In which "Don't Look Back" scene is Dylan being the biggest dick?

it IS sort of amazing that she was just tagging along on that tour, though I guess she expected to be asked to play with Dylan.

Hell, I could have posted nearly every scene.

haha, yeah. BUT THEY ALL HAD IT COMING.

I mean, it's a scientific fact that Bob Dylan 1965-66 was cooler than everyone else on the planet. HE HAD NO CHOICE.

i always felt worst for the dude from the animals who follows dylan around

dylan treats him like a friend for most of the movie and then just says something totally decimating to him near the end but i can't remember the details

i guess this would be alan price that i am talking about

guy out of the animals absentmindedly tinkling around on the piano: amazing.

voted 'dylan is not a dick'. i like the argument with the student the most, because you can see the cogs turning in dylan's brain.

dylan treats him like a friend for most of the movie and then just says something totally decimating to him near the end but i can't remember the details

yeah I don't really remember that part of Don't Look Back. they made a plot out of it in I'm Not There so I figured it came from somewhere

donovan > dylan

I'm not here was kinda crap though...
donovan is underappreciated btw, but he's still no dylan. same goes for cat stevens...

i always felt worst for the dude from the animals who follows dylan around

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, January 6, 2009 3:26 PM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dylan treats him like a friend for most of the movie and then just says something totally decimating to him near the end but i can't remember the details

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, January 6, 2009 3:27 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

uh i just popped the dvd in and skimmed around and i think i totally made up this scene by conflating the dude with the sunglasses who's dylan's gofer with the scene where alan price is jamming with dylan and then dylan asks him about leaving the animals and all of a sudden price just looks crestfallen. but this isn't even due to dylan being a dick as far as i can tell. so yeah, sorry for making up that story guys.

The question for me is, had cameras not been rolling, would he have been more of a dick or less of a dick?

If you watch the movie closely you'll see that Donovan ASKS Dylan to play Baby Blue. It's only in the editing that Dylan is made to look like a dick. They were swapping songs, as folkies do.

the scene with the student is the only one where i really feel sorry for anyone. dylan's not exactly wrong in anything he's saying, but it's just so easy and cheap. it's like roger federer egregiously serving aces right at some kid in a wheelchair. the time magazine thing is one of my favorite bits in the movie. i wish i taught a journalism class just so i could show it.

They were swapping songs, as folkies do.

Right. Got it. The point is Baby Blue is so awesome that by all rights Donovan should have curled up in the corner weeping

whiney could learn from this proper preposition placement

I agree about the Time interview, the reporter was trying to shove Dylan into the "folksinger, voice of his generation" box and Dylan refusing to be shoved.

sherriff's wife totally pwns dylan.

Yup, he's got no searing comeback for her.

It would be easier to find Bill Murray's "most smartass moment" than to single out just one scene from this.

Who's a bigger dick? Dylan vs Lou Reed... Someone make poll.

Townes Van Zandt was notorious for crashing those folk song swaps, waiting for everyone else to play their song, and then playing something devastating of his own. Often "Pancho and Lefty."

Oh God, Lou Reed is a much worse person that Dylan by 10,000 miles.

And don't feel so bad for the science student, he went on to co-found Chrysalis records, and made a mint.

The Donovan song, "To Sing for You," released as a single, I think, is far from crappy. It's lovely, if slight (and presages most of what Belle and Sebastian would accomplish--though they'd kick up the tempo and orchestrate some keyboards and horns to punch things up a bit). It's just that "Baby Blue" is, well, "Baby Blue." But, to reverse the logic, it actually praises "Baby Blue" far more to note its superiority to a pretty good song than to a crappy one, right?

Alan Price had just been fired from the Animals, that's why he gets a giant buzzkill when Dylan asks him how the band's going.

re: Donovan's song, yeah it might be harsh to say it's a crappy song ... I just think it's kind of an awesome moment dramatically -- after the build-up throughout the film ("Who IS this Donovan!?"), to see Dylan slay him like that is just great cinema.

Lennon demonstrates how to pwn someone without being a total dick. Of course, it's not really an even playing field, as Dylan is high as kite.

ahem..

Alan Price walked out on the Animals when the royalty check arrived on his doormat made out to him, as the credit on the track read "Trad: Arr Price"

That's why he mumbled. not going to explain all that on camera, like?

