for me it started with the music this song Ballad of a thin man the live version that's in the scorey doc that was my way in I'm now deep in that church of Bob and I feel like I got this opportunity to kind of be a bridge to this music has been understanding what he went through has it changed you like Bob says at the end I don't look back I feel like I went through a thing and it was like a new Guiding Light to how I want to feel when I
work this theater space this is where I found my rhythm my confidence it all started there the journey I've been on as an actor this is like bringing it all back home no pun intended you know the words and songs of Bob Dylan have translated so much of The
Human Experience there's going to be puns some of these iconic songs were written here in New York City which is where I meet Timothy shalam one of the actors of his generation where dides that term come from probably also New
York in the early 60s when Bob Dylan arrived sang these songs and spoke for his generation what a time what a story to tell Bob Dylan then and Timothy shalamay now well we're here it's good to see you by the way nice to see you and meet you
I feel like I've known you and uh I'm so stoked to do this and I feel like you're talking to a non musician so I'm very grateful for that I don't think so and we'll get to that I think I think you are in lots of different ways I don't
don't think we could be sitting here having this conversation about this film and and your journey thus far if if music hadn't played a role in your life but we'll get to that I mean it seems strange to not start with the location
yes and why we're here cuz you were excited we were coming here I think this was actually your idea yeah not only excited this is Manhattan theater Club this is not this space but the space right next door yeah that's where I kind
of hibernated and got all these ideas out and uh so with without the theater I don't have an acting career and without your early interviews and in addition to the interviews you have now you know I wouldn't uh I wouldn't have jumped into
this either I know you don't do a lot of this yeah it's not a common thing for you to sit down with all cameras and stuff around and so we're going to have a good time I think the work should speak for itself all the pretentious
reasons actors would have yeah but this role and this guy Bob Dylan in this movie and this is why I like to bring it into this theater space because I really I feel like I'm a we get into it but in the journey I've been on as an actor
this is like bringing it all back home no pun intended but I had will myself into doing this a little bit because the greats like Dana de Lewis or whatever they don't you don't have to necessarily explain bit by bit how you went about
something but uh this felt worth it to me and talking to you felt like the easiest way and this is the first time not to be dramatic it's the first time I talk about this movie or this role with anyone not to be cynical but the further
you go along sometimes your answers can get watered down or you get guarded or defensive if you don't necessarily trust who you're talking to so this I put off things because I wanted to make sure the first time I talked about what's been
the most special thing role I've ever worked on was with someone whose interviews I've watched and seems to get the best out of people you know it's cool to hear you say that like the most worthwhile role and you said this really
cool thing to me when we spoke the first time he said you know I think I I hope people and I feel like people will consider it worthy but Worthy is not a term that gets kicked around when you're talking about numbers or box office or
worthy you can do something totally worthy and it can only matter to you the the experience I had I know was worthy yeah and but I've joked about it with friends just because it was the best experience I've had as an actor or the most rewarding experience i' had doesn't really necessarily translate to the effect of it not only on people but maybe in the finished product because I've also had more challenging experiences that come out great so I
don't think that things necessarily go hand inand but I do feel like that's a good word to revolve around is worthy here because when I got approached with this project five years ago or six years ago let's say this 2018 and I had just
done call me by her name Bob Dylan was this name I knew was held in reverence and I knew I was supposed to respect if you were in The In Crowd that's a name you get behind but truthfully I didn't know anything about it you know I
thought doing the hen I did a Henry V F movie called The King I thought it was to my advantage I didn't grew up in England and I thought that would be my advantage with Bob Dylan if we did in the first year or two years because I
could see online the communities that revered him how deep that reverence was and I'm happy it took five six years because I I'm now deep in that church of Bob I feel like that's my mission is the the next three months till the movie
comes out I feel like I'm in the Church of Bob I'm a humble disciple and I feel like I got the this opportunity to kind of be a bridge to this music you know this period this time period in order to get to this to this role which is
playing somebody or interpreting someone's a period of someone's life while they're still alive there's certain disciplines I think that that hopefully you get to go through to figure out how you do that and I wonder if any of the work you've done
previously was of service to that because I I'd imagine it must be one of the biggest challenges for you you're saying other roles i' done yeah there's anything this was the biggest this was the biggest because this was taking on
someone who maybe to my generation isn't impersonated to death but to a previous generation is one of the most I mean I saw an article I didn't click on but was like four Dylan Impressionists on the a complete Unknown trailer so actually
when we're shooting the movie somebody came up to me one of the actors and he said ah you're doing early 60s Bob I do more of a Rolling Thunder review Bob first of all they were really positive on your take which must have been nice
yeah that was really nice that was that was hugely nice and the thing that came out of it was that they they wanted you to play Bob yeah it can quickly fall into character the best feedback I got over the course of the shoe and this is
the first shoot I really turned my phone off the entire time you know I was watching this Ed Bradley interview with Bob D the other day 60 Minutes one kind of this famous 2004 interview and Bob and it says his uh connection to a sense
of Destiny was fragile I like that he use that word fragile because I always felt my connection to Bob was fragile I felt like I came into his music at a time where pop culturally not a lot of people around me were coming to Bob
Dylan so I felt very connected to it I had to learn how famous he was in the 60s and 70s I at first I thought he was like the the treat I found you know and as I began to work on the movie and as everyone has an opinion about Bob
especially an older fan I felt like my connection to him became fragile and I had to like fiercely protect that and fiercely protect what as an actor or the kind of actor I am is really important which is a sense of play I don't like to
