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Screengrab’s Favorite Movies About Music: Non-Fiction Edition (Part Six)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:30:00 GMT

Scott Von Doviak's Favorites:

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT (1979)

My first exposure to the Who was the 1982 HBO special The Who Rocks America, which was actually shot in Toronto at the final concert of their farewell tour. (That’s their first farewell tour, approximately 37 Who concert tours ago.) I had no idea at the time that this was quite possibly the worst performance they ever gave; I was just enthralled by the whole thing – the songs, the guitar windmilling, the microphone-swinging, and probably the hatred and self-loathing seething from Pete Townshend’s every pore. But it wasn’t until I tracked down a copy of The Kids Are Alright that I really experienced the Who in all their glory. Directed – or, more accurately, assembled – by Jeff Stein, who would go on to direct some of the seminal music videos of the 1980s, Kids is a scrapbook of television performances, promotional video, talk show appearances and assorted Who ephemera. It was exactly the right movie at the right time for any Who fanatic – the equivalent of a bootleg videocassette a few years before such things existed, and a perfect tribute to drummer Keith Moon, who died the year of its release. Watch the above clip from The Smothers Brothers Show carefully, and you can see the exact moment that Townshend’s hearing was damaged forever.

DON’T LOOK BACK (1967)/NO DIRECTION HOME (2005)

D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back has a deserved reputation as the seminal rockumentary, but to get a full picture of the mercurial Bobby D., it should be watched in tandem with Martin Scorsese’s retrospective documentary in which Dylan, er, looks back. Shot cinema verite style during Dylan’s 1965 tour of England, his last before going electric, Don’t Look Back captures a snapshot in time of the hipster-dandy version of the Bard on the verge of supernova pop stardom. He’s funny, snotty, weird, puckish, contrary and inscrutable, and he always carries a lightbulb. Scorsese’s film covers the same period, as well as Dylan’s early days and his first electric tour (using footage from the misbegotten Eat the Document), with the added perspective of a wizened, plain-spoken, remarkably straightforward Dylan. He doesn’t seem like a guy who’d have much patience for the brat with the giant lightbulb.

LOUDQUIETLOUD: A FILM ABOUT THE PIXIES (2006)

The heyday of the Pixies had long since passed when filmmakers Steve Cantor and Matthew Galkin decided to follow the iconic indie rock band of the 1980s from rehearsal halls to arenas on their recent reunion tour. While lead singer Charles Thompson had achieved some success as solo artist Frank Black, the rest of the band had struggled in the years since its breakup. As loudQUIETloud opens, Bassist Kim Deal is fresh out of rehab, guitarist Joey Santiago is scoring an independent film and drummer David Lovering is barely scraping by as a stage magician. The band members have never been particularly close; as one interested party notes, they may well be the four least communicative people on the planet. As a result, the fascinating loudQUIETloud plays a bit like the alt-rock version of the Metallica documentary Some Kind of Monster, as the Pixies try to hold it together through mental breakdowns, family tragedies and those ever-popular musical differences.

Hayden Childs' Favorites:

DANIELSON: A FAMILY MOVIE (OR, MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE HERE) (2006)

Here’s an understatement for you: Danielson is an oddball band. Spurred on by a very positive review at Pitchfork, I bought the 2006 album Ships not long after its release, but I was completely unprepared for the bizarre melange of influences on the album: folk skronk with lightning-quick time changes and sudden silences, led by offputting squeaky vocals, as if Moby Grape were covering The Pixies while fronted by the muppet Beaker. Let’s just say I had a hard time finding a way into the band, so I rented the just-released documentary Danielson: A Family Movie. The movie has a lived-in feeling that shifts the strangeness to familiarity. Here’s some facts about Danielson and the Danielson Family: (1) the band is populated by siblings, spouses, and very close friends, (2) the band is led by the eldest sibling Daniel Smith, who formed the band as part of his senior thesis in art at Rutgers, (3) the band is explicitly Christian, if you can bother to parse the obscurant lyrics, (4) the band has a homemade-art aesthetic that includes matching outfits, synchronized dance movements, two drummers, and a giant cloth tree with holes for Daniel Smith to poke his head and arms through, allowing him to perform from within the tree like a born-again nature spirit. It’s weird, but also rather delightful in execution. The documentary has such a matter-of-fact way of dealing with the oddball Danielson path through life that they do feel like family by the end. The music makes sense. There is perhaps too much focus on how the band’s indie-rock fans feel about their Christianity (because, really, who cares?), but it’s a forgivable lapse. Extras on the DVD include a few of their silly, but also touching, videos.

