Bob Dylan Insisted on Including a ‘Totally Inaccurate’ Scene in ‘A Complete Unknown’

This December, the film A Complete Unknown will tell the story of Bob Dylan’s arrival in New York City up until his infamous decision to go electric. Dylan has had some involvement in the film’s production. While none of the actors have met him, he has met with director James Mangold to share his thoughts on the biopic. Dylan told Mangold that he wanted one scene to be entirely fictional.

Bob Dylan wanted one scene in ‘A Complete Unknown’ to be purely fictional

While A Complete Unknown follows Dylan’s life relatively truthfully, there are several alterations to history. Monica Barbaro, who plays Joan Baez, admitted she bristled against this at first. She wanted to show Baez’s story as accurately as possible. 

She didn’t like that Dylan and Baez sang “Girl From the North Country” together when there is no evidence of this happening in real life. She also pushed back against scenes in which Baez and Dylan played guitars together, as he was usually the one who handled the instrument. The director believed these tweaks made a better film.

“[Mangold] was like, ‘I just love that image so much,’” Barbaro told Rolling Stone.

He added that this was a movie, not a completely accurate depiction of Dylan’s life.

“You can’t make it like a Wikipedia entry,” he said.

Dylan himself reportedly pushed for even greater diversions from the truth. According to Edward Norton, who plays Pete Seeger in the film, Dylan told Mangold to include at least one “totally inaccurate” moment in the film. While Mangold had strayed from reality in some places, he worried that a complete departure might irritate audiences.

“What do you care what other people think?” Dylan asked in response.

Many believe this is far from the first fabrication about the musician’s life

Dylan’s request likely doesn’t come as a surprise to many of his fans, who have come to expect the musician’s fabrications. Dylan’s stories about his life have contradicted themselves over the years. Some Dylan experts even believe that he invented entire sections of his biography.

“Jesus Christ, as far as I can tell almost everything in the Oh Mercy section of Chronicles is a work of fiction,” Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin said, per Rolling Stone. “I enjoy Chronicles as a work of literature, but it has a much basis in reality as [Dylan’s 2003 film] Masked And Anonymous, and why shouldn’t it? He’s not the first guy to write a biography that’s a pack of lies.”

Timothée Chalamet worked hard to play Bob Dylan in ‘A Complete Unknown’

In A Complete Unknown, Timothée Chalamet will take on the role of the elusive songwriter. Due to COVID-19 delays and Hollywood strikes, he was able to spend five years working on the role. He worked with a guitar teacher, harmonica teacher, dialect coach, vocal coach, and movement coach. According to them, the actor pushed himself to embody Dylan.

“He never wanted to take the easy way out,” his guitar teacher, Larry Saltzman, said. “If I presented something to him like, ‘OK, this is the real way, but there’s a little bit of a shortcut,’ his answer to that was always ‘Don’t show me the shortcut.’”

A Complete Unknown will hit theaters on Dec. 25.