go about it mechanically and I felt like that was a learning curve on this too at some point it was like I need to worry less about how I think Bob Dylan would eat a bagel and more capture the spirit of this guy because you you know one can
get in their head at the beginning of the process and go especially with other music biopics yeah okay this is about brushing your teeth the way he would have brushed his teeth or or getting the but anyway all that to say I got this
text from Jeff Rosen who's Bob's manager halfway through the shoot I didn't even know he came to set thank God yeah cuz that whole day I would have been yeah exactly essentially he said like like good on you for capturing the spirit of
he didn't say good on you man I'll read it to you because to the Bob to the Bob purist they'll go good on you yeah exactly to that point too Jeff Jeff was so effusive and positive I Edward Norton and I were jumping up and down went man
Bob's manager loves it and then we went oh no the real Bob's such a contrarian that Jeff's GNA go to him and say this movie looks good and then Bob's gonna say well must be a piece of yeah totally but um for me the connection was through the music you know at some point we this movie does not demystify the cult of Bob doesn't try to go Oh in fact it's a challenging story in that way the Johnny Cash movie that Jim mangled also directed The Johnny
Cash story is a little clear from a tra not a tragic perspective but from a narrative you know uh there were beats clear Beat Beats the flashback beats that then walk hard I don't know if you've seen that movie like brutally you
know yeah I made the mistake of watching five minutes of that movie before I started this I'm oh my God I'll never be able to do this you know and uh but this is a more this is a kind of a confusing story structure because well he was
confusing he's a mystery he's still he's still a mystery 61 to 65 the general impression you get if you read the books or you've seen any the movies or or read any of the articles about that time is that he was almost an apparition and his
come up was two years basically from when he got to New York in January 1961 to his point of success was like a 2-year run so there isn't the The Waiting 10 years to come up that's the other really interesting thing about it
is that um you know this his is a story of of not even reinvention CU he didn't even re there's nowhere for him to come from he literally started fresh when he got to New York he started there he was like there's a great quote in the Martin
sces film where he says um you know I really didn't feel like I had any past that I had to hold on to so I could just kind of start again that was a huge thing for me when I came into this music I felt like self-invention self creation
you know I grew up 10 blocks from here I grew up in like a the most untethered environment and I say that affectionately you know I grew up in a Arts Building you know there's a a rapper from my building named Marlin craft he's got a New Yorker or piece on
him if you want to understand the building I grew up in that that's the thing to read like Alicia Keys grew up in my building it's all like it's an Arts it's like a super untethered I don't know but it's a beautiful place
but equally I culturally came into all the things like kid cut your hip-hop the things that formed me like any normal kid in that period and then when I was 23 and when I got to LA and it's not like I hit a wall but I started to everything's perspective and I started to see what my perspective was relating to that kind of music or what people's perspective that made that music would be on me as as a as a whatever as an actor all of a sudden I
was like oh this was a means to an empowerment but it's but it's something I'm is fragile for me to relate to or whatever and then I came into Bob's Music and and this whole thing of self-invention which isn't the license we necessarily give ourself in this day
and age in 2024 no I don't want to speaking broad Strokes I don't think it's anti that but it's it's hard it's more challenging it's more challenging to get away with or something yeah that aspect of self-invention it was freeing
to me at a time where already my career you know people want to know you as a certain thing and I'm not saying that as a negative I'm not saying wo is me no but typ casting is a thing right okay it's a term I actually want to ask you
about this what does it mean to an actor when that term ever gets kicked around even in closed circles where you've had some success doing a certain thing people like you for that right is it hard to break away from what people love
you for most brutally which I haven't experienced I that's I guess the best example of typ casting would be if you had been on a sitcom that have been hugely popular and you try to make a dramatic film and know people people
laugh at you on screen cuz they're only used to laughing at you right in my experience this is where I also felt like I connected to Bob in humility so I'm not putting myself in a level with but there's got to be some common ground
so I understand why you laying out the groundwork as a disclaimer but and and also I've had a life experience I want to say it's weird but I can relate to some of these these things he went through so Bob wanted to be a rock and
roll star Buddy Holly Little Richard Elvis Presley that was the sort of depending on your point of view the sort of like rice krispy pop rock and roll music that was saturated and you know marketed to kids in the late 50s equally I wanted to be a
big movie actor right I wanted to be oh yeah and but if I audition for The Maze Runner or Divergent things of that variety that were popping when I was coming up it was like the feedback was always over you don't have the right
body or I had an agent that that called me and said you got to like put on weight basically you know not aggressively but you know and then I found my way into these like very personalized movies or something for him it was folk music you know he couldn't
keep a rock and roll band because they would all get hired by other kids that had more money literally in Minnesota so for me was finding a very personal style movie like call me by her name or beautiful boy or ladybird or Little
Women Miss Stevens hot summer nights those were like smaller budget but very I don't know how else to put like personable movies that started in this theater space this is where I found my rhythm my confidence my flow doing
prodical son here John Patrick Shanley that playright they gave me the juice the way LaGuardia gave me the juice when I was starting out in high school juice the juice was the confidence you know the juice was like um just saying You're
great and also at some point that I wouldn't take no for an answer like I felt like there were it was people with connections that were getting these roles prodigal son was supposed to be a kid with connections I don't want to say
that disparagingly you know I say it respectfully and the audition I had not in this space but at Manhattan theater Club in Midtown I was going nuts you know I was like kicking things across the room and uh and it was it the role
was about a a sort of a dylan-esque character a little more like rageful than Dylan who you know refused to not break out of his shell you know and and so to have John the way Harry schiffman my teacher like you just have to have
