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Topic: Scorsese/Dylan: American Masters (nsc) Return to archive
January 31st, 2005 05:03 PM
FPM C10 LOS ANGELES -- For an artist who for so long cultivated mystery as part of his poetic persona and sidestepped straight answers in the few interviews he gave, like the "song and dance man" he purported to be, it's now time to set the record straight for Bob Dylan.
Following his critically lauded and briskly selling autobiography "Chronicles, Vol. 1," Dylan has opened up his considerable vaults of little-seen road films, performance videos and home movies - as well as a freewheeling 10-hour interview with his manager - for a two-part "American Masters" this summer, directed by no less than Martin Scorsese.
It is at once one of the longest "American Masters" programs in the history of the public broadcasting biography series - with two nights and a likely four
hours - while covering the briefest period of time.
Scorsese's film, with the working title "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan," covers only the jingle-jangle morning of Dylan's career - the five years from leaving his home in Hibbing, Minn., for New York City in 1961 to the motorcycle accident that took him briefly out of action in July 1966.
Even so, the sheer volume of filmed material will require some judicious editing (at least until the expanded DVD version is also released). A double-disc CD package of previously unreleased performances will accompany the
premiere of "No Direction Home," slated for broadcast July 13 and 14.
Scorsese previously filmed Dylan when he performed in the farewell concert for the Band, captured in the 1978 film "The Last Waltz." Like that film, Scorsese may well assemble the huge portrait without ever dealing directly with Dylan.
"I'd like to create the story - to find the story, first of all - and then play it out the way I think it's right," Scorsese told reporters at the TV Critics Association winter press tour in Los Angeles earlier this month. "I'm
looking out for clarity. I'm looking out for the understanding of how mercurially an artist like this develops. And in a way, it's better I don't speak [with Dylan]. It's better I just deal with the material.
"I feel the freedom that way, in making it that way, but I want to bring something that I can to it without being influenced in any way," said Scorsese, who has been nominated for an Academy Award as best director for "The Aviator."
That means "No Direction Home" will be authorized in the sense that it will have the full cooperation of the Dylan camp and access to its archives, but Dylan will not have editorial control.
The decision was made to limit the focus from 1961 to 1966 because of the wealth of material released, against a backdrop of world events changing just as
quickly.
"I think there were eight albums" in that period, said producer Nigel Sinclair, who previously produced Dylan's 2003 theatrical puzzlement, "Masked and Anonymous." "Every single album was an extraordinary piece of work. There
was a time with such fertile change in the world, in the cultural world and the political world, the feeling was that, to get through what we had to cover, we couldn't do more than this period in this film."
A short clip shows some extraordinary performances - a marvelous piece of film from a Newport Folk Festival workshop stage, playing around on Dylan's 1965 tour, and putting on reporters at any number of press conferences.
Scorsese mentions in particular a March 1963 performance on a Westinghouse Broadcasting Co. TV special about folk music, hosted by John Henry Faulk, in which Dylan sings "Blowin' in the Wind," "Ballad of Hollis Brown" and "Paths of Victory."
"It's just a beauty, a killer. You can just see him come into his own there, with the harmonica and hit at the right phrase, and you see his eyes move at the right phrase. Just one of those shots that has it all, I think." Scorsese also mentions a 1964 Canadian TV special by Daryl Duke taped in a logging community. "Dylan comes in and sings, and these other men are moving around. It's quite interesting. The quality might not be as good, but it's quite moving at times."
Scorsese said he would do what he could to keep Dylan's performances "as complete as possible. There are certain pieces you just can't interrupt. But it's a matter of length. ... That is probably going to be our toughest call.
There are some things that are so beautiful."
For Scorsese, who previously directed a series on "The Blues" for PBS, this is clearly a labor of love, one he has been working on for two years.
"I'm trying to make as honest a film as possible," he said. "For me, of course, I'm on his side, so I might come out in terms of a pro-Dylan. The other issue is that 1966 - it's sort of like an arc when you hit '66. Something stops
and begins again."
The filmmaker doesn't rule out doing additional interviews with Dylan, if only to clarify what he has said in previous interviews. But it's been a learning curve for Scorsese.
"You have to create the context in which he evolves, so that means there's a lot of history," he said. And that includes music influences flying in from all kinds of places."
And it means exacting the meaning of "Highway 61" - as it winds up from the South to the frozen north country of Hibbing.
"I didn't really understand the type of place that it is. That part of the country, for me, is quite new," Scorsese said. "I don't really know the middle of the country. But when I started to understand the nature of the climate - the
cold, the mining town, the nature of the end of its prosperity - a lot of this affects the work and the creation of this artist."



February 1st, 2005 11:28 AM
Martha

:-)
February 1st, 2005 02:52 PM
justinkurian "A double-disc CD package of previously unreleased performances will accompany the premiere of "No Direction Home," slated for broadcast July 13 and 14."

That's great news...presumably live cuts from '62-'66.
February 1st, 2005 08:31 PM
Phog Bring it on. I cannot wait for this to air.
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