How Bob Dylan approved the script of the biopic about him

While overseas arrived last December 25th, the Bob Dylan biopic “A complete unknown” will be released in Italian cinemas on January 23rd 2025. With the big screen debut of the film, based on the biography “Dylan goes electric!” by Elijah Wald and which traces the electric turning point in the career of the Duluth singer-songwriter, the reviews and testimonies of the figures involved in the making of the film are multiplying. In a recent interview for “The Town” podcast, producer Peter Jaysen recounted how Dylan gave his blessing to the project after reading the script in detail with director James Mangold.

During the chat, Jaysen revealed that the voice of “Like a Rolling Stone” made a significant contribution to the film by playing himself while reading the script directly with Mangold. “Bob Dylan met Jim Mangold several times,” the producer pointed out: “During their meetings, they read the entire script aloud. Jim Mangold read each part and the stage directions, while Bob Dylan only recited the lines of the dialogue of his character. During that process, Dylan was also writing notes on the script. At the end of the last session with Jim Mangold, Dylan signed the script and said, ‘Go with God.'”

Dylan’s important involvement in the making of the biopic had already been confirmed by Timothée Chalamet, who is entrusted with the role of the singer-songwriter in the film, when he revealed that James Mangold has “a script with Bob’s annotations somewhere”.

In addition to Peter Jaysen, who also confirmed on the podcast “The Town” that he is working on a biopic about Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett, director James Mangold also recently detailed the moment in which he proposed the “A complete unknown” project to the legendary singer-songwriter. In an interview for the “Guardian”, Mangold revealed how the 1984 film “Amadeus”, in its way of exploring the life and figure of Mozart, was the inspiration for developing the feature film on Bob Dylan starting from his stature as genius and man.

In the chat, the director then recalled how he explained the concept to the musician himself, during a meeting in a coffee shop, knowing that he would have to provide as incisive and brief a description as possible. “I thought about it very carefully, because I knew he didn’t want a long explanation,” Mangold emphasized: “I then said, ‘This is about a kid from Minnesota who’s suffocating and feeling desperate and leaving everything, friends, family, behind him and, with only a few dollars in his pocket, he goes across the country and creates a new identity and makes new friends and finds a new family and blossoms and succeeds and then starts to suffocate again and runs away.'” Pleased with Dylan’s reaction, James Mangold recalled: “He smiled. And that was all. He had nothing else to say, but I knew that meant he didn’t object.”

“A complete unknown” has so far garnered positive reviews and, according to some rumors, the protagonist Timothée Chalamet could receive an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Dylan.