people when you're young and this is where privilege or being in the right place at the right time does play a factor that go hey that Pat you on the back you know that say do this basically and I realize at some point my strength
is my vulnerability like you know I feel like you know at at 25 or something you know similar to Bob again you hear stories of people that their upbringings are way more dramatic than mine you know and then you start to go
like what is my drive you know what is and then like Bob my drive is my drive my thing is my thing like it just is at the time you don't know what that is right which is why you're going for the rolls that all your peers are going for
exactly so you're showing up in these places going well I'd like to play that and someone goes but you can't yeah exactly yeah you're not you're you're you're sort of not cut out for this I was either not cut out for that kind of
thing or I wasn't what was considered like a more vulnerable I don't know like something it was driving me nuts call me by her name ladybird hostiles and beautiful boy I shot in a 9mon stretch or something and that's before I did any sort of like
press or anything related to it so the so the window was pure the way Bob made Bob LP or free wheeling that's how I look at it you know where his success was kind of going like that now the turning point for Bob for me the way I
interpret his career or a symbol of the turning point is this thing uh a civil rights award called the Tom Pay award he got next to James B Balwin and he was drunk when he was there there's no audio that exists of it but there's a speech
he gave you can read where clearly he's had it with sort of being um deified now I was never deified but I could equally relate that I was like well I've done this thing but when Deni VV knocks on the door about Dune or I got the
opportunity to play Wily Wonka or something that was Bob wanting to be in a rock and roll band up top you that was like well Leonard DiCaprio and those that's who I initially aspired to be when that door wasn't open yeah then I
had to go make folk music basically you know then I had to go really hard it's the opposite of a thing where that's where I get jealous of musicians where you can uh you know show up when you want and the studio is curated and and
I've watched musicians record with one engineer in the room or 30 people in the room you know or take eight years to make an album or take eight years to make an album or eight months you know or never put it out you know and there's
actually a beauty I think and a rigorousness to a film set you are showing up at a certain time and you got to flip the switch and I've seen people like Christian Bill I've work with people like that that do it you know so
you just got to do it but that's a whole other discipline when did you start to learn that the king that was the the this movie this Netflix movie The King The Henry the fth movie that was the switch and that was also the biggest
budget I worked at and I'm a young New York 22-year-old kid at that point playing Henry V who's like one of the great but every movie I've done has reflected some place I'm at in my life in that moment I've had this this weird
gift of that the one exception to that would maybe be Wonka which is actually a challenge to kind of Bring It All back home that movie was like I got to access a musical theater bone that was really alive to me at 17 16 at performing arts
high school but now was well I was like I was postco and all that stuff but everything else so the king or Dune are these roles where uh you know it's they're basically about like a circumstance being too great for your youth you know and I I could relate
deeply to that on both those projects you know um uh that was my point in relation the Bob thing not to bring it not I not want to jump five years but that was like a that was a new challenge of sort of playing a savant and a genius
and how do you do that somebody once said to me you can't make a movie about a painter because it's not interesting to watch paint dry and and and and you know and Bob has that yeah yeah and Bob has that element because he's not I like
to say about Bob he's not one of these forward- facing musicians in other words it doesn't make sense to match the choreography the exact way it was there was no choreography you know the way the Jackie the Jackie Onasis biopic Natalie
Portman as a sequence in that that's step for step exactly what Jackie did that was sort of my aspiration my Layman's aspiration going into Bob and at some point the vocal coach I was working with or the dialect or movement
all the stuff that I saw my my good friend Austin Butler crushing with on Elvis and I thought okay and at some point I was like wait I got to do none of this because this is not my style and B Bob did not have a vocal coach yeah
you know he had two bottles of red wine and four packets of cigarettes so you know there's no way to uh impersonate that you know um but you got to start somewhere from a process point of view as someone who has made music and talks
about music and loves music I've got to get into the whole sort of where it began for you from a from from a a performance point of view because cats out the bag now anyone who knows knows that's you singing and playing the guitar on the trailer so you do that
throughout the film and it sounds like everybody does it sounds like Monica barara does as well yes as well yeah so let's just get into the technicalities of that yeah um you had to teacher but not only are you learning how to play an
instrument it maybe you had played as a kid or not but you've got to kind of do it in a way that is reflective of of the period of the period and of the person and his particular type of playing is what makes him him oh yeah it's a lot of
downstrokes and his strumming pattern in the early 60s was very different you know I've heard some people say his guitar playing sort of peaked in the 80s and 90s that he was getting better in other words the the two two craziest
things to me are how people are hard the purists are hard on his guitar playing or hard on his voice because Blind Willie mctell is a good example that but I can give you a million songs worried blues or where his voice is beautiful
and it's got that quality okay I got to I got to wrap it around back to your question but inside Luen Davis which is a sort of Bob Dylan inspired movie with Oscar Isaac Cohen Brothers it makes this great point that Luen Davis is kind of
like the struggling folk singer the whole movie but he's got this beautiful voice and the last scene it's sort of the anti- biopic he never has his moment of Triumph but the last scene Len Davis gives this beautiful rendition of of the
song farewell and then in the background of a shot you see a Bob Dylan figure Bob in Shadow with the singing the song farewell as well but it's like got this rust this like thing that's cutting through and and Oscar makes the perfect
expression because all these aspiring folk artists you couldn't have guess that this weird thing was going to be the thing that that cut through so anyway to bring it back to process for me it started with the music before
there was even a start date CU this started really for me and Co sort of bored and this song Ballad of a thin man the live version that's in the scors doc that was my way in what did you feel when you heard I just like oh this is
