Bob Dylan surprised fans recently with warm words on new film A Complete Unknown, a flick focusing on the early years of his career. Writing on Twitter / x, the songwriter said: “Timothee Chalamet is starring in the lead role. Timmy’s a brilliant actor so I’m sure he’s going to be completely believable as me. Or a younger me. Or some other me.”
It’s far from the first time Dylan’s life has been represented on-screen, however. CLASH is set to publish a deep dive in the coming days, but we thought it only apt to recall the time the American artist branded a famous celluloid depiction of his life as a “propaganda movie”.
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Remarkably, that stinging rebuke was present to Don’t Look Back – the D. A. Pennebaker film that followed Bob Dylan on his 1965 British tour.
A work that remains dearly loved by fans, it contains some incredible moments – a perpetually shades-clad Dylan offering stinging putdowns, and a nervous, endearingly shy Donovan sat at the (literal) feet of the master.
In a 1978 interview with Playboy, Bob Dylan lambasted both film and film-maker. “Don’t Look Back was somebody else’s movie,” he said. “It was a deal worked out with a film company, but I didn’t really play any part in it”.
“When I saw it in a moviehouse,” Dylan continued, taking issue with how the editing of the film had presented the songwriter, “I was shocked at what had been done. I didn’t find out until later that the camera had been on me all the time. That movie was done by a man who took it all out of context. It was documented from his personal point of view. The movie was dishonest, it was a propaganda movie”.
It’s a word Dylan is fond of – “propaganda / all is phoney” – but also one he was chosen with care. Adding to this, he expanded: “I don’t think it was accurate at all in terms of showing my formative years. It showed only one side. He made it seem like I wasn’t doing anything but living in hotel rooms, playing the typewriter and holding press conferences for journalists. All that is true, you know. […] But it’s one-sided”.