I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART: A MOVIE ABOUT WILCO (2002)

The story of Wilco’s 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an archetypal rock fable: the band, signed to a major label, records an album that is too strange for the executives to understand. The label asks the band to modify their vision, to make something more commercial. The band sticks to their guns, and the label cuts the band loose. The band spends a little time in the wilderness, and finally another label picks the band up and releases the album. It’s a huge success. Now here’s the other side: this isn’t exactly what happened to Wilco. It’s close, sure. But there’s other forces at play. I Am Trying To Break Your Heart is the story of Wilco in the wilderness, and it’s a time of great upheaval. The major battle in the story isn’t Wilco versus the record labels, but rather Wilco songwriter Jeff Tweedy versus Wilco guitarist/keyboardist/producer Jay Bennett. Bennett had arguably pushed Wilco in the creative direction that produced Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but Tweedy had a definite vision and as the album was recorded, he appeared to be moving towards the idea that his current bandmates were not up to meeting his vision. As the documentary starts, Tweedy has just replaced longtime drummer Ken Coomer with avant-rock guy Glenn Kotche. Tweedy goes on to ask another avant-rock guy, Jim O’Rourke, to remix the song “I Am Trying To Break Your Heart,” effectively making room for Bennett’s eventual ouster. It’s a fascinating look at the group dynamics behind the scenes, but probably most meaningful to fans of the band.

Click Here For Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five & Seven

Contributors: Scott Von Doviak, Hayden Childs

Double Threats: Dylan in the Movies

Hayden Childs — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Here’s an idea I have for an ongoing series: Double Threats, in which I discuss the acting careers of people mostly known for other artistic endeavors. Or conversely, the other artistic endeavors of people primarily known as actors. Inspired by tonight’s debate between the quick-witted enigmatic younger man and the proverbial Mr. Jones who seemed unsure of what, exactly, was going on here, didn't he?... OK, I’m stretching at this point, aren’t I? Actually, I’ve just had Bob Dylan on the brain recently and thought he might be a good test subject for this idea.

The double-aughts have been pretty good for Dylan in the movies. The man who made a household phrase out of “the sun’s not yellow, it’s chicken” managed to baffle critics and audiences alike with 2003’s Masked And Anonymous, which (this may surprise you, unless you saw it) he wrote himself. Then Martin Scorsese made the epic 3+ hour documentary No Direction Home in 2005, which included footage that shocked and amazed rock fans, such as the famous “Judas” moment from the misnamed Royal Albert Hall Concert, Dylan at the March on Washington in 1963, or (and this blew my mind) contemporary gnomic-old-man Dylan cracking a smile. And then 2007 saw Todd Haynes’ brilliant I’m Not There, which created an alternate universe where all of Dylan’s mythologies sprang to life.

Masked And Anonymous wasn’t Dylan’s first acting role, of course. Prior to that movie, he appeared as a chauffeur in a 1999 movie called Paradise Cove. I confess that I’ve never seen it, and his role was apparently miniscule, so let’s move on. In 1989, he had an uncredited role in the Alan Smithee-directed Backtrack. The Smithee name is always a sign of quality -- and we’re all on the same page here, right? (“Quality” is my clever code word for “utter crap.”) Moving on. Two years before that was 1987’s Hearts of Fire, which starred Dylan as a rock star with the supernatural ability to bore everyone senseless. At least, that’s what my vague memory tells me. I also seem to recall that he turned into The Hulk at one point, so I’m willing to concede that I might have fallen asleep somewhere in there.

By now you’re wondering: has Dylan been in anything good? Well, there’s the four-hour Renaldo and Clara from 1978. I have a simple test to assess how much you’ll enjoy this movie: add up the number of Dylan albums you listen to regularly (and you’re free to define “regularly” as you and your maker see fit) and then divide that number by the total number of albums he’s released (32 studio albums, 13 live albums, 14 compilations, and a near-infinite number of bootlegs, but you don’t have to count them unless you feel so compelled). Should you hit somewhere around 40 percent, then you might like Renaldo and Clara. You’ve probably already seen it, though, so, uh, never mind. Finally, before Renaldo and Clara, Dylan was in Sam Peckinpah’s 1973 great-on-the-square Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid.

Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid is a masterpiece, but it’s a messy one. I guess you could say the same thing about some of Dylan’s 70s albums, too. In the movie, Dylan plays Alias, a mostly wordless guy who hangs around Billy The Kid looking shockingly similar to a rock star named Bob Dylan. It’s not a big stretch for the man. But it is a pleasant, unassuming role that complements his sometimes-powerful, mostly-pleasant and unassuming soundtrack for the movie.

According to movie lore (and, uh, Wikipedia), Peckinpah had never heard of Dylan before the movie and had to be talked into meeting him by Rudy Wurlitzer (who wrote it) and Kris Kristofferson (who played Billy). Dylan was a fan of Peckinpah’s movies, especially the elegaic Ride The High Country. So Dylan played Peckinpah a couple of songs he’d written after reading the script, and Peckinpah, sentimental cuss that he was, was blown away. Peckinpah brought in Jerry Fielding to help Dylan score the movie. Fielding despised Dylan and everything he stood for and was thoroughly unimpressed with the music Dylan wrote for the death scene of Sheriff Colin Baker (spoiler!).

Baker, who was played by Slim Pickens, has a quite moving death scene, one of the most poignant in any Peckinpah movie, and that’s saying something. Fielding pushed and prodded Dylan to come up with something better, and Dylan responded with that obscure ditty “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.” (Obscure? I kid, I kid.) Fielding, not exactly a man of the times, hated the song so much that he quit the production. Dylan toiled on without him. Later, as with so many Peckinpah movies, the studio took control away in editing, and the theatrical release chopped Dylan’s role down to not-much and cut his music into pieces. The 2005 DVD release restores the movie to its director’s cut and adds a different version that combines elements of the theatrical cut, the director’s cut, and previously unreleased scenes. None of these versions, however, expand Dylan’s role into anything major or even coherent, but they’re certainly worth a viewing. Apparently, most of Dylan's role was shot using a camera with a defective lens, so there wasn't much left for the movie. It’s a shame no one's brought his acting chops to cinema yet. That Dylan guy would have killed as the lead in Don’t Look Back.

Scorsese Passes the Baton to Demme on Bob Marley Documentary

Phil Nugent — Fri, 23 May 2008 19:00:00 GMT

In what might just be a propitious turn of events, Martin Scorsese has dropped out of what was intended to be his next film--a documentary about Bob Marley that he was working on with Steve Bing's Shangri-La Entertainment and Fortissimo Films, the same team with whom he made the Rolling Stones concert movie Shine a Light--and Jonathan Demme has stepped in. The movie, which everyone wants finished for a release date of February 6, 2010--the late, Jamaican reggae legend's 65th birthday--would have been Scorsese's fourth music documentary of this decade, counting the Bob Dylan film No Direction Home and Scorsese's episode of the PBS series The Blues. (It also would have taken him out of his comfort zone of music and musicians associated with the 1960s, unlike another project that's still reportedly on his plate, a documentary about George Harrison.) Apparently Scorsese was forced to bow to scheduling reality. Besides the Harrison doc, he's also preparing The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt with Leonardo Di Caprio and an adaptation of the Shusako Endo novel Silence from a script by Jay Cocks, even as he's already begun shooting Shutter Island, also with DiCaprio, and based on a novel by Dennis Lehane.

Scorsese was working on the Marley movie with the blessing of the singer's family. When he signed on, Marley's son Ziggy Marley, who's serving as executive producer, was quoted as saying, "I am thrilled that the Marley family will finally have the opportunity to document our father's legacy and are truly honored to have Mr. Scorsese guide the journey." Now Ziggy's gone back to the well and said of Demme, "His empathy with my father's body of work and his unique understanding of the musical documentary form makes me confident that this film will be the ultimate celebration of my father's life." Even if it's intended as spin control--Marley would probably do his best to sound upbeat if he woke up tomorrow morning to find that Demme had been replaced by Uwe Boll--the sentiment computes. Not only has Demme made his own string of superior rock movies (Stop Making Sense, the more recent Neil Young picture Heart of Gold), but some of his other films, notably the documentaries Haiti--Dreams of Democracy and The Agronomist reveal a passionate feel for the Caribbean culture and the mixture of pop and politics that informed Marley's career. Warming up to his assignment, Demme has referred to Bob Marley as "one of the greatest human beings of modern times".

Screengrab’s “I’m Not There” Study Guide

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:30:00 GMT

As you have already been informed, I’m Not There arrives on DVD today. For those of you in the “I’m sort of interested, but not really a big Dylan fan” camp, here are a few supplemental materials that may or may not enhance your appreciation of Todd Haynes’ unconventional biopic. Put away your notebooks, there will not be a test.