rock and roll and and it was this first like wow is this what the album version sounds like and then I went to the original went oh cool he was really just vibing but at a high level the way he's pissed off he's pissed off in that like
performance it feels slower it feels heavier I don't even know sometimes when the cord changes it just feels to me like he's just spitting B yeah yeah he exactly it's acidic it's like battery acid very acid yeah and and uh Robbie
Robertson I met years later who was kind of giving me sort of what the vibe was on that tour actually when I met Robbie his wife said what do you think about playing Robbie in a biopic and I said well I'm supposed to play Bob in a
biopic and she he went God damn it Bob's been beating me to the punch for 35 years or whatever something like that but um when Co hit and I was just stuck at home like everyone was stuck at home I watched Don't Look Back The Da
pennybaker thing and I started to get into the times they were changing and I saw this folk music not as necessarily chirpy love ballads but then songs like Ballad of Hollis Brown North Country blues or rocks and gravel I was like you
know whoa he's this this he's got some edge here and then there was obviously there was the black lives matter movement in that moment and and and there was like a social social Crest in America at that time I found myself
going back not only to Bob's Music but Pete Seager and all these folks that uh in the 60s had gone through a very similar thing but I felt like I was going back to the 60s I went man a lot of like popular music was that it was
topical songwriting but the music was The Guiding Light it was you know when I found myself just pouring over and pouring into his life and then also admiring that it didn't feel like he was virtue signaling you know that it was simply where his art was that a song
like the death of emit till he wrote Because he wrote you know his thing was his thing his juice was his juice you couldn't really Define it and at some point 6465 where he felt like he had been pedestaled he turned his back and
like and and what to me is a coolest thing ever you know that's why I love bringing it all back home so much that album because I know that it got heavier and progressively heavier he' made the cut he done it he'd gone I'm out that's
my favorite album that was a moment where he like in battle of him man where he's like something's going on you don't know what it is like that I didn't know what that song was about until maybe 6 months ago and I don't want to I don't
want to presuppose but then I I was reading in that book the sort of whatever the ones that explain that it's sort of about about folks like me a little bit a little bit a little bit no a little bit I mean and me too
people that are like sort of on the outside and trying to understand it trying to sorry trying to understand it look I mean curiosity is a funny thing and you have to walk the line really carefully right like what what got me into a chair like this having a conversation with you is this curiosity that just keeps bigger and bigger and bigger the longer I go yeah which is beautiful but you have to be careful with it right because to your point it's
it's not to be overanalyzed and and it's probably not to be analyzed at all he would say that you know Bob's got a great interview with Martha Graham uh ' 80s MTV journalist where she he's describing a a n a German movie that he
wanted a music video to be like and she said well what's the movie about and he's like well it's kind of hard to explain you know it's kind of like trying to tell someone what what's a song about you it's like somebody say what's the song about he goes would you
listen to it you're like yeah I listen to it well that's what the song's about that's been my whole life trying to find out what the song's about yeah yeah and and the and the gift that he's you know the da Penny Baker doc called Don't Look
Back I feel like he lives it to a te you know the no direction home the Scorsese doc he didn't watch until like three years ago I mean Bob has that great quote kind of like ballot of a thin manner where Jeff said why did you leave
the F Community why did you disappear in the 60s he goes well I was sick of people like you he says to his own manager you know which is fantastic my other favorite quote in that is when they're talking about the booing and he
goes I didn't really get it I mean I didn't make me mad though they can kill you with kindness too exactly exactly and and those kind of artists it's hard now I don't know how someone would do it now musically you know those kind of
artists that are sincerely indifferent because he's 83 now he's sort of retreated from the public eye I know him you never met him never met him would love to any contact at all I've seen him live but did he did he contribute did did he
write you a note did he send you anything nothing no that would be the most the least Bob like thing ever approve the script he made modifications in the script he has lines that are his in the script you know that I relished
oh wow so you could definitely tell his lines that well there was one I was saying a Jim mangle the director writer and I said this is good man I was like when didd you come up with this he goes Bob put that in I was like oh I was like
yeah yeah yeah yeah I was like that's that's a b yeah it was yeah yeah he has he has the Bob annotated script I'm going to ask Jim for it he won't give it to me but I want it you know with the annotations he didn't really there's a
song I don't want to say what song but there's a song like Jim was looking to cut verses because it's really long in the movie and um I just love it like he went to Bob very nervously and said like you know and that Bob was me like third
verse sixth verse seventh verse you know ex out like you don't really need those ones he's sort of unsentimental about that's the coolest thing ever man like he had some instinct to not let people in at the beginning it's hard because
because when people say when people Pat you on the back and say hey you did a good job you kind of want to explain why you did a good job you know and he just had some insight to not and that's that's where I'm so prideful to get to
play Bob in the 60s because you think Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger or Jimmy Hendricks and these sort of Larger than Life figures to the earlier metaphor about Mason or Divergent when I look at my older contemporaries my contemporaries now I don't really see
myself in the mirror of them I don't say that to put myself down but I just don't when I watch group interviews for movies I put out whatever and they cut castmates I think they're much much better spoken like they can flip the
Hollywood thing on way more than I I feel like I Stumble over my words and I can't really get it across so I like I get to be Bob in that 60s I'm pretending there's a Multiverse that doesn't exist so the fact that I get to be this guy
you know and that's where I try to be humble too and check my ego at the door that in process I never wanted to see myself less when I looked at the monitor in the movie and I've also ever before in this particular yeah why is that well
because the guy's so known you know when I've seen when I've had to do ADR you know coming and fill lines I've had to divorce myself I'm like this isn't da Penny Baker you know this is its own thing now and and it's not an impression
