40Speaker 04

  Nonstop. Really, all of them from that, uh, that stretch. But, I mean, that's just an incredible fucking album. Like, it's unbelievable.

• 1:14:50Sean Fennessey?

  The first, like, fourteen albums?

• 1:14:51Speaker 04

  Yeah. Bringing it all back home.

• 1:14:53Sean Fennessey?

  They're all good. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:14:54Speaker 04

  Like, amazing.

• 1:14:55Speaker 03

  Uh, his first going electric years are, to me, like, kind of like my platonic ideal of what rock and roll sounds like in a lot of ways. So like, when you even go back on Bootleg and listen to, like, She's Your Lover Now, and, and, you know, It Takes A Lot To Laugh and A Train To Cry, It Takes A Train To Cry, like, I'm like, that still sounds like The Oblivians now to me, or whatever, so, that, Blonde Um wants my favorite album, and

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Speaker 03

  Pat Garrett and Billy the Kind is my, like,

• 1:15:25Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:15:25Speaker 03

  My, like, underdog.

• 1:15:27Speaker 04

  Fun one.

• 1:15:27Speaker 03

  Like, one I go back to a lot.

• 1:15:29Sean Fennessey?

  Number four, that's the one.

• 1:15:30Speaker 04

  Blonde on Blonde is so good.

• 1:15:32Speaker 03

  Billy, number four?

• 1:15:33Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. Um.

• 1:15:35Speaker 03

  Oscars?

• 1:15:36Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah, I mean, it was nominated for Best Drama at the Golden Globes, and now I think it has found its way meaningfully into Best Picture. I guess that's cool, I, you know, it's not in my top ten movies of the year. I like it, you, you adore, is this like a five-star movie for you?

• 1:15:52Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:15:53Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:15:53Speaker 04

  Again, I don't really think it's a movie.

• 1:15:55Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:55Speaker 04

  Necessarily.

• 1:15:56Sean Fennessey?

  It's just like a sentimental object that you enjoy.

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  I, I just found it, like, so engrossing.

• 1:16:01Sean Fennessey?

  Okay.

• 1:16:02Speaker 04

  Really, like, hypnotic.

• 1:16:03Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Speaker 04

  Um, and so I loved the experience of watching it, and then I loved, like, the, the fam- very familiar, well-trod rabbit hole it sent me back into. Like, that's just a fun.

• 1:16:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:16:14Speaker 04

  Fun experience.

• 1:16:15Speaker 03

  It's a gateway drug. Uh, we, we probably have overused the phrase "a great time at the movies" to describe things that are, aren't that good, but for a great time at the movies.

• 1:16:25Sean Fennessey?

  Red Rooms, a great time at the movies!

• 1:16:30Speaker 04

  I believe we said that.

• 1:16:30Speaker 03

  I'll see you in the red rooms!

• 1:16:34Sean Fennessey?

  A complete unknown, pervert, in the red rooms!

• 1:16:38Speaker 03

  Um, Red Rooms, uh, I don't know, um, my bad.

• 1:16:44Speaker 03

  This literally was that. You know, where it's like, you go see Twisters and you're like, that was a great time at the movies. It was like, this is like, yo dude, this is a really, really good time at the movies. If you like Bob Dylan's music, you will love it. Is that a Best Picture winner?

• 1:16:59Sean Fennessey?

  No, I don't think so.

• 1:17:00Speaker 03

  I often wonder for you.

• 1:17:00Sean Fennessey?

  I don't think so.

• 1:17:01Speaker 03

  Cause you have this relationship with the Oscars specifically. Where it's like, what's good for movies and the Oscars versus what I want?

• 1:17:10Speaker 04

  Ooh.

• 1:17:11Speaker 03

  And.

• 1:17:11Sean Fennessey?

  That's why I've been banging the brutalist drum. Cause I'm like, it's both. Like this is something that's looking back and forward. Something that is incredibly resonant right now. But is an ode to something from the past. That I hope more people are interested in, in terms of the art of movie making and movie going.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:29Sean Fennessey?

  Um, and also will probably be nominated for a fuck ton of Oscars. Like, that's just, that's ultimately my thing.

• 1:17:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:35Sean Fennessey?

  Um, I, I often advocate for mainstream movies like this.