As you may have gleaned, I’m Not There is a cavalcade, a kaleidoscope, a veritable cinematic smoothie blending many eras and images from Dylan’s career. Mmm…smoothie. I’m sorry, where was I? Oh, yes. Throughout the film Haynes quotes, tweaks and otherwise references a number of original sources very familiar to Dylan fans but perhaps not to neophytes. Such as:

DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC (1965)

In one of the seminal moments of Dylan’s career, the one-time pride of the Greenwich Village folk scene plugged in his guitar at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, alienating the purists in the audience and prompting Pete Seeger to announce he’d cut the power with an axe if he had one. (Haynes has some fun with this moment.) Dylan’s evolution from earnest folkie to hipster rocker can be seen in the recent documentary The Other Side of the Mirror, which collects his Newport performances from 1963 through 1965.

EAT THE DOCUMENT (1972)

Once intended as a straightforward follow-up to D.A. Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back (which forms the basis of much of the Cate Blanchett segment of I’m Not There), this fragmented look at Dylan’s 1966 tour has no official release, but has been heavily bootlegged (and now, of course, YouTubed). Those seeking straightforward live concert footage are bound to be disappointed (though extended versions of many of the performances are available on the DVD of Martin Scorsese’s Dylan doc No Direction Home), but the film has its fascinations, notably footage of John Lennon sharing a car ride with a severely fucked-up Bobby D.

PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973)

This elegiac Sam Peckinpah western contains Dylan’s “acting” debut (as the mysterious outlaw Alias), but more importantly, his soundtrack composing debut, including the timeless “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” which should always conjure images of Slim Pickens clutching his bloodied midsection. In the Richard Gere section of I’m Not There, Haynes creates a landscape of the Old Weird America that is equal parts Pat Garrett, The Basement Tapes and Dylan’s 1976 tour, the Rolling Thunder Revue. (For more on Pat Garrett, check out Tom Block’s definitive appraisal at The High Hat.)

RENALDO AND CLARA (1978)

This one is for the completists only. In fact, I thought I was a completist and I’ve never completed it. Nearly 30 years before Haynes, Dylan himself did an impressionistic take on his own legend, with the assistance of Sam Shepherd. The nearly four hour result has long been regarded as a complete debacle, but here’s your chance to get on the ground floor of the re-evaluation. The whole thing is on YouTube if you have the stamina.

The Curse of the Rolling Stones

Scott Von Doviak — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:30:00 GMT

My profuse apologies for the lame Harry Potter prank. Here’s your actual Scorsese news of the day, concerning a movie that does exist: the new Rolling Stones concert film Shine a Light. Scorsese, as you may know, is no stranger to the rock and roll music. An editor on Woodstock, director of both the quintessential concert film The Last Waltz and the acclaimed Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home, Scorsese was also an early adopter of the wall-to-wall classic rock approach to movie scoring, for better or for worse. His frequent use of Rolling Stones music, in particular “Gimme Shelter,” has become something of a running joke, with Mick Jagger noting that Shine a Light may be the first Scorsese movie that doesn’t feature the 1969 track.

“I'm not really that knowledgeable about how music is put together,” Scorsese told the San Francisco Chronicle, in an interview from the set of his upcoming adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island. “I love music. I wish I could write or perform music. I can't do it. I love it, and it's one of my main sources of information. I was fascinated that if Jagger would sing a line in lyrics, Keith (Richards) would respond with two notes on his guitar or a strum. I found I wanted to capture all that. I wanted to capture the look on Keith's face when he decided to respond to that lyric.”

The project may seem a tad redundant to anyone familiar with the cinematic history of the Stones. A number of concert films precede Shine a Light, and as the L.A. Times notes, most of them have been touched by controversy and even tragedy. “Most infamously, the 1970 film Gimme Shelter by the Maysles brothers documented the nightmarish scene the previous year at Altamont Speedway, where the Hells Angels were hired as security but went on a rampage. One 18-year-old concert-goer was stabbed and stomped to death. There had been other dark tinges to the film library. The Rock and Roll Circus (recorded in 1968 but not released until 1996), directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, turned out to be a grim time capsule as the last public performance of Stones guitarist Brian Jones. The politically ominous Sympathy for the Devil (filmed in 1968 and released in 1970) was beset by a studio fire, the arrest of Jones on drug charges and a dispute between director Jean-Luc Godard and the producer that climaxed with a fistfight at the premiere. Then there was Let's Spend the Night Together, directed by Hollywood rebel Hal Ashby, who filmed the band in 1981 at Arizona's Sun Devil Stadium and then hours later was wheeled out of the band's hotel on an ambulance gurney after slumping into a drug overdose."