Olympics it's a thing I found early on you know it it it you it's a process you can't you can't do at home you know you got to be on set figuring it out and like anything I've always been humble about this you got to play to the least
educated person in the room not exclusively but but that's who you're making it for because again someone said to me in Bob's Camp I'm not going to say who but they said don't worry about the Bob Dylan fans not liking this Bob Dylan
fans don't like what Bob Dylan does you know what I mean which is a great point they're like they haven't liked what he's done since 1966 you know what I mean so that was sort of a weight off my shoulders yeah it was the most unique
challenge I've taken on but that where my my confidence came through is eventually doing all the Music Live you know maybe it was the least responsible thing on the actor's part because music exists and the performances exist so
maybe I should have been most concerned about spreading no no no you're not wrong Stakes is high for sure and and like when well first of all like you said Bob's Bob's here Bobba is alive Bob Bob this is interpretive this is not
definitive this is not fact this is not how it happened this is a fable you know exactly it's not it's it's kind of softball to say would the easiest thing would have been to sing along to the original songs or whatever but it's it's
a lot to take on MH because you're not just having to do it Faithfully in fact you have to do it uniquely right you have to do it in a way that isn't like like the songs that exist cuz otherwise just sing a lot of those exactly so
that's a whole other thing it's a whole other thing but when you say uniquely that's what Harry schiffman one of my earliest mentors when I was taking on this role he said don't worry about being Bob Dylan Like because people can
go see Bob Dy they can watch the early footage or go see him now because he's still tours this is about not only myself interpreting Bob but Edward noron interpreting Pete Seer and Monica interpreting Joan bz and um Boyd hook
interpreting Johnny Cash you know in this moment in this 60s where American culture was a kaleidoscope and grenwich Village was a kaleidoscope you know the way culture still is now too but but it's just without being like a history
teacher that was the beginning you know personalized music stuff with intention stuff with poetry it all started there in the movie we did these pre-record but I'm not playing the guitar on the pre-record with Nick Baxter is a super
talented musical supervisor and the music and I would butt heads with Nick a lot the guitar sounded really friendly it's hard to get that sound I mean he was playing on a a card a guitar that was basically falling apart you know and
I also found like my voice had like a bar tone it was it all sounded clean and I was doing vocal warm-ups with Eric vitro who was this vocal coach help me on Wonka and helped me sing Grand on Wonka and then here I would listen it
back and I'm like man this sounds too clean you know and then when we would do it on set it was song To Woody which is one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs ever it was the first one we shot in the movie you couldn't do it to a playback
cuz it's such an intimate scene it's in a hospital room with Woody with Woody Guth and Pete SE and I did it live and it and it and it went it clicked great you know and I'm making mistakes on the guitar a little bit here in there you can kind of fill
those in after I went home and I wept that night not to be dramatic but it's a song I've been living with for years and and something I could relate to deeply and I also felt I I come back to this word a lot I felt like it was the most
dignified work I'd ever done and dignity might be a weird word there but it felt like so dignified and humble we're just bringing life to a thing that happened 67 years ago I went oh of course Leo and Daniel de Lewis of course they do these
biopics it kind of all clicked because there's dignity to it you're not pulling at a thin air this is this happened you know we did when I did song To Woody which is a song I like I said I could relate to deeply and it went great then
I was like all right I'm going to fight this war until the rest of the movie and Nick Baxter and I were great friends and he came to my house the other night and we're great friends but over the course of the movie it was a
constant you know the metaphor was like I was throwing this delicately made China on the ground each time we didn't use a pre-record something we had crafted in La for six months but there's not a single pre-record in the movie and
then Jim would say to console Nick or myself you know treat that as like a work session you know you were practicing to do it left because all of a sudden Edward Norton say too something clicked in my voice there was a certain
rawness those microphones those old school microphones we were using were playing in concert halls I could get I could get the strum better and I could get how he was singing he also say something really really beautiful about
the natural comforting effec of Reverb and the fact that it allows you like and theater has it anywhere where you perform the idea of what you do what you do being wrapped up and nurtured by the the natural Reverb of the room
absolutely allows you the space to be more open and to be Freer in there absolutely you're in a studio meticulously creating pre-recorded tracks yeah that's that feels to me confined and a it's confined and contrived and you can also hear that my
arm is not going the way you don't hear Bob's arm going but he's doing something to his voice but you're in that club and you the cameras are rolling but who cares about them right now there a spotlight on you and you're singing this
song exactly and I didn't know of another music biopic where somebody was doing it live you know and I I'm like a I you know Jeremy Kleiner who was a great producer he once said to me you act lyrically and I love that I love that yeah I don't want to understand
myself too much as an actor but it made sense to me you know you know holding my elbow a different way isn't as interesting to me as capturing like spirit and soul and something and here it was in the music that I could capture
the spirit and the Soul you know it wasn't I couldn't I I I did find my way in otherwise you'll see like you got to when you're playing Bob Dylan otherwise it's going to be weird to claim you're Bob Dylan and not doing things that were
unique to his behavior but that's that's it I mean you know if you're doing a bck about somebody it's because they've had enough of an impact on us all as human beings and on society through the music that they make that we know those songs
inside out so we're right there like shouts to to to Remy mallik right when he did Queen live AG which is amazing amazing when I saw that performance of him of of him doing live a that that performance of Queen at live a being a
boomer is ingrained in me so hit those beats but how do you hit those beats when Bob is like I said you can't sing along Faithfully to a Bob Dylan song you just got to sing perfectly said it's sort of Blasphemous on its nose that's why Joel Cohen before we had Mangold involved who directed inside Len Davis I said hey don't why don't you direct the Bob Dylan movie and he said it's impossible and I said why is it impossible he goes because it's not
