pipes all the way down

Robert Sullivan has written an interesting article (“This Is Not a Bob Dylan Movie”) for the New York Times Magazine about Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan biopic (I’m Not There). Two things come immediately to mind: Velvet Goldmine (1998) and Christine Vachon. Haynes and Vachon are a major part of the New Queer Cinema, which, for a while, gave the tired, old cinema a run for its money.

Todd Haynes’s Dylan project is a biopic starring six people as Bob Dylan, or different incarnations of Bob Dylan, including a 13-year-old African-American boy, Marcus Carl Franklin, and an Australian woman, Cate Blanchett. It’s a biopic with a title that takes it name from one of the most obscure titles in the Dylan canon, a song available only as a bootleg, called I’m Not There.

Included amongst the avatars of Dylan, besides Franklin and Blanchett, are: Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw. The article makes it out to be a 20 million dollar experimental film, which I suppose is possible in a de-con, pomo sort of way. I might not even wait for the DVD of this one, but drag myself out to a matinée. I’m sure that niche in the multiplex will be close to empty. Now, if only, they could manage to keep the picture in focus.