Knowing which way the wind blows
Director Todd Haynes has established himself
as one of the most visionary directors of his generation. Far
From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, you
name it, but he's managed to outdo himself with his latest film,
I'm Not There. It's the first biography of iconic muso
Bob Dylan to ever be given the green light by the singer/songwriter.
Haynes uses six actors to depict seven different personas of Dylan
in an effort to capture the chameleonic essence of the man. Cate
Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale (he plays two Dylan's),
Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw and Marcus Carl Franklin all star in
the film. It was rapturously received at the Venice International
Film Festival and at the Toronto Festival, where Gaynor Flynn
caught up with the delighted director.
From
the beginning did you always have this vision of several different
people playing Dylan?
I did. That was really where the whole idea to
make a film about Dylan came from thinking of it as a multiple
character event. So that's the itch to make a biography about
Dylan came from.
Why multiple characters?
It was so demonstrated by biography after biography,
it didn't matter who was writing it or what angle they had, they
would continually describe Dylan, particularly in the 60's, somebody
who was incapable of staying in one place. He almost needed, almost
with a sense of hostility to throw back at his audience the expectations
that they would bring to him and say screw you, no way I'm not
doing that anymore. You have a lot of nerve expecting me to be
the same time and time again so that just became so evident to
me. And literally people would describe him at times in the 1960's
they would have seen him say in August of 63 and they'd see him
again in December of 63 and they'd say it was an entirely different
person. He looked different, he dressed different, he spoke differently,
he had different musical references and songs. They would describe
him as a shape shifter.
What's the reason behind the title?
Partly it's a song that I came across in a rediscovery
period of Dylan and his work at the end of my 30's in 1999 into
2000 cause I'd been into Dylan at high school but I hadn't really
continued to follow him or be as quite as obsessed with him in
my 20's and 30's. And I started to read about this song, this
magical, mystical not even there song that no one could hear,
that you'd hear about. And finally I found the bootleg and I finally
heard it. And at first you think, is this what all the hoopla
was about? And then you play it again and again and there's something
so hypnotic about it. It's a beautiful kind of unfinished song
and the power of the song is beyond language and that gives it
an extra power and he's singing to a woman who is definitely reached
a critical point of her life. Maybe she kills herself we don't
know but he's not there for her and there's this weird kind of
guilt. But the title I'm Not There just seemed a perfect way to
describe that displacement from oneself.
Can you talk about the challenges of choosing
who was going to play different aspects of Dylan?
Well I knew conceptually from the very beginning
and it was the idea that we first took to Dylan's people that
two of the most extravagant choices were in place which were a
young African American boy to play Woody and a woman to play Jude
and the Woody idea was really just taking the amazing example
of Dylan under the sway of Woody Guthrie music and persona when
he first started to enter into the Greenwich Village world. He
just constructed this whole persona based on Woody Guthrie and
would create these ridiculously elaborate and imaginative past
lives for himself and stories of growing up in carnivals and learning
the blues from famous blues artists and you just do the math and
its absolutely impossible but the sheer force of the performance
and the desire to be something other than who he was, was so captivating
and so persuasive that nobody ever cared whether it was true and
I just thought that that was so hysterical and fascinating that
I just decided to take it one step further and make him a black
kid and have nobody mention his colour.
But
then with Jude it was really just a strategy to get back into
that really original strangeness of Dylan in 1966 that is, if
any question about this idea of him changing and doing away with
certain aspects of himself throughout his career this one is so
well documented and you see a lot of it in Scorsese's No Way Home.
This Dylan that's no longer even the Dylan of Don't Look Back.
He's become this weird dandified character whose fingers are always
flying around the sky as he talks and when he played the piano
he really would do these strange gestures and his body is like
dangerously skinny and his hair is wildly huge and he is this
restless marionette on stage at this point like jumping around
and riffing off the resentment and the antagonism from his audience
in a way that truly is like the original punk rock moment a good
ten years before it would really happen officially in music. And
I just felt like that is an incredibly well known image of Dylan
but the shock value of it has gone away and I wanted to think
of a device to bring it back and I thought having a woman play
the role would do it. And of course Cate takes that and just takes
it a whole other level and she is just so subtle about it she
almost plays it with a relaxation its really remarkable what she
did with that.
