Cate Blanchett to play Bob Dylan in an upcoming film.

Todd Haynes

The last casting shift was that Ledger replaced Colin Farrell.

christopher nolan to remake "night of the hunter" with vince vaughan

http://www.iwatchstuff.com/2006/09/06/blanchett-dylan.jpg

A poster has leaked out...

http://www.justpressplay.net/images/movies/news/197.jpg

That's not a great poster,I have to say.

David Cross plays Allen Ginsberg. Awesome.

Blanchett and Cross

Cross is great in that scene, not really feeling Blanchett.
(I misread jaymc's post and thought Crosby was playing Ginsberg)

Dylan Movie to Open Like a Rolling Premiere
By JOHN ANDERSON

Imagine you’re a film distributor, handling an experimental movie by one of the country’s most iconoclastic directors. The subject is an enigmatic occasional recluse who is being portrayed by four actors, an actress and a 13-year-old boy. Where do you open that film?

If you’re very lucky, you get to book it at Film Forum, perhaps the most exclusive art-house cinema in Manhattan.

Now what do you do with a movie that stars Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger; whose subject is Bob Dylan; and whose director is the Oscar-nominated Todd Haynes?

Same answer. Same film. Which is what’s making the planned Nov. 21 release of “I’m Not There,” Mr. Haynes’s rumination on Mr. Dylan’s lives and times, something of a curiosity.

In addition to Film Forum, the film’s distributor, the Weinstein Company, will be opening the movie in just three other theaters, one more in New York and two in Los Angeles, giving it the kind of debut that might be afforded a Mexican documentary. Even “Velvet Goldmine” — the previous Weinstein-Haynes collaboration, about the British glam-rock scene of the 1970s, which starred an unknown Jonathan Rhys Meyers — began in 85 theaters in 1998.

But Harvey Weinstein, the company’s co-chairman, said the slow rollout was the best way to nurture an unconventional, nonlinear movie like “I’m Not There,” in which the above-mentioned stars play Mr. Dylan at particular stages of his life. Shot in styles that correspond to each Dylan epoch, “I’m Not There” sometimes looks like “A Hard Day’s Night,” elsewhere like “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” with Mr. Dylan’s life being imbued with mythic American qualities.

“With a movie like this you have to build it,” said Mr. Weinstein, who founded the company with his brother, Bob, two years ago after an acrimonious split from the Walt Disney Company saw them relinquish control of Miramax. “I don’t think you can go out on 500 screens. The reason for Film Forum is you go where the best word of mouth is on the movie. I like the movie; I think it’s adventurous. The audience is going to have to work — work in a good way.”

Mr. Weinstein said that a similar approach had worked for two of Miramax’s biggest successes. “Good Will Hunting” opened in New York and Los Angeles and eventually brought in nearly $140 million at the domestic box office, while “Chicago” began the same way and grossed $170 million. Those films had larger openings, however: “Good Will Hunting” (with the rising stars Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) in 7 theaters, “Chicago” in 77.

“I’m not saying this movie’s going to come anywhere near those,” Mr. Weinstein said, “but I have a tendency to start small and go big. If we threw this movie out wide, I don’t know what it would do. I think we have to start somewhere.”

The “somewhere” means Film Forum, “a real cathedral of cinema” according to Mr. Haynes’s longtime producer, Christine Vachon, which has presented the premieres of work by Ingmar Bergman, Jean-Luc Godard, Hal Hartley, Claude Chabrol, Spike Lee and Lars von Trier, among many others. But rarely does it get star-laden films like “I’m Not There.” And for it to agree to have another theater share a New York premiere is a rare move.

“We did it with ‘Saraband,’ ” said Karen Cooper, Film Forum’s director, referring to Mr. Bergman’s last American release. “Lincoln Plaza opened it the same day, and I don’t think either of us were happy. I thought the same crowd that lined up to see ‘Scenes From a Marriage’ would want to see ‘Scenes From a Divorce.’ I was wrong.”

Ms. Cooper said that she was offered shared openings all the time and regularly turned them down. But she said that she and Mike Maggiore, Film Forum’s programmer and publicist, decided the Haynes film was so remarkable that they would not mind sharing it with Lincoln Plaza. In Los Angeles, “I’m Not There” will open at the Westside Pavilion and ArcLight Cinemas.

Conventional movie-business wisdom says that if a film fails to catch fire at its opening theater, it will not move much farther. But Mr. Weinstein said there was “not a chance” he would not take this film into more theaters and cities, regardless of its fate on the coasts. “I’m going to play every major city in the United States with this movie,” he said. “I’ll play 100 cities, at least.”