Yeah, was going to post that "Donovan Requested that song" thing, worst request ever?

Where is he 'mean' to Joan? Occasionally distant when busy, that's all I remember. (No more than any regular boyf/girlf situation)

The student lad (yeah, etc) years later said that Dylan wasn't being 'offensive' but was more 'accomodating' with the 'silent/observe' comment (one BIG indicator about how Dylan works), and the 'don't you know when you're LIKED?' (as in "we likeyou dammit!")

Oh, and the Sherrif's wife 'seems to have two sons called Stephen (or was it Simon?)'

A funny moment in the Alan Price sequence is his opening a beer on the edge of the keyboard. Dylan: "You get glass in it?" Price: "Wood."

I was tempted to go for the 'drunkie' one but then, the line: (not verbatim, obv)

"I have enough to take responsibility for MY people without having to take responsibility for YOURS as well"

.. I remember having to say that myself.

The science student actually gave as good as he got. The reporter was the biggest dick in the room, and deserved every second of his verbal bitchslapping. But threatening to start cracking heads over a broken glass was dickish to the extreme.

I don't think so.

Throwing a glass into the street where fans were congregating is the dickish to the extreme.

(I assume, by the handshake at the end, enough time had passed that Dylan had (agreed to) calm down enough for the culprit to own up and apologise.)

-the blistering argument with the geordie near the end..whi oisn't alan price

clue me?

He totally charmed those geordie girls who were all "My friends prefer you solo" when he was all "yeah, but you're different, right?"

o shit sorry that's the glass scene.

but that isn't price, right?

No, and he's no Geordie either.

haha

And don't feel so bad for the science student, he went on to co-found Chrysalis records, and made a mint.
No shit! Didn't know that.
Regarding Alan Price, Dylan was obviously surprised to hear he was no longer with the Animals ("Don't you play with them no more?"). I wonder if he would have let Price tag along had he known that from the start.
Dylan and the drunk were never meant to be friends, I guess. After Dylan shakes his hand, he inadvertently pisses the guy off again just a few minutes later when he says he doesn't want to hear any poets like Dominic Behan. "Dominic Behan is a friend of mine," replies the drunk (off camera, but it sure sounds like him). Anyone know who the drunk was?
Maybe the guy had it in for Dylan from the start, as Dylan was accused of ripping off the melody of "With God On Our Side" from a song by Behan called "The Patriot Game."

I think Dom Be was a friend of Donovan's Manager.

anyroad, found Donovan's recollection...

The party scene in the film Don't Look Back speaks for itself and much that was said was powered by the tension from the drunk berating Bob. The film was edited by its director, DA Pennebaker, to reflect the discords and not the harmonies. It was, after all, a PR piece for Dylan's tour. In the film, as I remember it, I sit with Bob in his suite. The American folk musician Derroll Adams is there, gently drunk, and there is another guy who followed Derroll in with me, a belligerent drunk who is chiding Bob about his song "God on My Side".

"It's Dominic Behan's tune, not yours," the drunk slurs at Bob.

"I don't like drunks," Bob says. He scans the room as the camera focuses on him. I decide to sing a song and ask to play his guitar, a Martin, I think. The drunk continues to harass but Dylan settles himself, crosses his legs, a cigarette in his hand, long fingernails, black drainpipe trousers, with Anello & Davide boots pointing to the ceiling, as I move into the first verse. Bob listens closely and does not take one drag of the cigarette, hard for anyone who is on "uppers", yet he pays me the respect of keeping absolutely as still as possible as I sing to him. After I finish, he asks:

"You wrote that?" He is impressed.

I smile a little and say: "Yeah."

Wow, didn't know the drunk confronted Dylan about the alleged plagiarism. I haven't seen the 2007 double-DVD version. Was any of this exchange caught on film and included?

And don't feel so bad for the science student, he went on to co-found Chrysalis records, and made a mint.

Meanwhile, I doubt he made a mint, but the Time reporter is Horace Freeland Judson, who packed in his journalism career shortly thereafter, headed back to uni to get into biological research, and went on to write some pop-sci books, one of which in particular was recommended to me recently. Anyone read them?

xpost I don't think it's on DVD2 (I have the pairing), actually most of it is snoozeworthy by comparison, apart from Joan in a taxi, singing "I'm the one" Gerry and the Pacemakers, turning it into a pieece of folk beauty. While the 2 bobs say little.