• 1:17:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:17:41Sean Fennessey?

  To get recognized because I think it's good for the health.

• 1:17:44Speaker 03

  Do you think it's bad that this is like boomer masturbation?

• 1:17:46Sean Fennessey?

  Um, well, I think I'm, I'm just like you guys. I'm willing to make an exception because Bob Dylan's the fucking man.

• 1:17:52Speaker 04

  Yeah. How many cranks? How many cranks are you giving this one?

• 1:17:56Speaker 03

  Oh, man, four and a half, four.

• 1:17:57Sean Fennessey?

  Wow. Does that mean it would take four and a half pumps to achieve?

• 1:18:03Speaker 03

  Oh, right. So like.

• 1:18:04Sean Fennessey?

  What is, what's the scale here?

• 1:18:05Speaker 03

  Yeah. What's the red room?

• 1:18:06Sean Fennessey?

  Is like one actually better than five?

• 1:18:08Speaker 03

  How many red rooms do I want to go into?

• 1:18:11Sean Fennessey?

  I give this film seven red rooms.

• 1:18:16Speaker 04

  You guys have mentioned red rooms a lot.

• 1:18:18Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, Chris saw it. It's a complicated film.

• 1:18:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:20Sean Fennessey?

  With a lot of strong ideas.

• 1:18:22Speaker 04

  Is it possible that the three most meaningful things we watched this year were Dune Part Two?

• 1:18:28Sean Fennessey?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:18:29Speaker 04

  A Complete Unknown and Timmy on Game Day? Just the, the Timmy trifecta.

• 1:18:34Speaker 03

  One of the great runs.

• 1:18:36Speaker 04

  I have no notes.

• 1:18:38Sean Fennessey?

  What else is he doing? He's up, he's doing the Safdie movie?

• 1:18:41Speaker 03

  He's gotta make Dune Three.

• 1:18:43Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:43Speaker 04

  That might be a minute though, right?

• 1:18:45Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah. I hope he doesn't do Wonka Two. Jesus Christ. Has he Wonka?

• 1:18:48Speaker 04

  I have not seen Wonka.

• 1:18:49Sean Fennessey?

  You saw it?

• 1:18:50Speaker 04

  I will at some point.

• 1:18:50Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna see Wonka.

• 1:18:52Sean Fennessey?

  You won't watch it?

• 1:18:52Speaker 03

  I will not.

• 1:18:53Sean Fennessey?

  Why not?

• 1:18:54Speaker 03

  I just did, I have no interest in it. I've never even, I don't even know, is that role a doll? Right?

• 1:18:58Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:18:59Speaker 04

  I do know that he got a custom pair of Wonka dunks. Cause I saw that on Sneaker News on Instagram.

• 1:19:05Sean Fennessey?

  Okay. Great story.

• 1:19:06Speaker 04

  Um. Thank you.

• 1:19:10Sean Fennessey?

  Any closing thoughts?

• 1:19:11Speaker 03

  I want to keep talking about Bob Dylan.

• 1:19:13Speaker 04

  Oh, my god, I know.

• 1:19:14Sean Fennessey?

  We don't have to stop. I mean, I made a list of the movies that he's mean that are meaningful to him. And some of them are widely available and others are not. We've mentioned Don't Look Back quite a bit, the D.A. Penny Baker documentary. People are interested in this period. He captures him at the during this period. Eat the Document is another Penny Baker documentary that is not widely available. I just bought myself a copy on eBay over the weekend.

• 1:19:36Speaker 04

  Will you be doing an unboxing on film?

• 1:19:38Sean Fennessey?

  Maybe, maybe, yeah. Bobby in the Box? That's a good idea.

• 1:19:41Speaker 03

  Get Dylan on, top, top that let's number, you know?

• 1:19:44Sean Fennessey?

  What'd you think of Bob's tweet about the movie?

• 1:19:46Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 1:19:47Speaker 03

  I thought it was great.

• 1:19:48Speaker 04

  Great stuff.

• 1:19:48Sean Fennessey?

  Yeah?

• 1:19:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:19:49Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think you wrote that?

• 1:19:50Speaker 03

  I don't know what's up with his Twitter.

• 1:19:52Sean Fennessey?

  OK.

• 1:19:52Speaker 03

  It's also a strange time to become a prolific ex-user.