He said he also planned to position Ms. Blanchett, who plays Mr. Dylan during his “Blonde on Blonde” phase, for an Oscar. (Mr. Bale corresponds to “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan,” Mr. Ledger to “John Wesley Harding.”)

“I may be jumping the gun,” Mr. Weinstein said, “but if Cate Blanchett doesn’t get nominated, I’ll shoot myself.”

Films considered Oscar-worthy are released in various ways. Last year, Pedro Almodóvar’s “Volver” and its star, Penélope Cruz, were seen as possible contenders, but Sony Pictures Classics opened the film in only six theaters. (It ultimately grossed close to $13 million.) Another nominee-to-be, “Pan’s Labyrinth,” opened on 17 screens. It has made approximately $37 million. Both those films, however, were in Spanish, and foreign-language films are a hard sell to the American moviegoer.

“I’m Not There,” which will play at film festivals in Venice, Toronto and New York, is Mr. Haynes’s first movie since “Far From Heaven,” his critically acclaimed 2002 homage to the melodramas of Douglas Sirk. The film, which has Mr. Dylan’s blessing, is also, according to Ms. Vachon, his most expensive film, although she declined to divulge the amount. (“Far From Heaven” cost $13.5 million, according to boxofficemojo.com.)

Though Mr. Haynes, who was unavailable for this article, has never had a major commercial success except for “Far From Heaven,” he has never suffered a lack of critical acclaim. His “Poison,” for example, won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991, and “Far From Heaven” received four Academy Award nominations, including one for its star, Julianne Moore. But Mr. Weinstein said the decision to pick up “I’m Not There” was not purely about making money but about an obligation to have important movies distributed.

“That’s the story of my life,” he said. “That’s exactly what I believe in. ‘I’m Not There’ and some of the tougher stuff — it’s not going to be ‘The Nanny Diaries,’ you know. But I’ve been very fortunate that what I’ve believed in has worked, and even when it doesn’t work, we make money in other areas to cover that. It is my responsibility and, more importantly, it’s my passion.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Heath Ledger to play Cate Blanchett in upcoming biopic.

the teaser for i'm not there

Having just read Jonathan Rosenbaum's Movies Wars, I can understand his frustration about certain media outlets' film coverage where it's less about the film and more about the mood of Harvey Weinstein.

AMPED

^

^

this debuts at the venice film festival this week.

i'll see it at tiff. curious.

Again I say... PSYCHED

I sorta can't believe this has taken so long!

i have some friends in this (shot in mtl). so curious

I PLAY JESUS FREAK DYLAN GUYS FYI

"a Finnegans Wake-like meditation on Sixties film culture.... (which)says, among other things, that the presence of politics in works of art, like the presence of the artist's personality, is at once unavoidable and virtually inexpressible. The audacity, beauty, and complexity of Haynes's ironic celebration-and-critique are, quite literally, unlike anything you've ever seen before."

http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/so07/imnotthere.htm

Cate wins Best Actree @ Venice

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=aJz_JH9KFElQ

Sixties cinema was always already influencing the cultural-political reality from which Dylan sprang.

yeah well done i read hoberman too.

this is complete dangerous nazi shit btw, as is the godard quote about aesthetics and ethics.

alarmist much?

article binds together numerous bits of contemporary (though very old) rubbish.

I’m Not There joins Inland Empire, Zodiac, Syndromes and a Century, and I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone as part of a recent and broadly convergent body of work that revises, questions, and sometimes even tosses out narrative fictional structure, in light of our increasingly collective transnational digital culture.

throwing out narrative fictional structure was last daring in about 1922. 'transnational' is or hopefully was a big buzz-word in film academia, but wtf is meaningfully 'transnational' about 'zodiac', and what has it to do with collective, digital blah-blah?

I think he meant Disturbia.

y u hate fun

xpost

I don't even see where that quote claims "tossing out narrative fictional structure" is "daring".

guys, bob dylan is boring.

i did stand in line with cate blanchett at a patisserie in north sydney once. shes cute and not bob dylan like at all.

i think the implication is plain.

i suppose i am so BORED with

-godard
-debord
-deleuze
-warhol
-mcluhan

as '60s godheads. and when they're served to me by the writer of '48 hrs', something weird is afoot.

i hope the film is less leaden than 'velvet goldmine' and less derivative than 'far from heaven' and less suburbophobic than 'safe'.

xpost

'derivative'

Thanks for telling us how bored you are; we are edified by your boredom.

-_- ~~~ zzzzzzzzzzzz

No, but that sounds like a very good idea indeed.

