Cate Blanchett: "How does it feel to play Bob Dylan"

By editorial board on December 7, 2022

When Bob Dylan toured Britain in 1965 he brought with him a spoon collector, a giant lightbulb and a man dressed as a monk. But surely even Dylan couldn't have imagined that, 40 years on, a woman could win an Oscar for playing him.

Cate Blanchett is the surprise hot favourite to win an Oscar for best supporting actress at Sunday's Academy Awards for her highly acclaimed portrayal of folk singer Bob Dylan in the quirky biopic I'm Not There.

Ladbroke's are offering odds of 11-10, putting her way ahead of the other nominees, who are up for their performances in more mainstream films.

 

Cate Blanchett as Bob Dylan
Amy Ryan is 2-1 for Gone Baby Gone, Ruby Dee at 10-3 for American Gangster, Tilda Swinton is 10-1 for Michael Clayton - in spite of her winning a best actress BAFTA this month - and Saoirse Ronan is 16-1 for Atonement.

Cate also has a best actress nomination for Elizabeth: The Golden Age, but at 33-1 she is an outsider against the favourite, Julie Christie, whose odds are 4-9 for her role as an Alzheimer's victim in Away From Her.

However, Miss Blanchett wasn't in the star-studded audience at Hollywood's Kodak Theatre when the Oscars were handed out.

"When i won th eprize, the most surprised person in the world was me. And after me come a long list of everyone who told me that I'd be mad to play Bob Dylan.

"They pointed out the obvious - that he's a man and I'm a woman, so there's a huge credibility gap for audiences to overcome.

"But they also said Dylan was too off-beat a subject, too anti-establishment and too old to fill cinemas.

"I said they were wrong then, and I've been proved right. But I knew I was taking a chance."

She is one of six actors in the film who portray the singer at different times in his life - the others are Heath Ledger, Richard Gere, Christian Bale, Marcus Carl Franklin and Ben Whishaw.

But it is an unrecognisable Blanchett who steals the show as Dylan in the mid-1960s when his reputation as an adored poet and folk hero began to unravel during an uncomfortable tour of Britain.

His music came under scrutiny by cynical British audiences and his Messiah-like status was challenged by interviewers.

 

In I'm Not There, Blanchett captures this perfectly, playing him as a frail, vulnerable figure, apparently bewildered by his success, but arrogant, evasive and confused when he is met with a barrage of questions and criticism for the first time in his life.

The, at that time, a paranoid: Bob Dylan thought the British press were against him, the trouble was that Dylan - anxious to shed his reputation as a folk protest singer - now wanted to be a rock star.

The music charts were dominated by British artists - The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Cliff Richard, The Kinks, Sandie Shaw and The Hollies were all riding high.

And as we had begun to dominate the world with our music, so had our fashions. Mary Quant had invented the mini-skirt, Barbara Hulanicki had just opened her Biba boutique and Carnaby Street was home to the planet's coolest clothes shops.

So when Dylan arrived thinking he could turn his back on the songs that made him famous and switch music genres overnight - only to find that we were interested only in the old-style Dylan - he was sadly mistaken.

Read the full article  By MICHAEL HELLICAR on Dailymail  


Allen Ginsberg, the American poet, who had joined Dylan's entourage, tried to come to the rescue. "What are you saying in your songs, Bob? What's the message?" "The message, is just for you. It always was. It's Get Lost."

As a modern star standards, Dylan's behaviour was exemplary. He didn't drink, do drugs or trash hotel rooms.

He spent his free time writing and polishing up his songs, he ignored the attentions of groupies (even when Miss Baez wasn't with him), and was unfailingly polite.

"What's the wildest thing you've ever done?" I asked, having long given up taunting him about the missing message. "Well - now this was really fun, really something man. You'll just crack up, I promise.

"I tore up a piece of paper into strips. Must have been 40 or 50 by the time I'd finished. Then I wrote a different word on every piece. Then I put them all in a hat, mixed them up and pulled them out one by one.

"Then - and this is where it gets really crazy, man - I wrote them all down in the order they came out, put everything to music and recorded it."

"And that was fun, was it, Bob?" I inquired.

"Man, I had a ball." Poor Bob. No wonder we couldn't understand his songs. No wonder he was convinced people in Britain weren't taking him seriously.

 

DISCLAIMER: the images used by Videomuzic are for the purpose of criticism and exercise of the right to report news, in low quality, in compliance with the provisions of the law on copyright, used exclusively for the information content.
DISCLAIMER: Videomuzic usa le immagini per finalità di critica ed esercizio del diritto di cronaca in modalità degradata conforme alle prescrizioni della legge sul diritto d'autore utilizzate ad esclusivo corredo dei contenuti informativi.
Copyright © 2022 Videomuzic | Rome. ITA | Pictures, videos remain the property of the copyright owner, Any copyright owner who wants removed should contact us..
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram