Inside ‘A Complete Unknown’: How Timothée Chalamet became Bob Dylan

Before director James Mangold began production on his Bob Dylan movie, A Complete Unknown, the subject of the film asked him a pointed question. “The first time I sat down with him,” Mangold says, “Bob said, ‘What’s this movie about, Jim?’ I said, ‘It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota, and leaves behind all his friends and family and reinvents himself in a brand new place, makes new friends, builds a new family, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to choke to death again — and runs away.” 

Dylan took all of that in, and smiled. “I like that,” he said.

A Complete Unknown doesn’t have an official release date yet, but its first teaser trailer dropped today, and Mangold hints it could come out as soon as December. The film’s story begins with Dylan’s arrival in New York in 1961, and ends shortly after his history-making electric performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. It stars Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, Elle Fanning as his girlfriend, Sylvie Russo (whom Mangold confirms is simply a renamed version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend of that era, Suze Rotolo), Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez, and Edward Norton as folk legend Pete Seeger. 

In his first in-depth interview about A Complete Unknown, Mangold (also the director of Walk The Line, Logan, Ford v Ferrari, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny) tells Rolling Stone about the process behind the film, Chalamet’s performance, and much, much more. (To hear an extended audio version of this interview, check out the new episode of our Rolling Stone Music Now podcast — go here for the podcast provider of your choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just press play below.)

You previously said that it might be better to describe this movie as an ensemble piece instead of a biopic. Is that still how you’re seeing it, now that you’re much deeper in the process?
I didn’t want to turn Bob Dylan into a simple character with a simple thing to unlock that then makes you go, “Ah, now I get him.” I don’t think that’s possible, having gotten to know him. I also think it’s pretty clear he spent most of his life trying to avoid that exact act by anybody. Which is an act of, by nature, reduction — reducing someone to a simple epiphany, a plot-point Freudian history of their life.

So then my role as a dramatist becomes, if I’m not going to do that… which in a way I did do in Walk the Line. It’s a difference. Johnny Cash is defined by his upbringing, the loss of his brother, the shame he’s carried in life, and an addiction that was driven by the sorrows of his childhood. It lines up very clearly. And his music being about, kind of, imprisonment and darkness — it’s all in incredible, dramatic harmony with these psychological observations about him. None of that would be that easy with Bob.

So when I say it’s a strong ensemble piece, it’s certainly following Bob, but I’m much more interested in the wake that this person has left on others, as much as I’m interested in unpacking who he is in some kind of conventional movie-Freudian way. That’s why Elle’s character and Pete Seeger, Edward’s character, and Joan Baez, of course, and many others are more than just passing through in a kind of Hall of Presidents pageant. They’re significant players coming in and out of the movie. They all were instrumental in his journey in the years between ’61 and ’65, but they all also interacted with him in different ways that are prisms and keyholes to different aspects of who Bob might be. 

A really simple example of what I’m saying: Amadeus is about Mozart and he’s the title character, but in some ways you experienced the movie through Salieri and the King and his wife and others. One of the things that is truly hard to define and certainly I think hard to define on film — and one of the great questions of life — is what is talent and how is someone born special. And instead of me trying to answer that question, which I truly believe is unanswerable, I think that we try to answer, when we come across someone like that, who’s got some kind of artistic tiger by the tail and seems on a kind of rocket ship compared to us mortals, how does it affect us and our feelings about existence, our own validity? Jealousy, worship, idolatry, obsession, love, all these things can be the result of this kind of superpower that a character can have.

And not only that, but I think one of the things Timmy is so brilliant at playing in the movie and something I think Bob related to me, is a true feeling — which is that it’s also about, how does one deal with that burden? How you yourself, if you have this power, aren’t even sure exactly where it’s coming from — you’re trying to protect it and cherish it, but you’re also not sure if it will lift you or destroy you. And so there’s an ambivalent relationship for all the characters with this idea of immense talent.