The prosthetics in the deleted Cate/Dylan nude scene deserve an award of their own.

o_0

I could've sworn Ryan Schreiber was in the Newport Folk Festival scene.

man what a dope movie

i need some kind of annotated companion cause i know im missing like 90% of the inside baseball

I wd bet I missed 60% of it, and it don't much matter

(u might wanna google Ann Powers + INT if nec, max)

I don't really know much about Dylan, most of the songs in this I was hearing for the first time, but I had read the autobiography at least and it was interesting to see how things I knew about him got translated into these other characters.

This movie is amazing by the way, I loved how it deconstructs the Rock biopic, which is always about this layering of times, which is always in love with eras and costumes and a mangled nostalgia and sort of made that analogous to the Dylan who constructs the present from a past that telescopes further and further into the past, It's just obsessed with that overlap montage and flashback that makes up the crescendos of these movies and makes a whole movie that surfs along on this. It finds its own poetry of pastiche too, the Christian Bale bits aren't really funny the way they seem to be, they're stranger and reminded me a lot of Superstar. In face out of any director Haynes' remakes camp as something more personal and moving, all that jumbled gibberish that the Moore/Baez character spouts (perfect casting, so perfect) isn't really ridiculous.

Sorry, I just watched it.

In face out of any director Haynes' remakes camp as something more personal and moving, all that jumbled gibberish that the Moore/Baez character spouts (perfect casting, so perfect) isn't really ridiculous.

I'm not sure what this means, but I'd like to know.

The only reason Far From Heaven isn't horrible is because its so serious about camp. It neither turns the campier elements of Sirk into a bawdy spoof or strips it away, instead its always a slipping mask. Its also interesting to me that these both have Julianne Moore, because I think Haynes and Moore definitely bring out the best in each other, she has this strange timbre to her voice and a tendency to be a bit Meryl Streep, but with Haynes she's lacerating, so controlled that quivering tone is laughing/crying.

The bio-doc trappings are all played up, the set-ups, that daft photo of Moore doing Baez, the weirdly portentous "he was a genius" crap, but there's something really harrowing about it, not in spite or because of the set up, but both. Like I think the whole movie collides these fragmented elements in the hope that something will make sense in the cracks and overlaps. Like when Richard Gere finds the guitar case.

Story one: Robert Pattinson - dyed blond - is a new wave punk high school teacher fresh out of university, dealing with the ignorance and illiteracy of his students, one of whom won't stop flirting with him.

Story two: Julia Roberts plays the blond, male leader of a pop group making his first movie after achieving stardom. Annoyed by its poor quality, he wants to write his own movie but he's pestered by resentful bandmates and hangers-on who won't stop saying how smart and sexy he is.

Story three: A young African boy with blond hair saves money to buy an electric bass and move to America. Imagines performing with musical legends ranging from Hendrix to Marsalis. "And what music will you play, little one?" "I will play everything."

Story four: Successful jazz bassist Owen Wilson and philanthropist Gwyenth Paltrow tour the world with his band, fuck.

Story five: Bill Nighy wanders the English countryside, playing his lute.

i would watch this

i can't actually work out who it is

lucky

oh wait, duh

Bill Nighy wanders the English countryside, playing his lute.

seriously i would watch this on youtube for hours

the movie ends with nighy stepping around a small blue turtle

'psycho 98' > 'far from heaven'
― That one guy that hit it and quit it

OTM

Haha! It took me almost five minutes to get that!

possible linking device for da croupier's story: intercuts from an epic tantric sex scene in which rutger hauer is having intercourse with an unseen figure who is revealed, over the closing credits, to be himself.

Everybody knows I'm not a folk singer.

I hadn't seen this film until a couple of weeks ago, when I checked the dvd out of the library. I was surprised at how much humor it had. The not-funny parts were ok, too, but just ok.

For the sake of reference: I never was a hardcore fanboy and was too young to ride the Dylan bandwagon during the protest-song first wave. I do like Dylan's music and I've listened to it off and on since about 1970. I met his music via his first Greatest Hits album, in mid high school. I worked my backwards to the earlier stuff, then we both moved on thru the 1970s stuff. I stopped paying much attention after his come-to-Jesus moment.

I think of his lyrics as highly evocative, but not very good poetry, which is something of a conundrum as the two usually go together. IMO, his outstanding quality as an artist is that his songs are fun to sing. His reputation for profundity has never been merited, but he is very entertaining.

I'm more surprised there's been no mention of the 'non-linear' 6 characters.

i.e. All of the characters could exist at the same time. None of them are meant to be 'the real Dylan' of any duration, more that they resemble 'part' of him at any point in time. (The meeting of Gere and the young lad is not an anomaly, not really!)

The Heath Ledger one seemed more true to how Dylan is in real life.

