I'm · Not · There

im_not_there, is a journal devoted to Todd Haynes's film on Bob Dylan,
I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan.


This journal will be a loosely structured take on the ideas that link Bob Dylan's and Todd Haynes' work.

Start here if you would like to read from the first entry.

One controversy that follows I'm Not There is the idea of whether or not the film was able to capture some essential truth about Dylan. More from the Bill Flanagan book:

People seem to think they know all about me. Maybe they don’t. Maybe everything I’ve done has been one side of something. One part. Certainly nothing that I’ve written defines me as a total person. There’s no one song that does that. Nothing I do really should surprise anybody. It seems like I’ve been doing it for so long I can’t remember when I wasn’t doing it. There’s nothing I could say that isn’t documented somewhere in the past so you could think, "Yeah, he would say something like that."

Haynes has been criticized for his unconventional approach to the film, as if it was somehow unfaithful to the work of Dylan, but this excerpt from the previously mentioned interview gives us insight to how Dylan himself tries to avoid the limits of a genre when writing. His description of writing the song Tangled up in Blue sounds both experimental and cinematic:

See, what I was trying to do had nothing to do with the characters or what was going on. I was trying to do something that I don’t know if I was prepared to do. I wanted to defy time, so that the story took place in the present and past at the same time. When you look at a painting, you can see any part of it or see all of it together. I wanted that song to be like a painting.

Interviewers keep asking Todd Haynes whether or not Dylan has seen I'm Not There. While declining to come to a premiere, he was given the film on DVD, which he apparently loves to watch on his tour bus. No word yet on his opinion, but here's an insight to his cinematic sensibility from an interview in Bill Flanagan's Written In My Soul, Conversations with Rock's Greatest Songwriters:

You can go to a movie and say, "What’s this about?" A movie is something that gives the illusion of stopping time. You go someplace and you sit there for a while. you’re looking at something. You’re trapped. It’s all happening in your brain and it seems like nothing else is going on in the world. Time has stopped. The world could be coming to an end outside, but for you time has stopped. Then someone says, "What was it about?" "Well, I don’t know. It was about two guys who were after the same girl." Or, "It was about the Russian Revolution." Well, yeah, that was what it was about, but that wasn’t it. That’s not what made you stay there and stare at the screen, at a light on the wall. In another way you could say, "What’s life about?" It’s just going by like a movie all the time. It doesn’t matter if you’re here for a hundred years, it still goes by. You can’t stop it.
So you can’t say what it’s about. But what you can do is try to give the illusion of the moment of it. And even that’s not what it’s about. That’s just proof that you existed.
What’s anything about? It’s not about anything. It is what it is.

Despite the original intention to open the film on limited screens (2 in LA and 2 in NY) on November 21, I'm Not There has had a wider opening in 130 theaters across the country and has made close to a million dollars over the long holiday weekend. The naysayers who insisted that the staggered opening was an indicator of the doubt the Weinstein Co had about the film have been proven incorrect. Film festival reviews, internet blogs and word of mouth have created a genuine interest in the film.

The reviews are mixed but, surprisingly, about 80% are positive. Both those who love it and those who hate it argue passionately, and we use one of our favorite Haynes quotes here:

All my films have divided audiences intensely. The most interesting films that have ever been made have always done this.

On October 31, 1964, Bob Dylan performed at New York's Philharmonic Hall. Between songs he said to the audience, "Don't let that scare you, it's just Halloween. I have my Bob Dylan mask on. I'm masquerading."

I'm Not There has received mostly positive reviews after several film festival screenings. The unintentionally hilarious exceptions seem to be written by critics who proudly


1. Don't know Dylan:
Again, be warned: This is a review by someone who knows next to nothing about Dylan and it's intended for the viewer who knows next to nothing about Dylan. [And he objected to the film being 'exclusionary'!]


2. Don't like Dylan:
Your reaction will depend hugely on whether you see anything deep in Dylan’s music (I don’t) [a.k.a. Boring Film Critic Astonishes Us With Trio of Hatchet Jobs]


3. Don't like people who like Dylan:
Incorporates and represents everything I hate about Bob Dylan, which is what everyone loves about Bob Dylan.

"Those who know
Don't let it show...."



Brian Eno's Needle in the Camel's Eye, opens the film Velvet Goldmine. Later in the film, Roxy Music's Bitters End offers the line, "should make the cognoscenti think."