Your last movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, had its own form of pressure, trying to live up to that franchise’s history. This is another high pressure-movie, and what Timothée is being asked to do isn’t easy. How does all that factor in?
Making Walk the Line, Joaq [Joaquin Phoenix] would come up to me almost every day, and he’d go, “Say that thing.” And I’d say, “You’re not Johnny Cash.” And he’d go, “Thank you.” There’s sometimes a perception out there that what we’re doing is about a perfect replication of a human voice and physicality. We can’t do that. Not with human bodies. Maybe AI in the future can do something that meets exactly which snaggletooth they had or which pockmark was on which cheek. But if you start going down that road, you lose yourself. You’re trying to please somebody, but you lose yourself. What you have to be trying to do is to do what movies do well, which is to unpack the emotional dynamic of these people. And even then, it’s just my version of it. Meaning, I am not here to say I’m making the Jon Meacham definitive biography. That is not my job. 

So the movie begins with Bob’s arrival in New York in January, 1961, and stretches to when?
It literally ends within 72 hours after the [Newport Folk Festival] concert in ’65.

Were those always the parameters for you, or were there different things you explored in the writing process?
When I discovered the project, Jay Cocks had already written a script based on the book Going Electric [by Elijah Wald]. And that book was very much defined by that piece [of time]. And when I dove into Jay’s script and started to push and pull on it, largely in the area of trying to expand the early part of the movie and the network of characters, I found the years from ’61 to ’64 really interesting. My attraction became instantly to this idea of a talent like Bob, so vexing, so provocative, so filled with fiction and fact. This idea of this incredible, artistic character landing in New York with 12 dollars in his pocket — trying to thread the needle of how one goes from there to there is so interesting to me. And it’s kind of fable: that there was this village and one day this young man arrived and he goes to meet the dying leader of the music he worships, and he meets his second lieutenant, who takes him in and gives this young man who has talent a chance to sing himself. And suddenly this young man takes off like a rocket, so much so that all the people we meet along the way are suddenly transformed. Movies are so simple, really. Where you get in trouble with movies is, too much story. So what I described to you is the sum in total. And then letting these wonderful, eccentric characters and these tremendous young actors all just do their thing within the confines of this.

Is the idea to use the actors’ live performances from the shoot as the music in the movie?
It’s not the idea. That’s what we’ve done! Yeah.

That’s also high-stakes. How did you get to a place where that was comfortable?
Every one of these things comes with the fact that you can always fix it. You want everyone putting everything on the line every moment. But it’s not [like] if one of our actors hit a bad note, I don’t have an alternative take or the ability to replace that one beat. If Timmy’s brave enough to stand out there and make himself vulnerable, throwing himself at this, I should be brave enough to stand behind the camera and shoot. And Timmy was a partner in this. He very much wanted to. And the multiple years of preparation that we had on this movie because of false starts with Covid and stuff meant that Timmy really had a kind of incubation as a musician that was years in happening. And Monica Barbaro as well. She was cast when we were gonna make the movie before Indy. So a lot of these people have been in place for an incredible amount of time, and used that time incredibly successfully in their own musical journey.

What makes Timothée’s performance work in your eyes? What did he crack open?
I think what’s so wonderful about what Timmy is doing is that, while not answering questions about Bob, at the same time I think he does in a very poetic way, which is to suggest really empathically through his performance how one might want to make music, but one might not want to have people in your face all the time. And I think in a way, Bob answers that… Timmy, who I’m used to calling Bob sometimes, answers that question. I think he walks a really beautiful line of allowing an audience to see what a joy it is for this character to make music and what pure joy he experiences in his camaraderie with other musicians and his exploration of ideas and words and music, both making it and listening to others. Where Timmy also does something really quite profound is to show you his almost genetically predisposed discomfort with what his own great achievements then bring upon him and that, in terms of people wanting things, transactional relationships, or relationships that are tainted by the immense power and talent. 

And I think he does an incredible job of growing the character up, because one of the things I think that will be startling is, most Dylan fans don’t focus on the boy in the newsboy cap who’s arriving in town. And Timmy really carries this character from a 19-year-old boy telling tales of working on the carnival into this person that we recognise as an icon. Timmy finds the path to carry us there. It’s going to be impossible for people in trailers or teasers or photos to see, but the way he grows this character is a real act of acting brilliance in my opinion.