• 1:19:55Speaker 04

  I know. Is he on Bluesky?

• 1:19:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know, but the best thing ever was his Sirius XM show. When it would be like the sound of winds rustling in the back.

• 1:20:03Speaker 03

  So many playlists of his like Bob Dylan's.

• 1:20:06Sean Fennessey?

  We're back here listening to Jimmy Jam's Do-Do-Da-Mo.

• 1:20:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:09Sean Fennessey?

  This is a great tune from 1957 out of Oklahoma. He was really good.

• 1:20:13Speaker 04

  Oh, man.

• 1:20:14Sean Fennessey?

  James Austin Johnson is in this movie very briefly as a, um, an emcee at Gertie's. He, of course, is the proprietor of the active best Bob Dylan impression on Saturday Night Live. He busted it out.

• 1:20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Sean Fennessey?

  When Shalhoub was hosting.

• 1:20:28Speaker 04

  Great stuff.

• 1:20:29Sean Fennessey?

  You know, I didn't, I, I, it was nice to stumble upon this little easter egg, too, which is that the Jesse character, who's the blues musician who appears on Seeger's public access show, is portrayed by Big Bill Morganfield, who is the son of Muddy Waters, who is a hugely influential person on Bob Dylan's musical style. And, you know, Bob could play the blues, like pretty credibly play the blues in that time. And so I liked that little bit.

• 1:20:52Speaker 04

  That was great. Watching them together was great. Particularly amused by the, you know, offer of the guitar and the refusal. Like, it would be like touching your woman.

• 1:20:58Sean Fennessey?

  Your woman.

• 1:21:02Sean Fennessey?

  I had no idea where that scene was going when it was happening. That was one of the few times where I was like, ooh, what's happening here?

• 1:21:07Speaker 03

  Seeger tries to get out of the.

• 1:21:08Speaker 04

  That's the thing. It just feels like.

• 1:21:09Speaker 03

  The interview with, with the guy.

• 1:21:11Sean Fennessey?

  With Jesse, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:21:12Speaker 03

  Jesse.

• 1:21:13Sean Fennessey?

  Couple of other Bob movies. So that we've got the two Scorsese docs, right? We've got No Direction. Required viewing if you liked this movie. Rolling Thunder Review, one of my favorite movies of 2019, I think it was, which is another kind of like assembly documentary that is

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  But a little bit more-

• 1:21:29Sean Fennessey?

  fictionalized.

• 1:21:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a little bit more indulgent in the Bob Dylan self mythologizing.

• 1:21:35Sean Fennessey?

  Absolutely. It's pulling in part from Ronaldo and Clara, which is a movie that Bob made in the 70s that was, I don't know if it was ever formally released, but it's kind of like the ultimate bootleg of Dylan- Dylanology at this point. Last Waltz, of course, he performs at the final concert for the band, also made by Martin Scorsese. We got Masked and Anonymous, the Larry Charles movie that Bob wrote, that is abjectly terrible, but is a nice little time capsule of that era, I think it's early 2000s. And then Haynes's I'm Not There, which is a great film that I love. And the difference between that movie and this movie is you've got a lot of people in that movie singing scraps of Dylan songs throughout, but you, the movie closes like so mesmerizingly.

• 1:22:18Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know if you remember this with just the harmonica performance of Bob. Oh, yeah. Yep. Like right in 63 or 64. And this movie's like the opposite, like it's like a deluge of Bob like over and over again on your head. So they're, they're an interesting contrast of styles. Are there any other Bob Dylan, uh, Pat Garin Bill the Kid?

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, there's, I have a couple that aren't movies, but are just like personal experiences. So one thing that if people can find it, I can't remember if it's on PBS's app that they have. The 30th anniversary concert was one of, was basically my introduction to him. And so that features all these artists who at the time were pretty contemporary, like John Mellencamp and Tom Petty, doing covers and then Dylan comes out at the end and does a set and then does an All-Star Jam.

• 1:23:01Sean Fennessey?

  So awesome.

