Scorsese Does Dylan, Again

Anticipating the new Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Timothy Chalamet as Bobby, I am reminded of Scorsese’s 2019 doc about Bob Dylan’s 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour. It was on Netflix last year, and I watched it (having seen the original tour in Fort Worth back in 1976). I remember the show as Dylan in top form. Scorsese captures that — the concert footage is great and includes Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Eliot, Roger McQuinn and other modern troubadours in fine form. And Dylan is interviewed around 2019 looking back on the whole thing. That’s fine, but when actor Michael Murphy shows up identified as Jack Tanner, the congressman he played in on TV long ago, plus Sharon Stone (?) remembering how her mother took her at 19 to one of the shows and Dylan invited her to get on the bus…I thought, what’s going on here? I didn’t remember that. No, because it didn't happen. History shows that Sharon Stone was nowhere near the Rolling Thunder Revue. Other characters are invented — like an eastern European filmmaker who in real life (you’d have to search to find him) turns out to be Bette Midler’s husband.

Scorsese, presumably with Dylan’s complicity, decided to inject these purely fictional details, like a send-up of the documentary form but without warning labels or explanation. “This Is Spinal Tap” was clearly satire. This was, uh, I don’t know, hybrid whimsy. To me, it’s confusing and disconcerting to learn that Sharon Stone’s 2-shots with Dylan were digitally created.

But it made me think of current discussions of fact versus fiction and new forms of storytelling where they overlap. This is such an instance, but I wasn’t aware of the doc’s reception when it was first released, probably in theaters. Variety had a column asking why Scorsese had “pranked” his audience. (Long after he kicked his cocaine addiction.) Thing is, the pranking was unnecessary. Revisiting the “real” show and its players was enough, but I guess wasn’t hip enough for the times. Maybe I’m not either.