As you said, precise replication is neither the goal nor possible. But this is one of the most imitated voices, both singing and speaking, for 50 years. Everyone has a Dylan imitation. Tell me about Timothée’s unveiling of the way he’s doing it and how you both handled that.
It’s so funny. You make me think about it. I’d never thought about it. I was probably the one who was talking like Bob soonest because I was spending time with him and trying to remember — because the syntax of the way Bob says things even now is so particularly Bob, and I was really trying to capture that in what we were writing. I think Timmy also grows that. Meaning that he’s a little less affectedly Bob as we know him at the beginning than he is by the end, which I think is a complete closure of the circle. You’re trying to find something that feels like him, but also feels like Timmy, meaning that if I were trying to describe the directorial goal, you want your actor to play the part, of course, but you don’t want them to lose what’s special about themselves. Almost what you want is for the actor to find the parallel aspects in them and the person they’re playing. And to get those in harmony and then apply the outward affectations that do not disturb that initial kind of groove that they found with the character from their gut, if that makes sense.

Were there moments when it was eerie to witness?
Yes, there are. Eerie is a bad word. Miraculous. And there were also moments where it felt like something was getting channeled. I don’t mean in mimicry. I mean in feeling. But there were also moments where Timmy would come up to me and go, “I think I lost Bob a little,” or I’d say, when that happens, “You’re losing him a little bit.” And that was our code for drifting too much into yourself and not carrying some of those affectations and mannerisms that are part and parcel of being him.

I wanted to ask about Sylvie Russo, the part played by Elle Fanning. To what extent is that simply Dylan’s real girlfriend from that era, Suze Rotolo, with a different name, versus half-Suze, half-fictional?
It’s more the first. It was a character who I felt — and I think Bob very much agreed when we talked early on — was the only one who wasn’t a celebrity and an icon in and of themselves with a kind of public persona. Everyone else is up for the gauntlet and has been in that game a long time. And Suze was just a real person. And in many ways, Elle plays our access point or more normal kind of citizen, if you will, among all these eccentric characters. She’s much more like someone we know. And there was just a feeling for Bob of not subjecting her to that. But certainly the character Elle plays is that energy. Someone who comes into his life, who is an artist herself, who is politically active, who ends up moving in with him and being incredibly important to his awakening to some of these issues at play. Also a kind of home, and a kind of purity of love that they experienced together, that in many ways his character can’t ever have with anyone else. Because after a couple years, he’s now Bob Dylan, and there is no way for anyone to relate to him the way someone who knew him at the beginning and met him at the beginning could, like Suze/Sylvie did. There’s no real decoding to that other than just not feeling like there was value in subjecting her real name to the same kind of spotlight that these other people in the movie, who all lived their entire lives in the spotlight, experienced.

It sounds like Bob was protective of her memory.
Yes. There is no doubt that’s a really important person in his life and remains so. 

Judging from the teaser and the set photos, it does seem like Timothée and Elle light up the screen together.
As those two did [in real life]. There must have been a reason they put them on the cover of Freewheelin‘ together. 

Obviously you met with Bob. Did you meet with John Baez?
I didn’t. She was sent pages from the script to approve songs. I had never even planned on meeting Bob, honestly. That just came about because he read the script and wanted to see me. First of all, once you’ve read a few of these books, you realise there is no way to braid them all into harmony with each other. They’re in 100 percent contradiction about many things. So you have to walk your own line. I really limited things to massive amount of research and talking to Mr. Dylan. And there was so much actual physical documentation from 1963 on — of concerts, of backstage, of hotel rooms, of interviews. The amount of interviews Bob did was immense. I’ve heard them all and tried to harvest whatever I could for the movie from them.