I like the Time magazine scene -- it does come off a bit as facile college student media crit, but I have a feeling the points he was making were still a bit more salient in the 1960s.

I think Donovan probably has a point when he says: "The film was edited by its director, DA Pennebaker, to reflect the discords and not the harmonies." I think the movie is a fantastic piece of cinema, but I kind of take its "truth" with a grain of salt. It's really artfully put together, even though it seems so verite -- whether it really captures the reality of situations, I dunno.

Classic: "I don't WANNA know who he IS MAAAN! I just want his NAME!!!"

By the way, Donovan's autobiography is unintentionally hilarious, and reveals him to be a bigger dick than Dylan ever was. The guy's got an ego that doesn't quit, and his tremendous self-involvement, as well as his over-estimation of his own talents, is apparent on every page. Typical TM/western Buddhist kind of guy . . . they're all egomaniacs, hence the futile attempts at ego-supression.

Donovan strikes me as a genuinely delusional person, which you can sort of see in that anecdote.

The truth is somewhere between Donovan's version (Dylan: Hey, pretty neat song) and the common perception (Dylan: Think that's a song? THIS is a song...)

Over the following five years, Dylan would record more songs like "to sing for you" than "it's all over now"...

A funny moment in the Alan Price sequence is his opening a beer on the edge of the keyboard. Dylan: "You get glass in it?" Price: "Wood."

I was coming here to post that!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

A funny moment in the Alan Price sequence is his opening a beer on the edge of the keyboard. Dylan: "You get glass in it?" Price: "Wood."

I was coming here to post that!

ALRIGHT i'll bite wtf is the joke

It's not a joke, it's what happened...

I've played on many upright pianos, and I'm still trying to figure out how Price did that.

Ha, ILM rises as one to defend unfairly maligned global megastar

Revive!
Just got the new Criterion Blu-Ray and watched all the extras and outtakes last night. Not sure how much of them were included in the previous Blu-Ray edition (which I didn’t own), but they’re really great. Especially love the conversation/debate about gospel music and the blues between producer Tom Wilson, Albert Grossman and Alan Price, from the “Snapshots from the Tour” chapter.

I never felt bad for the reporter, comes with the territory.

not sure i've ever read the actual article that came out of that time magazine interview -- anyone have it?

When that interview took place, there was virtually no "rock journalism" as such. (I think Crawdaddy was launched the following year.) It was obvious the Time reporter (Horace Freeland Judson) was a general beat kind of guy, and was very unfamiliar with Dylan's work. I was surprised to learn he was only 34 at the time of the interview. Apparently he thought the whole thing was contrived for the sake of the film, and after seeing Dylan perform that night he came to the conclusion that the "music was unpleasant, the lyrics inflated, and Dylan, a self-indulgent whining show off"

he was a pretty well respected science journalist, right? lol crazy that he's only 34 there. in my head he's like 75.

I think that may have come later on. At the time, he was Time's European correspondent in London and Paris. Reading the original article from 1965 would be interesting, but I can't find it anywhere.

One of the funniest moments in the film is when Dylan points out a newspaper article on Donovan that he had tacked to his wall. Alan Price scans the headline: “‘Is Donovan deserting his fans?’ He’s only been around for three months.” It's just Price's deadpan delivery that makes it so hilarious, and it made Joan Baez crack up.

Read folks saying on Facebook that in the Criterion version you now more clearly see Donovan asking Dylan to play "It's All Over Now Baby Blue"

you watch the movie closely you'll see that Donovan ASKS Dylan to play Baby Blue. It's only in the editing that Dylan is made to look like a dick. They were swapping songs, as folkies do.

― thirdalternative, Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:57 PM (6 years

yeah, some talk of that over on another dylan thread Bob Dylan: The Bootleg Series
think maybe you just hear it better -- it's always been in there.

Oddly, I was looking for Alan Price singing 'Little Things' in Don't Look Back and this thread came up on google. Does anyone have that clip?

man that time magazine clip doesn't get old does it

"of a uh uh let's say a tramp vomiting man into the sewer"

"which they don't do"

"no i couldn't even be willing to try"

"how can i answer that if you've got the nerve to ask me?"