Bob Dylan Plays Bob Dylan, Whoever That Is

Lorey Sebastian, courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics Bob Dylan as Jack Fate in "Masked and Anonymous": the latest in a long line of identities.

JACK FATE isn't exactly Bob Dylan, although he's the central character in Mr. Dylan's new movie, "Masked and Anonymous." Then again, he's not exactly not Mr. Dylan, either.

He has Mr. Dylan's poker face, his song catalog, his wardrobe of cowboy suits, his reputation for making songs unrecognizable and his illustrious past. "Nobody could be like you, and a great many have tried," a sleazy promoter named Uncle Sweetheart tells him. Jack Fate has Mr. Dylan's band, which appears on screen as a cover band named, well, Simple Twist of Fate. And he has Mr. Dylan's gift for dry, knowing one-liners: when Uncle Sweetheart tells him, "You're all skin and bones," he calmly replies, "Aren't we all?"

Then again, everybody's a philosopher in "Masked and Anonymous," which opened on Thursday. Thug, promoter, journalist, girlfriend, revolutionary, television executive, dictator, prison guard — they all speak in parables and aphorisms and wisecracks that might just be wisdom, borrowing the diction of the King James Bible and of the blues. Their conversations ponder freedom, love, politics, time, conscience and death. And the tone — prophecy switching to zinger and back — is familiar to anyone who's ever heard a Dylan song. The screenplay is credited to Sergei Petrov and Rene Fontaine, pseudonyms for Mr. Dylan and the movie's director, Larry Charles.

Identity has long been a shell game for Mr. Dylan. "You may call me Terry, you may call me Timmy, you may call me Bobby, you may call me Zimmy," he sang in "Gotta Serve Somebody." But always, he has confounded and intrigued the many listeners who have tried to figure him out.

His voice and his songwriting are immediately identifiable, yet he's utterly mercurial, racking up as many inconsistencies as there are gigs on his perpetual touring schedule. Ever since he realized, very early on, that being the voice of a generation was a thankless, impossible role, he has strewn his songs and public appearances with hints and contradictions. He dodges even the slightest chance of being pinned down: He has been a believer and a skeptic, a traditionalist and a rebel, a heartbreaker and a man left lonely, an activist and a cynic.

"Masked and Anonymous" — title duly noted — steps back enough to let viewers see how much Mr. Dylan enjoys his elusiveness. He has registered what people have said about him through the years, and he doesn't necessarily mind a little hyperbolic praise, including being compared to Jesus walking on water. Characters in the movie discuss his songs in the manner of rock critics or discussion-board fans.

He's also well aware of how far his songs have traveled. The first one heard as the movie begins is "My Back Pages," sung in Japanese by the Magokoro Brothers. Searing performances of songs like "Drifter's Escape" (which is mysteriously absent from the soundtrack album) and "Cold Irons Bound" by Mr. Dylan and his band share the soundtrack with various unlikely versions of Dylan songs, including a turntable-scratching Italian remake of "Like a Rolling Stone." They provide yet another batch of alternative Dylans to toy with.

Mr. Dylan has had a sporadic film presence since the 1960's, appearing in jumpy documentaries like "Don't Look Back" and "Eat the Document" and making an incongruous appearance as a retired rocker and mentor in the 1987 "Hearts of Fire." In Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," he wrote the soundtrack music (including "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") and played a knife-wielding character with an apt Dylan name: Alias. But Mr. Dylan took charge of a film only with the rambling 1978 "Renaldo and Clara," which he wrote (with Sam Shepard) and directed during the ever-mutating mid-1970's Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

He called himself Renaldo while Ronnie Hawkins (who brought together the Band) was billed as "Bob Dylan." Other people are also mistaken in the movie for Mr. Dylan, including the musician Bob Neuwirth, who explains, "I'm not Bob Dylan, I'm the Masked Tortilla."

In a way, "Masked and Anonymous" is a latter-day sequel to "Renaldo and Clara," with a star who's had an additional quarter-century of hard-traveling mileage. Like "Renaldo and Clara," the new movie has rockers, preachers, prisoners and backstage machinations, and it teases at questions about the songwriter as public figure, hired hand and lover. But there's a major difference: "Masked and Anonymous" plays like a feature film, complete with an intelligible plot, vivid professional camerawork and well-known actors, rather than like a stoned, hand-held home movie.