And then you had other things. Jeff Rosen, Bob’s manager made available to me the letters that Johnny Cash and Bob wrote to one another in this period, and they became an instrumental voice in the movie. When you get these letters and you’re physically looking at them, you’re looking at the inner voice of these characters. I don’t need Bob to process what he wrote, and I don’t need Johnny Cash to process what he wrote. I have their feelings from that point in time in 1963 on an airport nausea bag. That’s what Johnny wrote to Bob on and I’m reading the words he wrote on it. So you’re gaining tremendous insight.

Someone spotted Timothée holding a letter from Johnny Cash on set, and it sparked a lot of speculation. Just to be clear, is there a Johnny Cash character in this movie?
Oh yes, there is.

Who plays him?
Boyd Holbrook.

I think people were somehow hoping this would become a cinematic-universe, multiverse return–of-Joaquin Phoenix situation.
I don’t do multiverses. But beyond that Johnny Cash was like, 30.

Exactly.
I love Joaquin, but he’s not 30, or whatever Johnny was at this moment. They’re both young people in that moment in life. It’s weird that I’ve even worked in the world of IP entertainment because I don’t like multi-movie universe-building. I think it’s the enemy of storytelling. The death of storytelling. It’s more interesting to people the way the Legos connect than the way the story works in front of us.

For me, the goal becomes, always, “What is unique about this film, and these characters?” Not making you think about some other movie or some Easter egg or something else, which is all an intellectual act, not an emotional act. You want the movie to work on an emotional level.

So it wasn’t a mind-fuck to have Johnny Cash back in one of your movies.
I think when you see the movie, Boyd is fantastic and you don’t think about it for a second. It’s just, Oh, there’s Johnny Cash and he’s in Bob’s life.

What role does Monica’s Joan Baez play in this film? I’m aware of the biographical facts, but curious how it works here.
She’s one of the main characters in the movie. She is an established figure in folk music, and when young Bob arrives, there is an intense and instantaneous fascination and attraction with each other, but also a slightly competitive edge between them. Also just real admiration. There are sparks both warm and fiery that exist throughout the movie between them. She becomes one of the really fascinating characters, someone who also, unlike Bob, had grown up almost on the stage, has a kind of comfort and professionalism about making records and concert appearances that is diametrically different than Bob’s more seat-of-his-pants approach.

Is the goal to get this movie out before the end of the year now, and is that an accelerated schedule? And is that hard?
It’s fun. “Yes” is the answer, and it certainly is fun. It can be just as scary to work slowly as it is to work fast. So I embrace it. And like I said, the movie is really taking form and teaching us what it wants to be. I think we have enough time to bring that to a landing in a lovely way.

Was there a particular reason for speeding up the schedule? December is obviously an ideal slot for a movie like this.
Yeah, it’s just simply that, that we could see ourselves making it. Or then having to wait a year [to release it]. That’s really what drives it, that you can’t release a movie like this in February or March. And then it’s the summer and then you’d go to some festivals or something like that and come out the following fall. But I love the creative momentum of just charging toward an audience, headlong.

The Dylan fanatics would be mad if I didn’t ask this: You have Baez singing with him at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, which didn’t actually happen. Is that something that worries you at all, or do people just need to understand that this is the way movies work?
It doesn’t worry me because, in a way, if I deny those expert folks their discoveries, they’d be denied a moment of joy in their lives in finding them. Maybe next time we talk, I unpack that, because I think they might have sung together in a writer’s session — or I was trying to encapsulate something that happened the previous year that we weren’t able to set up there, so does it matter that they sang that song in ’64 and then I’m doing it in ’65? It’s not like I’m ever just doing something out of whole cloth that is a complete contradiction to reality. Moreso I’m trying to put everything in an order that plays dramatically and is true to the things that happened. I’m always much more concerned with being true with the feelings and things happening as they did than what date, or whether there were barren trees out the window or green ones when it occurred. And certainly, to a large degree, we’re very accurate about the development of the songs and the order that they developed and the studio time and all that stuff, as much as we can be.

Someone joked that since we know Bob got himself directly involved to any extent, we know the movie can’t be that factual.
[Smiles.] I’ll let that be your own quote.

From Rolling Stone