How much was Dylan involved in this? Did you
have to tell him what you were going to do?
No I've never spoken to him. I've never met him.
The permission was granted through his manager. All the interactions
we needed in terms of getting music and rights all happened through
his manager Jeff Rosen and Dylan looked at the one sheet description
that Jeff asked me to write up, saw some of my films and basically
said, do you think this guys all right? Lets give him the rights.
And that was how it happened. It was that simple.
But a lot of people had tried over the year's
and always failed, right?
Yeah and he'd always said no and well obviously
it was this approach which was so different that he saw was not
going to be a reductive kind of one note conventional biography
film. But they didn't really impose any restrictions. It was really
respectful.
Were you scared about doing this on such an
iconic figure?
I was. I was humbled and honoured and at one point
I said Jeff this is a daunting and an awesome responsibility I
feel. I want to do it right. This is the first time Dylan has
given the rights to anybody, I want it to really reflect not just
his life story but who he is and what he did and Jeff's like 'oh
Todd you don't have to worry about that crap, this is your own
unique take on Dylan that's all you have to think about'. And
again I thought this is just unbelievable what Dylan's manager
is telling me.
But Dylan is an artist and respects the creative
process.
I felt like that was the woven tapestry on the
wall behind Jeff's desk and it was being applied to me as well
as his number one client.
Choosing
the songs to tell the story, must have been a daunting task?
It was hard because there was so much to choose
from and it wasn't necessarily my favourites all the time I would
choose. Sometimes it would be the one that would carry the narrative
forward the best or that serves a certain narrative function the
best or a song like Ballard of a Thin Man that just had such an
important historical, almost documentary role in Dylan's life
and the zeitgeist of the 60's. And then there were some places
where my taste or my idiosyncrasies as one more lover of Dylan's
music, I got to pick what I wanted just because I liked it and
it would be like a song as unknown as Going to Acapulco from the
Basement Tapes which we use in a privileged place in the Richard
Gere story, the Billy story. And again its always a total risk
because I knew I wanted a cover version of that song because it
had to be performed in the film by characters in the film but
you never know what its going to sound like.
Did Christian Bale sing his song?
He didn't. For Christian it was Mason Jennings
did the folk performances and John Doe from the Band X who did
the great cover of the gospel song which is another lesser known
Dylan gospel song and not necessarily among my favourites of his
gospel songs that just served a narrative purpose and progression
and how the scenes would follow and carry on from there but again
they did such a beautiful, transcendent version of the song.
So Cate Blanchett didn't sing because it sounded
like a female voice?
It was Malcomas. Steve Malcomas's voice doing her
and they're both lean tall people and I think it suited her frame.
The only lead actor of ours who sings is Marcus who plays Woody.
He didn't play the guitar but he has the voice of an angel, he's
an amazing creative talent that boy.
Was that ever a creative decision early on
to find actors who could sing?
No. It was enough to have them do what their characters
required. I made it an option for all the actors whose characters
sing in the film to try it and I wanted Cate to go into the studio
and try singing but she was like 'forget it I'm not even going
to think about doing it'. She was already working on getting piano
instructions and guitar instructions and dialogue and she prepares
as all really great actors do as early as possible. Most of them
had voice coaches.
Why do you think Dylan's album was number one
last year?
I think it's a building of a momentum from his
last two releases which were critically supportive and his radio
show and his beautiful book and also the fact that the New York
Times should have a section called Arts, Leisure and Dylan because
they cover him so closely as they should do. I think it's a critical
mass of attention. Also, Dylan is still with us. He's still around
making vital records today how cool is that? You kind of forget
whose still here who isn't and I think all of that contributes
to a great receptivity for his work right now.
Gaynor Flynn