about a singular moment how do in a 2-hour movie Encompass the the miracle that is the breadth of what he wrote and how much he got out and the fact that it's like watching paint dry because how do you how do you make how do you make lyric
writing interesting basically so tell me what is the movie about so the movie is about 1961 and 1965 a young Bob Dylan arriving in New York and how his career took off it's sort of about the folk Community it's an ensemble movie right
it's an ensemble yeah it really is I mean a free whe in time which is Suz Rolo's book and there was another book which the name of which escapes me that was less about Bob and more about Greenwich Village at that time because
Greenwich Village was this artistic Community where people were bubbling and you had people like Pete Seager da van rck or Paul Clayton that were like folk stars but but through McCarthyism folk music got blacklisted in the late 50s so
nobody had cracked through and rock and roll was seen as this kind of thin music that was you know you know on the Pick It line with us right yeah exactly it was like aimed at teenagers so the Newport Folk Festival was sort of the
Coachella let's say for like better metaphor of the picket line of pure music of Folk Music and so there was sort of an opening for someone if not literally a young person to sort of take over the folk Community the the structure of the movies that Woody
Guthrie was dying that Pete Seager was sort of the lieutenant and was like a real Bonafide folk artist and you know politically super on the left and of the people and he was slated to take over the folk community and at nowhere a
prophet shows up that is Bob Dylan who inexplicably takes over everything at once and who's who who in Bob's words the songs are coming from God and the Ed Bradley interview says I can't do it anymore so in that period anyway and
then at the moment of deification at the moment where he was on top decided to turn his back on the folk community in one interpretive way in another way he just wanted to make the music he wanted to make and became a rock and roll star
let's say the first rock and roll star at the Newport Folk Festival got booed off stage or like a mixed reaction because because he took let's say what was considered pop music whatever rock and roll and he played it at what was
supposed to be a space of Purity at a time when he was considered to be the one person through all of this blacklisting this fear-mongering this mcarthism this there's no place for politics and music if you if you step on
that stage and you speak about government and we speak about our actions we will make it very tough for you to reach your audience was legitimately happening he was bigger than that so they saw him as someone who was going to be able to destroy
that methodology right cut through and Reach people and then he went over here and then he went over here and he played rock and roll yeah and and and and sort of yeah got rid of his savior label and people thought he was making like not
only a bad career decision but a bad artistic decision the irony is now like a rolling stone or sub trinian Homesick Blues they're kind of considered some of his his best music but so that's generally what the movie is about you
know it's that it's that period and it's a good period too because mid-60s early you know mid 70s Rolling Thunder review ' 80s Bob a lot of it's Chronicle this this is sort of the period cuz he wasn't famous yet that's the least sort of
scene but we also don't demystify it the movie is called the complete unknown so this isn't like this isn't inventing tragedy to explain backstory in fact that was sort of sort of some of the challenge of the movie you're playing
someone whose career rise was rapid you know where which I can relate to too because I I I I struggled and I worked very hard but ultimately my career took off when I was 21 you know so yeah I want to talk about that actually because
the idea of like quote unquote Fame right when something happens to you very fast and it's a product of of how of of the good work that you do needless to say if there's the chemistry of like your most authentic self meeting the
best opportunity meeting the most amount of people that's good Fame with all my work but especially the early work it so wasn't working until it totally worked and that's why I'm so proud if youed to call me by her name had a small budget
it was like a $3 million movie and in the context of how people's careers launch it's never that I mean rarely rarely that's when I'm happy to bring it all back home with this one or even do this interview here because this is the
sweet spot as an actor is you know these sort of bigger budget they're not like an indie but it's a bigger budget thing it's sort of like where I feel like Leo did a lot of his great work it's not the huge movies that are really hard to
sneak great performances in I always talk about Heath Ledger as Joker in The Dark Knight that's an example of a huge movie where someone snuck in a yeah a fantastic performance his performance in that by RS could have
been the box office death of that film it was that strange strange and affecting and intense but because he was who he was he made it even bigger yeah without compromising anything no compromise no compromise um and it feels to me like your experience is here and
that 9month period we got to make those films and everything you went through because let's not forget you'd had a taste of what it was to be on a big seat you did Interstellar I mean yeah Interstellar for me Interstellar and I
was I was signing William Morris the agency that was Bob having a deal at Columbia and his album flopping it's it's not like nothing flopped but remains my favorite movie I've ever been in you know that's that's at the top of
my list that's the one I go back to and watch but I thought it was going to do something for my career the way it didn't you I just thought my part was bigger basically there's a scene where MC the best acting some of the best
acting of the decade where he's weeping in the in the uh the ship I'm the other half of that scene so I thought it would cut sort of back and forth you know what I mean even though stay on him it's on him so you know so I'm sort of yeah yeah so
I'm sort of I was watching watching it just like where am I you know and then and then it cuts to to to Casey was playing me older I was like now I'm out the movie you know but um yeah but there's a great moment when you say
goodbye to him yeah that's great there's there's also a shot in one of the trailers I'm saying good bu to him that wasn't in the movie so also when I watch the movie they used this like push in shot so I was getting ready for this you
know well this is this is this this leaves an interesting placeing in your role in this in um in a complete unknown because you're also a producer on this film so what happens with successes you get to a point where you're able to have
a little bit more of an invested interest in the end result when you're an actor and you're starting out it's pure trust in the director abely trust in the studio now you get to produce this film it it puts you in a in a more
invested role which ultimately people want you to be MH but there's going to be moments when your instinct goes above and beyond protocol even where an actor and a director an actor and a studio and actor and a producer you talked about