Yep, just watched it, last night.

Any news on those 2DVD extras?

also the heath ledger one played the christian bale one in his biopic

quite.

if only Heath had lived to do the upcoming Bale biopic

Just saw this last night. I thought Haynes should have had Cate Blanchett play Dylan/Jude as a woman, rather than her impersonating a man. It would have fit, no?

rescreened this last night--still loved it but i thot the ending was sort of weak--also going to acapulco scene just doesnt do it for me at all, i guess cuz i cant get out of the "wtf mmj" headspace

second time 'round I was bothered only by MMJ

MMJ?

dont think i ever finished this - found it kinda bloodless

My Morning Jacket

had no idea that was the guy, didn't bother me a bit

great!!!!!!!!

i have yet to meet anyone in this life who thinks dylan should not have gone electric. who are these people?

― gff, Thursday, November 29, 2007 4:13 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

heh i was thinking the same thing during that scene - maybe its just that nobody today would admit to booing him then

not sure that this is a great movie for people who like dylan's music but don't know much about his life (ie. me) - watching it i was like 'i dont really get it but its interesting' but reading this thread is making me feel like i missed out on *everything* since i wasn't howling with delight like many of you apparently were - wish i at least watched DLB first

that said, if this came out when i was 17-18 it wouldve been my favorite movie in the world

also bruce greenwood was my fav dude in this

saw this last night, at last.

I thought it tremendous. The potency, the richness of pastiche.

i watched this again, first time since it came out, inspired by the poll over on ILM.

i dont have anything terribly intelligent to say about it, but i loved it this time. only off note is the sonorous sounds of eddie vedder doing "all along the watchtower" over stock footage of vietnam. cant decide if that's a cliche or a knowing cliche, but doesn't seem to work either way.

this is sorta obvious in retrospect, but thought connecting "finger-pointing" folk dylan to angry christian dylan via the Bale character was insightful.

would love to read an in-depth analysis of this. i really enjoy movies that seem to be "coded" in some way. like, all the different characters have a different category (poet, prophet, fake, etc.) but the Cate Blanchett one isn't included in the line up with the gun shot sounds and, as far as i can tell, isn't really given a category in that way (perhaps "Ghost" if i was hearing things right). need to watch again.

it's basically the same narrative/central conflict as Velvet Goldmine, just without the Christian Bale character

need to see that too!

I think its fantastic but it def has its detractors (primarily people who get upset by how many liberties it takes with the ostensible "facts" but then I think those liberties are precisely the point)

INT or VG? i guess both. watching this with a dylan-skeptic who kept asking about verisimilitude was funny since it made me realize how many things were tweaked and re-named "desolation row" style. probably difficult to get a strong sense of it without a minimal grounding in dylan-lore but they found it quite affecting anyhow.

I was referring to VG there but both films make it really clear that playing with the facts, the mutability of the subject matter, is central to the films' premises.

Forgot Charlotte Gainsbourg was in this.

They actually screened 35mm prints of this at Metrograph and MoMA recently. It was quite a nostalgia trip to see it again - I vividly remember seeing it when it came out, and I still have the ticket stub (now faded but just barely legible) tacked to my old bedroom wall. Back then, I was almost alone in the theater. (I didn't realize until the end that a couple was sitting in the back.) I was blown away, but it was kind of sad to see the film do so poorly as the screening I went to turned out to be the last before the theater booked a different movie. I think it had ran for at best two weeks. This time, it was a packed screening, and it still holds up for me. I think it's one of Todd Haynes's best films and the best film outside of D.A. Pennebaker's films that I've seen on Dylan. It's clearly a movie that understands his work very well and knows how to reflect that dramatically and cinematically rather than spelling it all out. (Even the few minutes of pseudo-documentary interviews are more about the way Dylan was idolized by his '60s fans.)

xps Also, a bit late, but here's Jim Hoberman's write-up back when it came out:

https://www.villagevoice.com/2007/11/13/like-a-complete-unknown-im-not-there-and-the-changing-face-of-bob-dylan-on-film/

rewatched this last night and laughed out loud when cate-as-dylan first thrills then destroys brian jones by recognising him at a party and introducing him as "brian jones from that groovy covers band"

i like haynes even when's being a bit leadenly DO-YOU-SEE but there's maybe less of that in this movie than any of his other movies?

(except for the destructive journalist being called jones, i mean i see why you feel you can't dodge that but YES WE GET IT TODD)

ranking the dylans: cate, marcus carl franklin, whishaw, gere, bale, ledger

cutest allen ginsberg ever: david cross lol

He has a couple of DO YOU SEEs in May-December.