It also plays like a Dylan song: a shaggy-dog story about power, love, show business, prodigal sons, faith and destiny. And it flips easily between the attitudes of Mr. Dylan's two most recent albums: the death-haunted estrangement of "Time Out of Mind" and the gallows-humor cackles and shrugs of " `Love and Theft.' " Jack Fate seems familiar because he has inhabited Dylan songs for many years.

"Masked and Anonymous" takes place "somewhere in America," where Spanish and English words blare from radios. (It was shot on digital video in some vividly seedy locations in Los Angeles.) A bloody revolution and counter-revolution are raging; the dictatorial president, whose portrait seems to be on every flat surface, is dying. Jack Fate, the faded rock legend, is released from prison to play at a dubious humanitarian benefit organized by Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman). A trusted roadie (Luke Wilson) returns with an old bluesman's guitar, and a bitter, 1960's-obsessed journalist (Jeff Bridges) shows up to write a story. Whose son Jack Fate is, and why he was jailed, are among the twists.

The narrative sounds bleak in summary; there's no happy ending, and there are some grim, sudden bursts of violence. "Every period in history has been more or less tragic," the journalist observes. Mr. Dylan's prognosis for America is a ruthless clampdown on everything from behavior to collective memory. But just as often, the movie is droll, filled with pithy, hardboiled comebacks. "You ever coming back?" a friend asks as Fate ambles away. "I did come back," he says.

Mr. Dylan and Mr. Charles (best known as a writer and producer of "Seinfeld" and as a director for "Curb Your Enthusiasm") have packed "Masked and Anonymous" with enough enigmatic visual cues and in-jokes to make Dylan fans long for the freeze-frames of a DVD. The fictional TV network's schedule board lists Dylan-titled shows like "Jokerman," "Empire Burlesque" and "Hurricane." An office building directory includes a character out of William Burroughs, Dr. Benway. More mysteriously, the journalist's girlfriend (Penélope Cruz) prays while wearing a Metallica T-shirt, and her hand is tattooed "333." And are those stigmata on one character's hand?

The movie ends with Fate, and America, worse off than they were when it started. But his craggy face looks somehow satisfied, as if he never expected anything else. "Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things, sometimes we have to know what things don't mean as well," he says in voice-over. Fans will prise meanings from "Masked and Anonymous"; its author has put them there. And as they do, he makes one more drifter's escape.

I've been wondering if some of the garbage that plays on the radio stations these days is people trying to copy his singing style or the real thing. Either way, pop music/rock has gone from just "dead" to zombie status. Dylan was the beginning of the end, but naturally he won't retire. Too many worshippers and hot 50 year old groupies out there.

'Lay, Lady Lay' was a great song with great vocals. His teenage daughter doesn't appreciate his music but benefits from his fame. It was a good thing that he was influenced by the Beatles to do drugs and it really helped his music.

that he was influenced by the Beatles to do drugs and it really helped his music.

sssssssssssssssspppppppt! Right on, Man!

A typical elite no-talent SOB:

Bob Dylan Forum Frigate
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jollyroger.com/zz/yjrrockd/BobDylanhall/ shakespeare1.html - 32k -
Bob Dylan may seek incarceration of Plaintiff in infringement suit
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This from the guy who claims lifting lyrics from others was simply his genius at work.

Are you actually crediting the fantastic tale of James Damiano that Bob Dylan infringed on his copyright?

Those must be the most ridiculous charges ever made. All one has to do is read the rambling nonsense Damiano writes to realize he's grasping at straws.

Artists get their inspiration from many sources. But as far as is possible --- given that we are all plagiarists to one degree or another, all of us standing on the shoulders of giants -- Bob Dylan is sui generis.

This is going to be a very enjoyable movie for hardcore Dylan fans, but it will be a complete flop commercially and critically.

