New on DVD

We chat with the filmmaker of the enigmatic Bob Dylan 'biography' 'I'm Not There'

By Sean Axmaker
Special to MSN Movies

Todd Haynes isn't one to follow convention -- just look to "Velvet Goldmine," a fictionalized take on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust phase via a glam-rock remake of "Citizen Kane," or "Far From Heaven," his reworking of glossy 1950s Hollywood melodramas. So it should come as no surprise to see that "I'm Not There," his freewheeling portrait of the life (or, rather, lives) of the artist known as Bob Dylan, draws from song lyrics as freely as from biography to explore his art, his persona and his place in the cultural dynamic. Oh yes, he also cast six different actors to play separate phases or aspects of the artist. There was plenty to talk about when I got the opportunity to interview the director mere hours after the film's premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall: Why six actors? Why Cate Blanchett? And, of course: What's in your DVD player?

MSN Movies: What's in your DVD player?

Todd Haynes: I watched "La Vie en Rose" last night on hotel pay-per-view, and I watched "Knocked Up" the night before. I hadn't seen either of those before. But I just got the Criterion Collection of Lindsay Anderson's "If ...," one of my favorite movies. I wanted to watch the extras, but I didn't have time before I left town.

You've recorded commentary for some of your DVD releases. How do you feel about commentary tracks?

I guess it's a good thing. I remember feeling like I was sharing stuff on my films that I thought might be interesting to some people, and I've heard some people say that it was, but I don't really ever listen to them on other films myself and I never listen to my own.

When you put out a DVD, what things you like to see on there, the things you like to share with audiences and you think would expand their connection to the film?

It depends on the film. I do a lot of preparation for my films and it depends on what that preparation is. Often it's about talking about other directors and approaches, the way the film was shot, the way the film looks, or literary references, things about [Douglas] Sirk or [Rainer Werner] Fassbinder or about [Jean] Genet, it just depends on the film in particular. Just where a lot of the ideas came from.

"I'm Not There" is not a literal biography. I guess you could describe it as impressionistic or metaphorical. Why approach Dylan in this way rather than with a literal historical biography?

Well, I don't know if I believe there is such a thing as a literal historical biography. I do see that there is a kind of form that has become common to film that we now call the biopic, but I don't know that it has any relationship to reality or anything literal or historical. It seems to be a construct to expose a certain amount of private history, a conflict with drugs or philandering or something, and then show how that gets recovered or resolved, and then find the songs or the events of the life that correspond to those moments of high and low. So, to me, it's a formula, almost more nakedly so than other film genres because, whatever the life, it has to fit in this one package.

You recreate the "Judas" moment with a character named Jude. Did you choose the name for that echo?

(Laughs.) Yes, there is that echo there.

Why Cate Blanchett in that part?

I knew I wanted a woman to play the role. There are a lot of great actresses out there, but I've been watching her work and been so impressed by what I've seen. She's also an incredibly physical actress. Of course she's so smart and has so much intellectual ways of approaching a role, but there's a physical, visceral kind of understanding that comes first and is perfect for this kind of role.

So why specifically a woman for that period in Dylan's life?

Because that period in Dylan's life is so bizarre to behold. Did you watch "No Direction Home," the [Martin] Scorsese documentary? A lot of footage from 1966 that [D.A.] Pennebaker had shot for the "Eat the Document" documentary that never really saw the light of day shows this absolutely extreme Dylan: totally skinny, riddled on amphetamines, his hair turning into this wild cloud, and these unbelievably bizarre, dandified gestures while performing, while talking, while doing anything. And yet that's one of the most famous Bob Dylan moments, the most canonized, which means the most stripped of its genuine shock value. I felt that it needed to get that shock value put back into it and I had to do something extra to remember how strange that really would have been back in 1965-1966.

You have six different actors playing six different Dylans, but to me they are really playing different dimensions of his persona or personality, represented partly by different periods but also partly by different concerns. And they all exist in the same universe. They could all come to a party and be together in the same room.

They could, they could. In one case, one of them plays another in a movie, so there is a strange kind of replacement and diffusion and multiplicity. I'm sure there's Freudian terms for all the things we're talking about that are eluding me at the moment, but yeah, they are not literally all phases of Dylan, although they belong to periods that were manifest by phases of his life or instincts that came out of periods of his life. But certainly Robbie's [Heath Ledger] story spans a whole decade and exists as the private side to a public life that some of the other characters occupy, and Billy [Richard Gere], in a weird way, goes all the way back to the beginning of American folklore and collects those images.

Why Billy the Kid? There's obviously that echo of "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," which Dylan was in, but he played Alias.

Why Billy the Kid? It seems so obvious! (Laughs.) Dylan of course did occupy a part in the movie, but he wanted to play Billy desperately. He told [director Sam] Peckinpah that he actually was Billy the Kid reincarnated, but Peckinpah had already given the role to [Kris] Kristofferson, so I let Dylan play it in my movie.

Why do you never use the name Bob Dylan even once in this film?

Because wouldn't it just have destroyed the illusion that all of these other Dylans, whether they exist separately or together, occupy? Wouldn't your whole imaginary relationship have just collapsed at that moment? Just chew on that for a while.

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Sean Axmaker is a film critic for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and a DVD columnist for MSN Entertainment, and a contributing writer to GreenCine.com, Turner Classic Movies Online, and Asian Cult Cinema, among other publications.