You’d think the senior citizen Stones would have put all that behind them, but even Shine a Light fell victim to the Stones movie curse. No, we’re not talking about the mysterious appearance by Christina Aguilera (“I'm still not sure who that is,” says Keith Richards), but the death of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who stumbled backstage and hit his head, never to recover. “I loved him,” says Richards. “But you know, what better way to go? Backstage at a Stones show? That's how I wanna go.”

The Five Most Intriguing SXSW Trailers: Documentaries

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 19:30:00 GMT

The 2008 SXSW Film Festival kicks off a week from tomorrow, and naturally the Screengrab will be your go-to source for wall-to-wall coverage. We're whetting our appetites by browsing through the trailers for the official selections and making a checklist of can't-miss screenings. Tune in tomorrow for the five most intriguing narrative films; for now, here are the documentaries that have our attention.

Crawford

In 2005, I went to Crawford, Texas for a wedding. This was at the height of "Camp Casey," the makeshift protest community that grew up around Cindy Sheehan and spent the summer heckling the vacationing president. Looking around at the nondescript one-traffic-light town in the ass-end of nowhere, I wondered why Bush would move there on purpose, when he could be spending his considerable leisure time kicking back in Kennebunkport, Maine. Apparently the townspeople of Crawford have wondered the same thing:

Super High Me

They drug test us once a week here at the Screengrab, so I wouldn't know anything about the marijuana or "pot grass" as I believe you kids call it. But apparently comedian Doug Benson knows quite a bit about it; he was named High Times magazine's Stoner of the Year in 2006, and now he's following in the footsteps of Morgan Spurlock by smoking "medical marijuana" for 30 straight days. Sounds like more fun than eating a month's worth of Egg McMuffins. Not that we'd know, of course!

Dreams With Sharp Teeth

Here at the Screengrab, you don't have to tell us that Harlan Ellison still has his edge; we found out firsthand. So we're very much looking forward to this portrait of the world-renowned author, and we're not just saying that to get on his good side! Although we are sort of wondering what Robin Williams is doing in this thing.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

Bigfoot is back, baby! The star of countless cheapo creature features and pseudo-documentaries of the 70s has been spotted in such recent fare as Strange Wilderness, The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang and The Wild Man of Navidad. This documentary from first-time director Jay Delaney follows a pair of amateur Bigfoot hunters whose cryptozoological quest provides "a source of hope and meaning that transcend the harsh realities of life in a dying steel town."

Shine a Light

Next to organized crime, rock and roll is Martin Scorsese's favorite subject – and who's to say there's no overlap between the two? An editor on Woodstock, Scorsese made one of the great rock movies of the 70s in The Last Waltz, and presided over the definitive Bob Dylan bio with No Direction Home. Now he shines his light on the Rolling Stones – although if this trailer is any indication, Marty himself is at least a co-star. Ironically enough, early word indicates this is one Scorsese movie that doesn't feature "Gimme Shelter" on the soundtrack.

Forgotten Films: Masked and Anonymous (2003)

Peter Smith — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Bob Dylan re-wrote the rules about what was allowed of a famous singer, songwriter, and public figure, but it turned out that he did have one normal thing about him: he liked the idea of being a movie star. Dylan was a movie star whenever he got to be himself in caught footage, as in D. A. Pennebaker's 1967 documentary Don't Look Back, but his first several attempts to pass for an actor, or to capture his magnificence himself, tended to be kind of, well, disastrous. The music he produced for the soundtrack of Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973) yielded a triumph in "Knockin' on Heaven's Door," but Peckinpah's attempt to incorporate Dylan into the cast, as a mysterious, knife-throwing hombre known as "Alias", only resulted in a smirking blank space on the screen. Dylan's own 1978 Renaldo & Clara, a four-hour mixture of fantasy and documentary sequences threaded through with performance footage from the 1975-76 Rolling Thunder Revue, inspired print seminars, in places like the Village Voice, on the theme, "Dylan: What Happened?"; long unavailable in its complete form, the movie will probably be seen again around the time that Jerry Lewis's The Day the Clown Cried is released as part of the Criterion Collection. Then there's Hearts of Fire, a misguided 1987 rock-'n-roll love story with Dylan as the sage old music legend who plays smitten mentor to the uni-named cupcake Fiona. The barely-released film was the last work by its director, Richard Marquand (Eye of the Needle, Return of the Jedi), who had a fatal stroke before signing off on the final cut.

