u/Spare-Jellyfish4339

Can we stop infantilizing Pinky Pie please? Just because she's not very articulate and is in a kids show often doesn't mean that she should be treated like a child by fans. Pinky is a woman, not a cartoon character. Come back when you find a baby that was in the grips of crippling alcoholism for over decade, nearly killed Weird Al on accident, and beat her addiction to become one of the most positive and healthy rockstars alive.

I’m this interview on Dick Cavett, John says “at the time I was more of a ??? Then I am now” and I can’t understand what he says. Can anyone hear what he says?

I tried looking it up but couldn't find anything. Why is he touching Ringo like that??

Over the last week I watched “Masked And Anonymous”, “I’m Not There” and “A Complete Unknown”. 3 films that are supposed to in some way represent the life (or lives) of Bob Dylan. These films are not connected in any way but they do form an interesting “trilogy” when put together.

Masked And Anonymous—Masked And Anonymous was conceived by Bob Dylan as a slapstick comedy, but through working with comedy writer Larry Charles it became a surrealist drama. It follows the musician Jack Fate (a stand-in for Bob, played by Bob himself) being brought out of retirement for a benefit concert for a country in the midst of a violent political revolution. There’s many subtle and unsubtle allusions to Dylan’s career and American history throughout that hardcore fans will understand. I think it’s very much Bob Dylan trying to express his feelings about the world and his place in it, I’d even argue it’s the most personal work of his career. I don’t want to talk too much about it, I really think you should see it for yourself, it’s a great movie. All the performances in it are incredible. Giovanni Ribisi, Val Kilmer and Ed Harris all get one scene each and they will all knock your fucking socks off. And it has a really good version of Blowin’ In The Wind.

I’m Not There—Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There is the most experimental of the 3, but probably the most clear in what it’s attempting to do. It aims to explore Bob Dylan’s ever-changing public persona(s), using 6 different characters to represent different parts of him. This style leads to the film being really inconsistent. There is a central theme of identity tying everything together, the film ends with Billy The Kid losing his dog but finding his guitar, symbolizing loss and gain through aging. But the film also introduces many secondary themes throughout which aren’t ever really resolved, which can lead to it feeling more like a series of musings than an actual story. This works for it being the middle entry in this “trilogy” but hurts it as an individual film. Christian Bale’s segment feels particularly pointless, other than to briefly reference Bob’s conversion to Christianity, but not really do anything with it and represent it in a really weird way. It touches upon the pressure he felt being labeled a “voice of the people”, but that was already explored in Cate Blanchett and Ben Winshaw’s segments. The scene with him getting drunk at the civil rights conference feels like a shot at the song Hurricane, with him using a word that I cannot type here but is used in the movie and in the song and we all know what it is whether I euphamize it or not. But the later scene with Billy The Kid standing up to Pat Garrett feels like a much more direct allusion to Hurricane, and that scene frames Bob’s return to protesting as heroic. The character drama and acting is good in all these segments, but there are a lot of sequences in the movie that just feel like music videos that take up time. It’s probably no coincidence that the 2 segments with barely any music (Heath Ledger’s and Richard Gere’s) were far and away the best ones. Overall, I liked I’m Not There but it’s my least favorite of the 3.

A Complete Unknown—James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown departs from the surrealist genre, being a historical drama about the folk revival movement of the 1960s. Where I’m Not There was an in-depth character study of Bob Dylan, and Masked And Anonymous more an exploration of the world around him, A Complete Unknown is focused on how the 2 affect each other. Exploring how Bob’s contrarian personality affects his artistry, his personal relationships and his place in the music world. It definitely has the most well fleshed out supporting cast of the 3, even with the small characters there’s a point made to show everyone at their best and their worst. It’s why I don’t call it a “biopic” of Bob Dylan, it’s a movie about the folk revival with Bob Dylan as the protagonist (and James Mangold has said the same thing). The film is very Dylanesque in it’s own way though. The ending emulates the infamous “Judas” incident, but it’s not actually it, it’s in a different place at a different time then when it really happened. The idea is the same but it’s stripped of all the rebellion and triumph we’ve come to associate it with. Because that would be cheap, and it would go against the spirit of the movie. I think A Complete Unknown has the best use of music of the 3. Every song choice feels meaningful. Bob plays 3 songs before getting his record deal: “Song To Woody”, “Girl From The North Country” and “I Was Young When I Left Home”which are all songs about leaving and/or being away from home. The only song that Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger play together in the movie is “When The Ship Comes In”, a song about anticipating a great event that will change the world, which both of them expect to happen at Newport, but in different ways. My favorite scene though, is the use of “The Times They Are A-Changin’”. Bob comes on to play it just after watching Johnny Cash’s electric set, so he’s singing it to express his own desire to change. But to the crowd at the festival it’s a folk song about progress, representing their growing movement, so they cheer and sing along like it’s a celebration. And to Bob’s girlfriend in the crowd it’s a reminder that their situation is changing, the camera even focuses in on Joan Baez, who he’s having an affair with, while he sings “the loser now will be later to win”. And then after the song ends the movie jumps forward 2 years, the times literally changing. A Complete Unknown is my personal favorite of the 3, though it is a close race.

These films were obviously not intended to be a series. Though they feel like they’re aware of each other, they do tread a lot of the same ground. But when putting them in a series some interesting things do come up. For one, each entry is less fictitious than the last. Masked And Anonymous is completely fictional, I’m Not There is fictional but with obvious influences taken from real events, and A Complete Unknown is mostly true to real life but with some things altered for story flow or to disorient the audience. They explore similar themes. The idea of what “folk music” is, to the world and to Bob Dylan is a constant debate in all 3. Masked And Anonymous argues that folk music is impossible to understand. I’m Not There argues that folk music is impossible to define. A Complete Unknown argues that folk music is impossible to own. “When they ask where the songs come from, they’re really asking why the songs didn’t come to them.” The idea of freedom is ever present through them too. Masked And Anonymous explores literal, political freedom. What it means and if it even exists. Bob even starts and ends the movie in jail. I’m Not There ends on this quote: “People are always talking about freedom. Freedom to live a certain way, without being kicked around. Course the more you live a certain way, the less it feel like freedom.“ A Complete Unknown is most obviously about artistic freedom, but it’s also about freedom from burden, and how the steps to gain our personal freedom can lead to losing other things we value (just like Billy losing his dog before finding his guitar in I’m Not There). Perhaps that’s too shallow of a reading but I found it interesting. I’d recommend all 3 of these films to any Bob Dylan fan, even if one or two aren’t exactly your thing I think you’d like at least one of them, and you’ll appreciate the Dylanesque dialogue, symbolism and music in all of them.

I’d like to know what y’all think of them.

Everything has to be put under some aesthetic label nowadays, like Frutiger 2K Bling Core or whatever the fuck. I heard that Vaporwave was patient zero for this phenomenon, but it feels like it has gotten worse during this decade.

My memory is foggy, but if I had to guess, it began around the pandemic, either right before, during, or right after (2019-2021ish). By 2022, it spread to the broader internet, and now it's inescapable.