This idea of those who know, is central to Dylan's Ballad of a Thin Man, with its taunting Something is happening and you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

The line that divides those who know and those who don't is essential to both Glam and [particularly 'Mod' Bring It All Back Home era] Dylan. These two eras in music - Mod and Glam - seemed to be all about the clothes and the pose but aficionados know that Glam lyrics are replete with references to literature, cinema, art and philosophy. Bowie's fabulously exclusionary line, "We were very miffed that people who'd obviously never seen Metropolis or heard of Christopher Isherwood were actually becoming glam rockers." says it all.

By the time Glam rock came around in the early 70s, the cool of Dylan's 1966 pose was dissolved by years of laid back hippie stoner attitude. Jimi Hendrix asking, "Are you Experienced?" is not quite the same as name dropping Genet, Sacher Masoch, Jacques Brel, and Brion Gysin on your audience. While Bowie would eagerly own up to his influences in interviews, Dylan referenced other artists indirectly, preferring to appear unschooled while secretly being a voracious reader and cinéaste. But the idea that you had to bring your own intelligence to a viewing of a film or hearing of a new album was understood by their serious fans. Dylan's work is probably the most studied for meaning in all of Rock. The challenge posed by artists like Bowie and Dylan was a pleasurable invitation rather than a burden to endure. It's easy to see why their work would appeal to Todd Haynes. While accessible, his films challenge viewers to spot the references, whether obvious like I Love Lucy [Dottie Gets Spanked] or the arty cinematic choices like Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles [Safe]. Likewise Todd Haynes' goal for Velvet Goldmine can happily be expected for I'm Not There:
"I hoped it would be like those trippy movies you'd go to and then analyze with your friends; buy the record and play it over and over again and ponder its meaning."

Of course, Rock & Roll was a major influence in the fifties with previously mentioned Little Richard making his mark on a young Bob Zimmerman. But there was an equally strong current permeating the American consciousness in the form of folk music. In the postwar imagination, folk music was an authentic American expression with credentials further honed in the struggles of the Dust Bowl and Depression. It was also seen by young people as an alternative to the increasing commercialization of popular culture.

The Anthology of American Folk Music was released in 1952 on Folkways Records. This six LP set contained 84 songs from 1927-1932 that were originally released on 78s. While folk troubadours like Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger were popular and influential by the early 1950s, the Anthology is acknowledged as one of the major reasons for the surge in the popularity of folk music with the generation born during and just after the war. The set of albums was just the type of thing that libraries and schools would add to their collections, introducing these songs to an audience that would never have heard them otherwise. Any newly minted folk singer would memorize the Anthology as the core of their repertoire. Bob Dylan covered six of the songs on the Anthology and borrowed from many more.

The collection and presentation of the Anthology seemed so authoritative and canonical - one can feel the earnest musicologist on his way to a Ph.D., weighing every track for its importance and authentically in consideration for inclusion. And yet that is not the case at all. It is the quirky vision of one particular man with perhaps the most esoteric credentials any American has ever had. Harry Smith was the definition of the bohemian artist. He was an experimental filmmaker, painter, collector, ethnographer, occultist, (he often claimed his father was Aleister Crowley with whom his mother had an affair) who happened to collect old 78s (as well as paper airplanes, Ukrainian Easter Eggs and Seminole Quilts.)

In the early days of marketing records, genres like hillbilly or old time and race records were usually sold regionally, so many of seminal country and blues records that would later influence rock and roll were not known outside what the record companies considered their proper demographic. It was unlikely that city kids would hear country music or white teenagers would hear the blues. 78s were also fragile, and by the 1940s, when Harry Smith was collecting, they were being replaced by the newer format of LP records. So Smith was prescient in claiming what many people considered obsolete or worthless from the trash. His choice of recordings ~ popular tunes arranged by theme rather than geography, chronology or ethnicity as they would have been in most other collections ~ and their idiosyncratic liner notes make the Anthology a uniquely personal work that nevertheless has had universal appeal. He was awarded a honorary Grammy Award in 1991 and said in acceptance, "I'm glad to say my dreams came true. I saw America changed by music."

Here's a brilliant clip of Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes interviewed by indieWIRE.com outside the Toronto Film Festival before the September 12th premiere of I'm Not There. They talk about how the idea of identity is central to Todd's films and about the challenges they faced in the making of I'm Not There. They display an intimacy that is probably unique to the typical Producer/Director relationship in the way they embrace and share a smoke while they practically finish each other's sentences.

Reviews are in for the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals and Cate Blanchett is getting raves [even when the reviews are not as lavish for the film itself.] She won the Best Actress Award at Venice. What originally was perceived as stunt casting has impressed most critics as inspired and her performance has been judged brilliant. Blanchett plays Jude, whose halo of hair, black Wayfarers, skinny Mod suits and polka dot shirts channel the 1966 Dylan of Don't Look Back.

