INTERVIEW WITH TODD HAYNES

What does Dylan mean to you? Do you feel the film will open up new interest in Dylan and his works for a younger audience?
Dylan's artistic achievements don't really require any endorsement from me. There are those who think he's the greatest songwriter of all time and those who don't care for him at all. But as a leading influence in popular music and post-war culture Dylan is inescapable, whether you like him or not. He along with the Beatles pretty much conducted the 1960's, at least for its massive generation of young people. So for young people today, who may associate him more with their parent's generation, I do hope I'm Not There offers a fresh jolt into that time, and an exciting new take on his music.

How did you begin preparations for the film, its obvious that you've often watched Don't Look Back, the Newport film, live clips and read his autobiography - Chronicles. Did you speak to any of Dylan's close friends from previous eras like Joan Baez & Suze Rotolo?
In preparing I'm Not There I spent as much time studying Dylan's creative history as his literal one, and by creative history I mean his songs, his writing, his interviews, his films, as well as the music, writing, films and history that inspired him. This was never going to be a straight biopic, so I chose instead to focus on the places where his creative life and real life intersected or mirrored one another. I did read all his biographies--in fact most of the books published about him--but didn't really conduct interviews. I suppose I felt that biographers in search of the "real Dylan" or "true Dylan" always failed, and that one can never really convey truth except through a kind of fiction. I did speak to Suze Rotolo, though, who had actually contacted me.
She had heard I was doing a film about Dylan and was concerned that I would get her wrong in it, as all the biographers had done. I asked her what she meant, since I thought she always came off so wonderfully in the biographies. What was it they left out? "The fun", she said.

What was the inspiration for casting each part of Dylan with different person? How did you come to write the screenplay with Oren? Where did these separate narrative strings come from?
I first discovered Dylan in high school, but sort of stopped listening for a while. Then in late 1999, at a certain turning point in my life, I found myself craving him again. I think I needed to return to that sense of adolescent energy--and possibility--that he had once nourished. I was leaving New York where I had lived for fifteen years, just to get away and write a script in Portland, Oregon, where my sister lived. What I didn't know at the time was that I would never return. Something was happening and I didn't know what it was. I just kept getting deeper and deeper into Dylan, discovering all the unreleased material and reading anything I could get my hands on. And the more I read the more I discovered how change--radical personal, artistic change had defined his life. And the only way to convey that fact would be to dramatize it, to literally distill his life and work into a series of separate selves and stories. The six characters that ultimately emerged seemed to encompass the dominant themes and instincts that informed his life and canon of work, though most had their roots in the sixties.
So while writing the script for my last film, Far From Heaven, the basic concept and earliest drafts of I'm Not There were also taking shape. And by the end of that first year in Portland, we'd secured the rights from Dylan to proceed. But the serious research and writing of the script didn't really begin until 2002, when Far From Heaven was over. It was a massive endeavor, producing massive early drafts of a script. And that's where Oren came in. A great writer and someone I really trusted, Oren flew to Portland and together we started whipping it down to a conceivable size and shape. It was a tough process but much more fun than doing it alone. And together we had a finished draft by the end of 2004.
Dylan's life is already very well documented, with I'M NOT THERE what do you hope you can add to the understanding of this artist? How do you hope his fans will perceive this radical reworking?
Basically I hope to explode any preconceived notion about Dylan into a thousand shimmering pieces--to see him both from the inside out and from the outside in, as both a creative person at a specific time and place and a true embodiment of the American multitude: its conflicts, rebellions and traditions.
Hardcore Dylan fans are a serious bunch. I suspect the film will send them into a state of frenzied debate, evoking both euphoria and outrage.

In light of your previous works on the subject of music i.e. SUPERSTAR & VELVET GOLDMINE and your work with Sonic Youth why choose Dylan?
I would be compelled to make a film about Dylan even if I didn't like his music. He's just too important and fascinating a figure to post-war culture to not eventually take on as a dramatic subject.

How did you choose the songs from Dylan's vast back catalogue?
The songs in the film are not necessarily my favorite or even the "best" Dylan songs. First and foremost they had to serve the narrative and dramatic demands of the film. But I felt it was important to combine great Dylan "masterworks" (like All Along The Watchtower or Visions of Johanna) with lesser known, even obscure compositions (like the title song, I'm Not There). I also knew I wanted a mixture of actual Dylan recordings alongside new versions performed by contemporary artists. This gave us the opportunity to continue to broaden and invigorate his enormous body of work, bringing new life to songs like Going To Acapulco and Pressing On.