After a long lay-off from movies, Dylan re-emerged in 2003 as the star of Masked and Anonymous, directed by Larry Charles. (It was the first movie directed by Charles, who was then best known for his TV work, as a writer on Seinfeld and a director on Curb Your Enthusiasm. His second movie would be Borat.) Dylan and Charles co-wrote the script, under the pseudonyms "Sergei Petrov" and "Rene Fonatine." It was made fast — principal photography was reportedly completed in twenty days — and relatively cheap; a lot of well-known people agreed to be paid scale on it because, like the various celebrities who appeared in Renaldo & Clara, they just wanted to work with Dylan. The cast includes Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Mickey Rourke, Angela Bassett, Penelope Cruz, Giovanni Ribisi, Luke Wilson, Fred Ward, Bruce Dern, Cheech Marin, Tracey Walter, Robert Wisdom, Chris Penn, Christian Slater and Susan Tyrrell, as well as Dylan's longtime touring band (including guitarist Charlie Sexton and bassist Tony Garnier) and a little girl named Tinashe Kachingwe, who brings down the house with her a-cappella version of "The Times They Are A-Changin'." The reward they get for their participation is that they all get to be characters in a new Dylan song — one of the really long ones, like "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again," full of imagery and puns and symbols and throwaway jokes. That's how the movie is conceived.

The setting is America as a junta-led dictatorship, with government-controlled media and street executions, and with Dylan as a legendary troubadour named "Jack Fate" who's spent the last several years locked away in prison. An Albert Grossman-like manager figure — Uncle Sweetheart, played by John Goodman — gets him sprung so he can perform at a big televised benefit concert, and he tours the back country on his way to the performance site, serving as witness to the perversion of the country's ideals, and playing straight man to a succession of ranters and weirdos. The movie has its dead spots and its puzzlements, and it rambles, as you might expect. But it's not just some vanity project. There's real pain and a lot of humor in it, and its vision of an entertainment-sated America in lockdown is politically sophisticated in a way that was guaranteed to go over like a lead balloon when it was released during the summer of "Mission Accomplished!" Part of the movie's strength, and part of what may cause many to regard it as dismissible, is that it pictures this nightmare of where we may be headed but doesn't have any ideas of how to slay the dragon once it plops its ass down in the seat of power. Dylan doesn't dismiss the power and value of music, but he knows damn well that it doesn't stop jackbooted thugs in their tracks.

The one message that does come through loud and clear is that the sixties have been over a long time, they aren't ever coming back, and they may not have been everything that nostalgic boomers and post-boomer dreamers want to think they were in the first place. In one of the movie's funniest and most pointed scenes, Goodman reads a long list of songs that the government would like Jack Fate to perform for the national television audience: it's a string of rebellious sixties classics ("Street Fighting Man", "Masters of War"), now toothless but still good for making the listener imagine that he must be a part of something daring. (Dylan's deadpan response: "I dunno, Sweetheart. It seems like a whole lot of songs.") And the movie's villain is a self-hating blowhard of a rock journalist (Jeff Bridges) who "interviews" the Dylan character by suggesting that he's a has-been and a sell-out while reeling off the names of rock heroes such as Hendrix who had the decency to die young. Dylan seems to hate this asshole more than the dying, dictatorial "president" (Richard C. Sarina) or his replacement — Mickey Rourke, who caresses the screen with his sweetest pussycat smile while promising, "We will empty the prisons, and fill the football stadiums!" Masked and Anonymous was part of a general comeback for Dylan that began with his 1997 album Time Out of Mind; since then, his autumnal renaissance has included a couple more albums (Love and Theft, Modern Times) and his memoir Chronicles, Volume One, as well as the belated official release Live 1966 and the Martin Scorsese documentary No Direction Home. (He also won an Academy Award for the song "Things Have Changed" from Wonder Boys.) In this unexpected surge of critically garlanded work, Masked and Anonymous (which also yielded a superb soundtrack album) may have gotten lost in the shuffle, but in its own eccentric way, it's as intriguing a statement about Dylan and his myth as any yet caught on film. At least, until the imminent release of Todd Haynes I'm Not There, which addresses the problem of summing up Dylan by dividing the part among six different actors. You can bet that Dylan is kicking himself for not having thought of that before.

— Phil Nugent