When Bob Dylan discussed all the details with “A Complete Unknown” director, all he said was, “May God be with you.”
Although Bob Dylan did not have the final say in the production of A Complete Unknown, the singer’s involvement was very important to the biopic.
Although the lead role went to Timothée Chalamet, Dylan was, so to speak, reenacting his own life in advance, as producer Peter Jaysen explained in more detail. Specifically, this means that the musician went through the script completely together with the director James Mangold – and had a say.
Like Jaysen in a conversation with the “The Town” podcast said, he approved every detail of the script: “He met with Jim Mangold several times. At one point they sat and read the entire script aloud, with Jim Mangold speaking every part and stage direction and Bob Dylan just reading the lines of dialogue to himself. Sat during this process [Dylan] there and wrote notes in the script. At the end of the final session with Jim Mangold he released the script saying, “May God be with you.”
Coveted script with notes by Bob Dylan
Timothée Chalamet recently started circulating the rumor that there was some kind of Dylan script for “A Complete Unknown”. “Jim (Mangold, editor’s note) has an annotated Bob script lying around somewhere,” the “Dune” star told Rolling Stone. “I’ll beg him to give it to me. But that will certainly never happen.”
Director Mangold, however, confirmed that Dylan wasn’t interested in putting the film project through its paces. Rather, he just wanted to make sure that some “asshole” didn’t dare to tell his life story incorrectly. “I think these are the normal questions that everyone asks themselves when they get together with someone,” Mangold said.
As Elle Fanning confirmed to ROLLING STONE, the songwriter added a few conversational lines for an argument between her and Chalamet. “We know the arguments were real, so he may have remembered something – or regretted something he said to her.”
Bob Dylan has already made it clear that he is very happy with “A Complete Unknown”. Timothée Chalamet, meanwhile, will have difficulty avoiding being forced to take out the harmonica again at every opportunity in the future and go into Dylan mode again. Then the many years of hard training for the role would have been worth it.