This is as it should be. Sell your latest record to a million people and you've made a big success. Get a million people to watch your movie and you will lose your shirt. It's simple economics -- to make a feature-length movie with professional production values you need an 8-digit bank account, for which you could produce dozens of albums. Dylan has never attempted to chase a bigger audience, and his not doing so here stamps this as a "vanity production". I'm not complaining, because I'm one of the million hard-core fans who will buy any new Dylan record and will sit still for the movie; but I'll bet that whoever financed it, unless it's Dylan himself, will be very unhappy.

Dylan was a Gramscian socialist. No big deal in tearing down. No "genius" required there. Anyone can do that. Especially when you appeal to kids. Dylan is nothing but kiddy sociological porn. He never inspired anything. His lyrics were 100% destructive to Western Civilization.

Yes...catchy tunes. So what? Poison better served with honey on it?

Dylan was and is a great writer with a great (though different) voice. Thank god there are folks like Bob Dylan, because today we have such drizzle as Brittney Spears and Christina Aguiliara and whatever slightly post pubescent boy band is in vogue this week.

You gotta listen to music for music's sake not for what the artist is, when you start to enjoy music for the sake of music, you might find that you will slowly become less of a judgmental tightass.

Yeah...I'm judgmental.

Well....Excuuuseeeeee....MEEEEEE!

Too bad I'm not like you who is just an impartial observer and reasoned in their judgement. But that is me and that is you.

These crap song-writers and their monied producers such as Dylan started what you bemoan.

Yeah, Dylan begat Spears.

Pull your head out, people as dumb as you frighten me, I hope you don't have a driver's permit, as there are too many farmers markets around these days.

Yes I am reasoned in my judgement, and I eat (rhetorically) folks like you for a snack.

Complete hogwash. Dylan could not care less about Gramsci and probably has no idea who he is.

To call his music "kiddie sociological porn" and "100% destructive to western civilization" is so deluded words fail me. Dylan interpreted a transitional period in that civilization. His influence is no mystery for anyone who's been paying attention as the transition proceeds.

Dylan is considered a great poet by many conservatives. He is not a politician. When I hear a "conservative" seek to muzzle a poet, I think not of Russell Kirk or William Buckley but of Stalin.

Dylan wrote the (excellent) soundtrack and played a small part - "Alias" - in one of my all-time favorite westerns, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973), starring James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson (as Pat and Billy) and directed by one of the masters, Sam Peckinpah. Definitely worth checking out.

Thank you, Dylan represented lots of things, in his early days he was acoustic, not good looking and with a gravelly voice, he actually took abuse from the purists when he switched to electronic guitar.

His voice is key, not a pretty boy, not a pre-pubescent singer, not some studio flavor of the day, he put his stuff out on the open market, and people bought it and enjoyed it. He spawned many "next Dylans", among them, two of my favorites, John Prine and Tom Waits.

Thank god all music isn't all cleaned up and perpetually 18 years old and aimed at pre-teens. Dylan had the audacity to actually write his own music, use his own voice and pay his own instruments.

Which is why we still listen 35 years later...

Good post.

It's also amazing just how many people consider Dylan a "protest singer" (along the lines of Joan Baez). Fact of the matter is that out of Dylan's 30-some-odd albums, only two of them - The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1962) and The Times They are A'Changin' (1963) - could accurate be placed in that category. ....both recorded before the Vietnam war. By '64, when his folkie fans tried to pigeonhole him in that genre, he broke out with Another Side of Bob Dylan and Bring it All Back Home and hasn't looked back since. He was "Judas" to the folkie crowd for a long time.

I've heard this movie is so disorganized and poorly written that it could have been made by a highschool film student. I've also heard that it's ugly and utterly un-watchable.

Dylan should stick to folk music.

Tom Waits bump.

And both Dylan and Waits still put out great music. The latter's Bone Machine and The Black Rider were among the best he's ever recorded (imo), and Dylan's recent recordings produced by Daniel Lanois rank with his best as well.

Dylan is considered a great poet by many conservatives.

So what? Bill Bennett gaves speeches at 50K a pop so he could fund Steve Wynn. Jack Kemp praises free enterprise zones and makes deals with Hugo Chavez. I could care what "many conservatives" think.But I must admit, Lay, Lady, lay always inspired me. Must be the deep, deep meaning I guess. Maybe the rhythm of the words. Bada-bing never had the same impact.

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