Here is Todd Haynes on Cate's role:

"Jude was always meant to be played by a woman. I felt it was the only way to resurrect the true strangeness of Dylan's physical being in 1966, which I felt had lost its historical shock value over the years.

But of course it would take an actor of Cate's supreme intelligence and ability to bring to the role the kind of depth and subtlety she delivers. Cate was scared; she told me many times that this was a very scary challenge for her. It took her a long time to commit to it, she's a very busy actress and had to balance it with her schedule but mostly I think it was due to fear, which is completely understandable.

I told her it's good to be terrified, that you're taking a risk and sometimes that's really when the surprises happen. I guess it at least convinced her to give it a shot."

Blanchett was impressed with Haynes' Superstar and that made her want to work with him. "It was really emotionally honest, this Barbie doll barfing into the toilet."

Cate Blanchett won the best actress award at the Venice Film Festival yesterday for her role in I'm Not There. She wasn't able to attend the awards but sent an acceptance speech read by costar Heath Ledger.
"I'm sorry I can't stand here throwing my arms around Todd, weeping just like a woman."
It's a deliciously worded response - she's both quoting a Dylan song and wittily acknowledging that she is indeed a woman, even though she won for playing a man.

Being on google alert for this project, I've read this story repeated in articles and blogs and for a few of those retreads Cate hasn't really been quoted correctly. It's one thing when a blog from Croatia loses the meaning in translation, saying "I am sorry I cannot be on stage and hug Todd, cry in public and just behave like a woman", it's another when newspapers from Australia miss the Dylan pun by leaving off the 'just' in this Cate "weeps like a woman" over award headline.


Todd Haynes won the Special Jury prize as well.

The idea of Rock & Roll fame as destiny has always been part of the myth. As already mentioned, a line used in Velvet Goldmine that looms large in pop history is Bowie's declaration of "I want to be a pop idol," at his graduation from Bromley Polytechnical School. Similarly, in his High School yearbook, Dylan states his goal is "to join Little Richard."





Little Richard, born Richard Penniman, calls himself "The Originator" (aka The Architect of Rock and Roll, and The Georgia Peach). He brought together the bawdy elements of R&B, the dramatics of gospel, and the theatrics of traveling medicine shows along with his inner campy flamboyance to be a major influence on rock and roll. He is outspoken but not bitter in his belief that he has not been given enough credit in rock history. In Rolling Stone magazine's 50th Anniversary of Rock's list of most influential performers, Little Richard explains why. He makes his case when the others on the list who cite him as an influence ~ The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown ~ are ranked in the top ten of "the Immortals" ahead of him.

That Little Richard was the first rock and roll inspiration for Bowie and Dylan is somewhat surprising considering that their cooler, distanced approach to performing has little in common with his raucous piano pounding style. But certainly there was something in Richard's audacity that inspired them to want to be performers. It's as if he gave them permission to identify with their inner rock & roller. Another trait they share is that Little Richard, Dylan and Bowie have all faced more than the usual amount of resistance to their image than even an innovative performer might expect.

While in high school Bob Zimmerman played several local concerts in Hibbing with his band The Golden Chords, often causing an uproar by imitating Little Richard at the piano. Long before the Newport Folk Festival, there was a complaint of the amplifiers being so loud that the audience couldn't hear Dylan's voice.

An unlikely aspect that Little Richard and Dylan share is a vacillating relationship with born-again Christianity.

Even a casual fan of Dylan is aware of his mastery of the folk, blues and rock genres. His influences include American icons Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson, and Little Richard, as well as Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
It's a pleasure to be able to listen to his satellite show Theme Time Radio Hour with your Host Bob Dylan, and hear the encyclopedic listings of his favorite songs, grouped by theme. The first season aired 50 shows and a second season is planned for this September.
The format is simple - the hour long show is titled with a basic, usually one word, theme - but it results in a thought provoking mix of genres, with diverse artists, spanning decades. Weather, Coffee, Summer, Jail, Flowers, Eyes, Drinking are typical titles. For example, the Time episode includes songs by Irma Thomas, Dr. John, Arthur Dooley Wilson [playing 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca, of course], Derrick Morgan, Etta James, Cab Calloway, Willie Nelson, Lou Reed, [singing the above mentioned Kurt Weill's 'September Song'], Ray Charles, Patsy Cline, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, and The Chambers Brothers.
In between songs, Dylan relates details and anecdotes in his deep, authoritative speaking voice that evokes the feeling of listening to radio back in the day when you could tune in stations from across the country late at night. Of course Dylan has the help of producers and researchers for this project but there is an essential intelligence and sense of playfulness evident in the chosen material that reflects the depth and breadth of his love for and knowledge of music.