some of the areas where you already kind of had to put your foot down and say no I want to do it like this so what's that line like to walk as you as you as you haveit as you take on more responsibility for the projects you say yes to what's it
like building a new form of trust with the people who that's a great question I don't want to I don't you can't medal a director has to have their singular Vision I've been spoiled where I've worked almost exclusively with URS in
some way produc orally I see like people that are really all over it that's where I earn that justification is the music I snuck into the movie so I feel like that's where I earn my credit there being an actor is about being humanist
at its core that's my theory you have a couple actors that are alienists you're watching them for their worldview and how they and you don't really relate to it but you go oh that's kind of fascinating most actors like you are
relating through I would put myself more in that humanist category but I found in my early career when call me by her name and all this stuff was taken off and I was like treated like a pop star or something you can drink the Kool-Aid for
like a better expression and when I was doing my play here my dream was to on Showtime or HBO book a miniseries or something that I have a great role in I had home humbled myself to that point I really was like act this this is a
drying up business if I could just get a great but I found for my work I'm like wait I'm jealous of the musicians or the pop stars your your music can be about your eroding Humanity or if you're a postmodernist or something it could be
about anything but I'm like pounding my nail in the wall so I actually have to retain that sense of humanity that's that's a long- winded way of saying so I have a producer credit on a movie that's really not to you know any director I
work with I was just pitching Alonso Quon a project but if I produce something that he's directing I'm not going to be you know cuz uh that would be foolish you know um unless I direct something one day but I wouldn't direct
myself in something would you do that I wouldn't I I would I would definitely direct something and I also think I've had a the I've had a few like I have the weird worldview experience where I've worked with like 10 greats and I've seen
how they've all or like something something like that something crazy and I've seen how they all work so most it's it's an insular job most directors really see how other directors work Greta has because she's an actress in her own right but but uh but I always think like when actors get to work with the great it's like at some point you're going to have to Define your vision right there's great examples of musicians who played guitar for great
bands session play like Jimmy pagee right Jimmy Paige was like a very successful session guitar player very successful could have made a great living out of that but then he had to go find out what Li Zeppelin sounded like
right right right and so at some point it's going to be like yeah of course like I know what makes James James and and you can take all those things but what's your identity is directed going to be that I have no clue I know what I
don't want it to be I'm in this I'm in this worldview where the film business this this is my inner Tom Cruz no I'm joking but like but where the film business sort of isn't what it was so I feel there's a responsibility to make
things that works that's not that doesn't dare an audience to be bored basically which is what a lot of prestige movies do right and so that's why I love this Bob Dylan movie because there's two versions of Bob Dylan movie I think one is a behavioral master class
that honors someone who didn't really make a lot of eye contact M and then what's the movie about then it's like watching paint dry or something and and to the people that know he's a genius they love it and to people that don't
know anything about him they'd rather you know spend their time and money elsewhere and then there's the other version that's disingenuous to who he actually was and his like a greatest hits thing and he's yeah smooth talking and making eye contact and this
is something else where it's still engaging which is why mangle was the best director but it doesn't dishonor the fact that this was a strange cat so it's an ensemble cast and there's a lot of characters that played really pivotal
roles in in Bob's story and and I think what what became very clear in the movies that that follow in the documentaries and the stories and interviews was that he was he was trying to get away from it being about him and
he was he was respectful of the fact that it was about Pete and about Joan and about Sue ultimately now played as sy so what was it like kind of where looking it in character with that cost mentality and with the chemistry of those people around and having to sort of recaptured that experience that he was going through with those really pivotal people in his life okay I'll give you two answers one is about preparation for Bob exclusively one is
about in relation to those characters so what I did for Bob started during Co that was learning all the songs learning maybe the Bob songs I know how to play 20% of which are in the movie so that was the first education then I was
working with Tim monik who's the why you had to learn how many songs for the movie I had to learn 13 let's say or something but in total I could probably play 30 so Tim monik was a dialect coach that's who I work with for years on this work with a
harmonica coach for five years and then worked with a woman named Polly Bennett who's a a movement coach that actually we got more out of just working on the script together than anything physicality related and then for my own Spirit Guap gaing for like a better
metaphor I retrace Bob step through Chicago his steps through Chicago and Madison Wisconsin and I started in Hibbing in duth and I spent about a week where he was from in Minnesota so let's get into that part of it because I could
go there and I could go and visit a house that he lived in or right I did visit the house he lived in because it's a mega fan named Bill I'm forget his last name but Bill owns the house and there's a piece of paper where he wrote
this not online he wrote the lyrics to song To Woody which has the melody structure of 1913 Massacre he wrote it on the record sleeve of 1913 Massacre with a drawing that says Bob in Chicago a drawing of him from the back with a
long winding road to New York City and it says Bound for Glory and he and he drew it's yeah what which is the name of the Woody goth three book and then and then and then a drawing of New York City with Woody and NYC at the top but I but I but I went there just to get a sense of and also because it was sort of mysterious to me and still is mysterious Hibbing and Deluth they're like on the edge of the world it felt like I went at the peak of wind
and I was I landed in Minneapolis I rented a truck I was racing down the highway and listening to sun the sun record Sun record is that what it was where that Johnny Cash and Elvis and all them were on when they were young and
then I skitted on on on ice and because I didn't know the roads well enough just get a sense of where he's from obviously Minnesota in 2024 not the 60s but those are good friendly people you know that don't have the city pretentions that you