Why are you making this film today?
The many reasons for doing this film today were not immediately apparent when the idea first came to me. But the years I spent developing, researching and writing I'm Not There were of course the crowning years of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. At times I felt very close to the character of Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) who finds herself caught impotently watching the Vietnam war unfold on television. I think much of my own rage and disbelief was channeled into the depiction of that seemingly distant universe of the 1960's, which, while offering some parallels to a war of choice run amok, was more often marked by an engaged and vocal opposition, nowhere in sight at the height of the Bush/Cheney years. At the time I felt as if I were writing about a lost and buried cultural history--the antithesis of where we were at the time. Today, though, the catastrophes of the Bush era have pushed the country in a very different direction--in some people's estimation, toward the collapse of a conservative era that began in the 1960's and one far more inclined to receive a film like I'm Not There as a powerful reminder of what's at stake in a free society, and what's been lost along the way.

What artistic license did you take with Dylan's life did you censor anything?
The film was never meant to be a tell-all about Bob Dylan, check-listing his drug use or infidelities. That said, the film is no puff piece. His indulgences, excesses, his aggressions, fabrications and controversial opinions are all on display at various points throughout the film. But to their extraordinary credit, Dylan's management has provided nothing but encouragement for me to interpret him as I saw fit, a situation that hasn't ceased to amaze me and to which the film owes its frankness and complexity.
Dylan is notoriously reclusive and this is the first film he has approved of his life - how did you approach him with the project? What did he say? What was Dylan's input in the film if any?
Throughout this entire adventure, I have never met or spoken to Dylan myself. I know if I had requested to do so it could have been arranged. But I never felt the need to speak to him directly. Jeff Rosen, on the other hand, his long-time manager, has been extremely close and generous to the production from the get-go. It was Jeff who Christine Vachon and I first approached in the summer of 2000, via Dylan's oldest son, Jessie, an independent filmmaker based in LA. After making my "pitch," Jeff advised me to write my concept down on a single sheet of paper--avoiding any references to Dylan's "genius" or "voice of a generation" stuff. The result, a proposal entitled I'm Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan, began: If a film were to exist in which the breadth and flux of a creative life could be experienced, a film that could open up as oppose to closing down what it is we think we know walking in, it could never be within the tidy arc of a master narrative. Accompanied by copies of some of my films, the proposal was sent to Dylan for his consideration. And a few months later, no doubt aided by Jeff Rosen's encouragement, we received word that Dylan said yes. (To this day, I still can't quite believe it.)

Why did you choose the title I'M NOT THERE?
I'm Not There is the name of a famously elusive, unreleased track from Dylan's famed Basement Tapes sessions, and recorded with The Band in Woodstock in 1967, while Dylan was recuperating from his motorcycle crash. The song has been written about at length by writers as varied as Greil Marcus, Paul Williams and Don DeLillo, and is featured in the film both in its original form and in a powerful new cover by Sonic Youth (their first and only Dylan cover.) But to me the title evokes Rimbaud's famous line (also in the film): I is another--and the theme of personal displacement that the film's "multiple Dylan" strategy tries to illustrate.

How did you choose the actors? Especially Cate Blanchett?
I couldn't be more astounded by my actors in this film, from my extraordinary leads to all the local talent we cast out of Montreal. Basically I just chose the best actors I could find, from Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale, Richard Gere and Ben Wishaw, to Marcus Carl Franklin, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Julianne Moore, Michelle Williams, David Cross and Bruce Greenwood. But the role of Jude was always meant to be played by a woman. I felt it was the only way to resurrect the true strangeness of Dylan's physical being in 1966 which I felt had lost its historical shock value over the years. But of course it would take an actor of Cate's supreme intelligence and ability to bring to the role the kind of depth and subtlety she delivers so stunningly onscreen.

How much freedom did you give to the actors of their interpretation of the roles? How did you keep what is 'essential' to you about Dylan with each separate character?
During the development and preproduction of the film I basically provided all my lead actors with extensive visual material of Dylan and the stylistic references I was drawing on for each of their stories. In addition I made collections of songs and interviews from Dylan's career that inspired their roles. No one was asked to imitate him directly, but rather to make use of his cadences, looks and styles, as they pertained to their specific time in his life. The result is a range of interpretations of Dylan from the inside out--while hair, make-up and costume designers worked closely with the actors to specify the physical manifestation of their characters and the time and place in which they are set.

What is your favourite Dylan song and why?
I don't have a single favorite song. My favorite record is still Blonde on Blonde--the rock era's first double album--whose baroque modernity and urbane melodrama never cease to astound.

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