Dylan's songs have always been cinematic, conjuring visceral images of wild characters and situations. He in turn, looks to films for inspiration if this well-researched website is any indication. We can imagine him on tour, in a hotel room, watching old film noirs and westerns at 3 a.m.

Films involving Dylan include:

Don't Look Back, D. A. Pennebaker's 1965 cinéma vérité documentary on Dylan's tour of Britain.

Eat the Document, the as yet unreleased film edited by Dylan, using Pennebaker's footage.

Renaldo and Clara, was directed by and staring Dylan. In this mix of roman à clef plot and Rolling Thunder Review tour performance footage, Dylan plays Renaldo, his real-life wife Sara plays Clara, while Ronnie Hawkins plays Bob Dylan. The definitive version of this film runs nearly four hours, the briefly released version that was sent to theaters in 1978 was two hours. Both versions have rarely been shown since its 1978 release.

No Direction Home, the Scorsese produced, three and a half hour documentary about the years up to 1966, incorporating the Pennebaker and other archival footage. An uncharacteristically candid interview of Dylan, by his manager Jeff Rosen, from the year 2000, frames the story.

Dylan performs with The Band in The Last Waltz. He acts in Masked and Anonymous as well as Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid for which he also composed the score. He's lent songs to close to 200 film soundtracks.

Todd Haynes has said that his single most influential film experience was seeing the classic Disney musical Mary Poppins when he was three years old. He has made two films that are unique takes on the biographies of singers, Superstar, The Karen Carpenter Story, a reenactment of the singer's life and death cast with Barbie dolls, and Velvet Goldmine, a roman à clef about the milieu of a Bowie-esque rocker.

His film on 19th Century bad boy, Arthur Rimbaud, Assassins, features songs by 20th Century bad boy Iggy Pop.

He chose the great Elmer Bernstein to write the appropriately lush score to his homage to Douglas Sirk, Far From Heaven.

Dylan and Wilde on Masks

Todd Haynes has his glam rocker Brian Slade declare Man is least himself when he talks in his own person! Give him a mask and he’ll tell you the truth! from Oscar Wilde's The Critic as Artist.

All performers need some kind of stage face or persona to enable them to act. Dylan has worn literal and figurative masks throughout his career. His popularity and lyrics opened him up to a lot of scrutiny from his audiences as well as journalists. His Wayfarers were perhaps his first mask.

During the Rolling Thunder tour of the mid 70s he painted his face with white makeup and black eyeliner in a reverse minstrel show/kabuki look that he considered an interpretation of commedia dell'arte. He said the white face made his audiences able to see him better on stage. Interestingly, it was during this tour that the musicians and backstage people, like Joan Baez, Jack Elliot, Allen Ginsberg, and Bruce Springsteen, said Dylan was as relaxed and happiest on stage as they had ever seen him.

In the film directed by Dylan, Renaldo & Clara, shot during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour, he plays Renaldo, his wife Sara plays Clara, while Ronnie Hawkins plays "Bob Dylan". In this way he could explore both real life and fictional relationships without being directly biographical.

In the film Masked and Anonymous, the reference is in the title. He plays Jack Fate, a legendary rock musician.

This title card from Velvet Goldmine is a quote from philosopher Norman O Brown (who may actually be quoting Stéphane Mallarmé). It is almost certain to apply to I'm Not There.

Velvet Goldmine explored the differences between notions of the artificial and the authentic in rock music. It would seem that the links between the artifice of glam and the authentic folk and blues musical roots of I'm Not There to be few and far between but surprising similarities pop up.


I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
~ Bob Dylan


I am not young enough to know everything.
~Oscar Wilde

Todd Haynes put Bowie's school boy declaration of "I want to be a pop idol" into the mouth of Oscar Wilde in Velvet Goldmine. That film depicts the rise of Glam Rock as the continuation of the aesthetic ideal Wilde created - the notion that an artist's greatest work is his own self-invention.

In I'm Not There Ben Whishaw's Arthur [Rimbaud] answers questions using quotes from Dylan's notoriously contrarian press conferences. Dylan is an aesthetic descendent of the vagabond poet who confounded his contemporaries.

Haynes uses Rimbaud and Wilde to illustrate how the ideas of rock and roll's iconoclasts have roots in the poets who were just as shocking to their times.