• 1:23:02Speaker 03

  So that features the OJs doing emotionally yours, which is fucking astonishing and Neil Young doing just like Tom Thumb's Blues, which is incredible. Uh, so check that out if you can find it. And what was the other one that I was going to recommend? People look for. Oh, G E Smith from Saturday Night Live, one of the Saturday Night Live bandleaders, did a series of interviews, I think with the Television Academy, but I can't remember, but it's like him sitting in his apartment, sitting for like an hour long interview. Half of it is about, is about touring with Dylan. And it is the most insightful, wonderful conversation where he talks about getting hired-

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  Basically off of SNL and going to meet Dylan at Montana's at like 1 a.m. to rehearsal night.

• 1:23:46Sean Fennessey?

  Huh.

• 1:23:46Speaker 03

  And Dylan just be like, you got the gig. And then doing the never ending tour with Dylan for a while. And it is just a incredible piece of ephemera on YouTube. If you just type in G Smith Dylan interview, it'll come up.

• 1:24:00Sean Fennessey?

  Have you guys ever seen Hearts of Fire? This is a rare film in which Bob Dylan stars. A Richard Marquand movie. You may recall him from the Star Wars trilogy.

• 1:24:08Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 1:24:09Sean Fennessey?

  He's the lead of this movie made 1987. He plays a reclusive musician, once a huge rock star, takes a younger female protege, played by Fiona. While on a tour, she meets a younger, more popular rocker and switches her loyalties. The younger, more popular rocker is played by Rupert Everett. I haven't seen this movie.

• 1:24:29Speaker 03

  Uh, did we mention Lewin Davis?

• 1:24:31Sean Fennessey?

  We didn't. So.

• 1:24:33Speaker 04

  Great fucking movie.

• 1:24:34Sean Fennessey?

  Like Lewin Davis is a five star movie.

• 1:24:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:24:36Speaker 04

  That's an incredible movie.

• 1:24:37Sean Fennessey?

  And that's obviously a movie that is could the most about Bob Dylan without being about Bob Dylan.

• 1:24:42Speaker 04

  Gets hit by the car, though.

• 1:24:43Sean Fennessey?

  Why?

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  Cause I love animals and I don't want to see harm before them. That's why.

• 1:24:48Sean Fennessey?

  I see. Um.

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  It's also the inverse of like all the women fawning at Bob Dylan and incomplete unknown is Carey Mulligan being like, you should tape your dick like.

• 1:24:59Sean Fennessey?

  Tearing out his soul.

• 1:25:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:25:00Sean Fennessey?

  Uh, yeah, I mean, what, what do you want to say about it?

• 1:25:04Speaker 03

  Uh, it's, it is the other side of this coin. It's the movie that you kind of were looking for inside of this movie a little bit where it's like, why is he like the way he is? And what, what were the moments in between these moments of singing? And what if Bob Dylan had just basically missed by five degrees, you know? Um, and it's one of their great late period films. I read with interest that I think it was in Dan Riley's GQ piece, or I can't remember. It's around that time, Chalamet met with Joel Cohen to talk about like how to accurately bring justice to Dylan because he was working with Francis McDormand on French, French Dispatch. And I would love to have a recording of that conversation.

• 1:25:42Sean Fennessey?

  Do you think Joel was nice about it?

• 1:25:43Speaker 03

  I'm sure he was, but he obviously made the movie. He couldn't have made a Dylan movie the way he wanted to make it.

• 1:25:50Sean Fennessey?

  He, right. Joel Cohen never would have made a complete unknown. That's not of interest to him.

• 1:25:53Speaker 03

  He's interested in the guy who fucking missed it, you know, like just by, by like 10 steps.

• 1:25:58Sean Fennessey?

  And yet the music in that movie.

• 1:26:02Sean Fennessey?

  Is as close to 1962 at Cafe was anything you're gonna hear. So it's a great movie if people haven't seen it. Um, this was great.

• 1:26:12Speaker 04

  Pedablast, we gave you our hearts, but you wanted our souls.

• 1:26:15Sean Fennessey?

  As always.

• 1:26:15Speaker 03

  So I gave it seven red rooms. Mallory gave it four out of five cranks. Did we get your official? How many years of Soto's contract will you be giving this movie?

• 1:26:26Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 1:26:26Sean Fennessey?

  Well, he can have all 15.

• 1:26:27Speaker 03

  Does he make it past the five year opt out when he takes Steve Cohen into the cleaners again?

• 1:26:31Sean Fennessey?

