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‘A Complete Unknown’ Director James Mangold on Consulting With Bob Dylan, Adoring Pete Seeger and Why Newport ’65 Was Like ‘Thanksgiving Dinner Gone Amuck’
'Complete Unknown' director James Mangold talks about meeting Bob Dylan, directing Timothée Chalamet, and Pete Seeger's and Joan Baez's importance.
Thankfully, “A Complete Unknown” has turned out to be a thoughtful treatment as well as a crowd-pleasing one that, against most odds, seems to be equally bowling over deeply Dylan-informed boomers and younger audiences that might have Timothée Chalamet as their first point of entry into this world. My way of making a movie, both as a writer and as a director, is to kind of really focus on the deeply personal — the local, if you will — and to really not get distracted at all by the large themes, like changing music and realigning the dynamic and cultural shifts. I think what’s so interesting and subtle in what Edward’s done in the film is, you have a character who is by nature so committed to mutual understanding and finding a way through, but he can’t quite untangle himself from the fact that his relationship with Bob has become somewhat transactional, and that he needs him to do specific things to further institutional goals.
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