Production on the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, is currently underway. Over the weekend, star Timothée Chalamet was seen filming at various locations in Manhattan, providing us with some of our first glimpses of him in character as the legendary bard. Check out a gallery of set photos below.
Directed by James Mangold, A Complete Unknown documents Dylan’s arrival to New York City in 1961 and the years of stardom that followed. Alongside Chalamet as Dylan, the film stars Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, Boyd Holbrook as Johnny Cash, Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, Elle Fanning as Sylvie Russo, and Nick Offerman as Alan Lomax.
Dylan himself reportedly gave Mangold notes for the script. “I’ve spent several, wonderfully charming, days in his company, just one-on-one, talking to him,” Mangold said of Dylan. “I have a script that’s personally annotated by him and treasured by me.”
“The reason Bob has been so supportive of us making it, is it’s about, as in all cases I think of the best true-life movies, are never cradle to grave, but they’re about a very specific moment,” Mangold added. “In this case, it might sound Altman-esque, but it’s a kind of ensemble piece about this moment in time, the early ’60s in New York, and this 17-year-old kid with $16 in his pockets hitchhikes his way to New York to meet Woody Guthrie who is in the hospital and is dying of a nerve disease.”
“And he sings Woody a song that he wrote for him and befriends Pete Seeger, who is like a son to Woody, and Pete sets him up with gigs at local clubs and there you meet Joan Baez and all these other people who are part of this world, and this wanderer who comes in from Minnesota with a fresh name and a fresh outlook on life, becomes a star, signs to the biggest record company in the world within a year, and three years later, has record sales rivaling The Beatles.”
A release date for A Complete Unknown has not yet been set.
Meanwhile, the real Bob Dylan is still alive and well. In fact, this summer he’ll join Willie Nelson on the “Outlaw Music Festival Tour.” Get tickets to Dylan’s upcoming tour dates here.