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Bob Dylanas Filmmaker, the first book of its kind, opens up exciting new ways tothink about the artistry of Bob Dylan. It offers a captivating explorationinto movies that, according to Michael, showcase Bob Dylan not just as asubject, but as the primary author. These include Eat the Document-ashort, experimental television film shot in 1966 and released in 1972; thesprawling, genre-blurring epic Renaldo and Clara (1978), bothdirected by Dylan himself; and the darkly surreal Masked and Anonymous (2003),directed by Larry Charles but co-written by and starring Dylan. BobDylan as Filmmaker explores what these movies reveal about "how it feels"to be Bob Dylan during three defining eras of his career: therevolutionary 1960s, the introspective 1970s, and the enigmatic early 2000s. Just as crucially, they illuminate Dylan's remarkable instinct for using filmnot merely as a medium, but as a deeply personal mode of expression. Thebook also provides an essential survey of Dylan's most recent movie projects,including those by other directors, in which Dylan's influence is less overtbut no less powerful. Here, Michael argues that Dylan operates as a kind of"invisible co-author": in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019),where Dylan appears as a slippery, self-mythologizing interviewee; AlmaHar'el's haunting Shadow Kingdom (2021), a stylized livestreamperformance; and James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (2024),the Timothee Chalamet-led biopic shaped in part by Dylan's behind-the-scenes"script approval."
Bob Dylanas Filmmaker, the first book of its kind, opens up exciting new ways tothink about the artistry of Bob Dylan. It offers a captivating explorationinto movies that, according to Michael, showcase Bob Dylan not just as asubject, but as the primary author. These include Eat the Document-ashort, experimental television film shot in 1966 and released in 1972; thesprawling, genre-blurring epic Renaldo and Clara (1978), bothdirected by Dylan himself; and the darkly surreal Masked and Anonymous (2003),directed by Larry Charles but co-written by and starring Dylan. BobDylan as Filmmaker explores what these movies reveal about "how it feels"to be Bob Dylan during three defining eras of his career: therevolutionary 1960s, the introspective 1970s, and the enigmatic early 2000s. Just as crucially, they illuminate Dylan's remarkable instinct for using filmnot merely as a medium, but as a deeply personal mode of expression. Thebook also provides an essential survey of Dylan's most recent movie projects,including those by other directors, in which Dylan's influence is less overtbut no less powerful. Here, Michael argues that Dylan operates as a kind of"invisible co-author": in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019),where Dylan appears as a slippery, self-mythologizing interviewee; AlmaHar'el's haunting Shadow Kingdom (2021), a stylized livestreamperformance; and James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (2024),the Timothee Chalamet-led biopic shaped in part by Dylan's behind-the-scenes"script approval."