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The Bob Dylan We Never Knew
How ‘A Complete Unknown’ Redefines Bob Dylan’s Genius for a New Era
Published in
5 min readDec 26, 2024
Imagine finding your childhood idol and singing words you wrote about him. He’s so impressed that your life — and the world — are transformed.
The whole story is electric.
That’s how A Complete Unknown, a strong contender for best picture awards, begins. More than a typical biopic, it centers on New York City’s Greenwich Village — the epicenter of the counter-culture movement:
- It’s 1961, and 19-year-old Bob Dylan (masterfully played by Timothée Chalamet) travels from his native Minnesota to New York City and seeks out his hero, 49-year-old folk legend Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy).
- Dylan has a newspaper clipping saying Guthrie is in a psychiatric hospital. He finds it, spotting the stricken Guthrie in a ward as another folk legend is visiting: the 42-year-old Pete Seeger (Edward Norton).
- The young Dylan sings them a song he wrote: “Hey, hey, Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song bout a funny old world that’s a-comin’ along. Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn. It looks like it’s a-dying, and it’s hardly been born.”
- They’re impressed. Seeger takes Dylan in, introducing him to a Greenwich audience, saying, “I wanna tell…