  We're gonna keep that war above two through our late 30s. That's what we're all trying to do here at The Ringer as we all age slowly.

• 1:26:36Speaker 04

  Christ.

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  I'm Pete Seeger. Steve Cohen bankrupted several industries in order to pay Juan Soto's.

• 1:26:44Sean Fennessey?

  Juan Soto dropped in to the 40 man roster. He'll be hitting third in this lineup.

• 1:26:50Speaker 03

  Heard Juan Soto tours hamstring in spring training.

• 1:26:53Speaker 04

  Do you think that line about?

• 1:26:55Sean Fennessey?

  Put that devil on me Ricky Bobby. All right.

• 1:26:57Speaker 04

  The toilet like still smelling is that is that about the Mets?

• 1:27:01Sean Fennessey?

  That's just, it's just completely unnecessary. It's completely, what's up? You got, you guys are big mad about Juan Soto.

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Not at all.

• 1:27:07Sean Fennessey?

  Big, big mad.

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  I feel fine. I'm mad about the Red Sox training for Garrett Crochet.

• 1:27:11Speaker 03

  Better you guys than the fucking Dodgers.

• 1:27:14Sean Fennessey?

  Mm hmm. Yeah. What are the Phils gonna do?

• 1:27:16Speaker 03

  Uh, the word is, there was a tweet, I can't remember the exact wording, so I'm gonna paraphrase it.

• 1:27:21Sean Fennessey?

  There was a tweet.

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  And it was that Dave Dombrowski brought his trunks. No, Dave Dombrowski wants to go swimming, but at least, but he brought his swim trunks or something like that.

• 1:27:32Sean Fennessey?

  It was Scott Boris and it was an iconic Scott Boris quote. The quote was, "The Phillies are not yet in the swimming pool, but they're wearing their swimming trunks."

• 1:27:40Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:27:41Sean Fennessey?

  Which really Boris the goat, he is like the heir apparent to Bob Dylan in terms of poetry of the mind.

• 1:27:47Speaker 03

  Every time you try to put your hands around Scott Boris, it's like.

• 1:27:52Speaker 04

  It's flame.

• 1:27:53Sean Fennessey?

  He burns you, yeah.

• 1:27:54Speaker 03

  He's like, the AAV is going up.

• 1:27:57Sean Fennessey?

  I don't know how to rate this movie. I mean, I feel similarly to you. It doesn't really feel like a movie to me. I will watch it again.

• 1:28:03Speaker 03

  You think your dad's gonna go see it?

• 1:28:05Sean Fennessey?

  I don't, my dad doesn't care about Bob Dylan. I didn't get him from my dad, really. My dad is not a meaningfully progressive person.

• 1:28:12Speaker 03

  If it was a complete unknown, but it was about Dwayne Allman, would your dad go see it?

• 1:28:16Sean Fennessey?

  Fuck, yeah. He would be first in line. He would love that.

• 1:28:20Sean Fennessey?

  I liked my experience with it. I really thought it was gonna be the worst movie of the year for me, and it is not that at all. It didn't betray my interest in Bob at all. So, thanks so much, guys. You're the best. This is nice. Twice in one month on this show?

• 1:28:33Speaker 04

  I know, I'm getting spoiled.

• 1:28:34Sean Fennessey?

  You'll definitely be back at some point in the next five years, Mel. You can count on that.

• 1:28:47Speaker 03

  I'm Sean Finnis. This has been The Big Picture. Thanks for listening. It's available anywhere you get Fulpies.

• 1:28:52Sean Fennessey?

  I was visiting my friend Chris Ryan, and Mallory Rubin just dropped on in on us. Came here to do a podcast.

• 1:29:00Sean Fennessey?

  Thank you to Chris Ryan. Thank you to Mallory Rubin for her work here. And thank you to Jack Sanders, who's our video producer here.

• 1:29:07Speaker 03

  He's a filmmaker.

• 1:29:08Sean Fennessey?

  One of the good men here at The Ringer. Thanks, of course, to our producer Bobby Wagner, who, boy, he is the light of my life. Thank you for listening to the show. We'll see you next time when we talk about the little film called Nosferatu. See you then.

• 1:29:21Speaker 04

  It's good.

• 1:29:27Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:29:29Speaker 06

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