know sometimes you have live in New York or La did you get a sense of what he was trying to get away from yeah I absolutely did I absolutely did I could sort of relate to it that my dad my dad's sort of from the Minnesota of
France you know he's from he's not from Paris he's from from uh adesh is the region you know so when I spent my summers in that region I could relate to that where I was in a Tiny Town in France and it's not that I resented it
but I went man there's got to be something out there CU I feel it again what's your reason to being sometimes your reason of being is just your reason of being they just got something to say it matters sometimes less what you have
to say more your need to say it yeah you know so just trying to get a sense of how he was like I said drove through Madison in Chicago which is supposed to be what his route was to New York on his first journey there just you just me
just me it had to be just me and then I you know because you got to that's the challenge of as opposed to like when I was shooting beautiful boy you got to create those moments of insularity as an actor it's it and it can become more
challenging and you want to offshoot responsibilities you know but the whole point why you know I didn't get into this to that's the whole thing with all the coaches and stuff I had to do it because because I knew my contemporaries
that had done biopics had done it and that's some point I was like this isn't this isn't helping me and it's also not fun it's not it's not as rewarding you see exactly you get to check in Chicago and you have one job which is to try to
better understand the environment even when I was Landing in Minneapolis and I had tears in my eyes because I thought this is so strange I thought here's a guy you know if you told me Bob came has come to me to me what C he meant to me
so visiting where cudy lived on New Lots Avenue in New York when I dropped out of college for Interstellar and I couldn't get a job and I'm at New Lots Avenue on the last stop of the train just to see where he was made sense if you told me I
was going to have that journey through my early 20s mid 20s with another artist that I would then be tasked with actually embodying and I didn't know who that artist was yet I would have I would have been stunned you know so a lot of
it was just you know and listening to this music from the but he would have been listening to Johnny Cash or Elvis or Little Richard or Buddy Holly and a lot of listening to his music and going and just feeling like a humble historian
or something just kind of walking that path did you feel different when you started than when you arrived back in New York absolutely made some insecurity had been solved some some curiosity and also knowing people knowing the the
lawyer who helped them change his name you know and getting anecdotes I'm not going to share here but stuff that was tremendously insightful stuff that hasn't made its way online that shouldn't make its way online but stuff
that was there were little clues that drawing I just described to you seeing his basement seeing how he grew up seeing how confined his room was seeing how it wasn't torturous it was a house on a street not a bad not a bad street
amazing that this film is even being made really because if you think about how the lengths he went in order to stop people from understanding what you went and ultimately experienced the length to which he just like the answers he would
give to interview questions that were just so obscure and obtuse in order to just say look you know he was he was the best in the world of batting them away cuz he's understood somewhere in a pure artistic sense a lot of us don't it's
about what he made it's not about anything else that is the least 2024 mentality of all time and in some respects are you and I guess maybe you can speak for James mangle the director are you surprised that he is involved in
this film at all no because I don't think word is Gospel to him in this in other words I think his experience the world was so strange to be deified like that I think this is another my guess is it's another raindrop in the bucket of a
strange life of people trying to interpret you or your words or your songs so this so the idea of deification right the idea of having so much talent or having such a gift or being open to some energy some Muse some magic which is what I think
music and art ultimately stems from as magic you know I've spent a long time talking to artists who just tap in and they don't know why how does a person just like anybody else process how the world is seeing them through their talent absolutely and
when people want a piece of that is the most conventional cliche but also when it's really good and and people want a slice of it and how do you how do you protect whatever it is that makes it good that's sort of the structure of the
movie too is he leaves Minnesota to get away from I don't want to say what's strangling him but feels like it's holding him back goes to New York finds a family the F community that then does the exact same thing and tries to
strangle him and then he has to you know break Break Free of that and then does that the rest of his life you know in dedication to his art no matter what consequence it was to his personal life not that I know of any but we don't
really know you know we don't know maybe there like 20 films that could be made about his life really this is going to be such an interesting one has better understanding what he went through at least through the character that you're
playing the interpretation of it has it changed you and how you're able to sort of live your life ultimately and does that happen often when you come out of rols in particular way that's a real life role yes here I I felt like I went
through a thing like Bob says at the end of Don't Look Back I I feel like I went through a thing and on the other side of it is The Bravery to Don't Look Back you know we look our culture now we look not only do we look back we contextualize
the back the immediately immediately what happens if you see somebody take a picture and spend 10 minutes editing and putting it back that's them contextualizing what happened you know unless you're the kind of the rare kind
of person that post takes a picture and posts right which no one but but uh so here I felt like I had The Bravery on on the other side of it to I often ask myself like what would Bob do you know um uh that sounds so basic but it's just
a truth would we know yeah no but I mean it in the sense that I'm I'm ignoring what he would do by even being here CU he would he would be on another planet but just in my own in my own day-to-day just Le leading with your artistic foot
first not in a pretentious sense but just doing the stuff that really challenges you who was I was an actor's interview I was reading the other day was it a waen phoenix interview something where you always you just got
yeah it was it was a Vini interview but you just got to always push yourself out of your comfort zone and not be complacent and man I can't say he he's he his songs are like the songs of life and it's they're you can't describe them
and so the if I got anything out of it it was just the feeling of it you know at a moment I needed it you know and it was like a new Guiding Light to how I want to feel when I work I'd love to do more things like this that's for sure e