Talkin' Masked and Anonymous (+Ex)

[00:00:00] Speaker A: This show is a part of the. [00:00:02] Speaker B: FM podcast network, the home of great music podcasts. Visit [email protected] you are listening to the Dylan Tons podcast. Hey everyone, I'm Jim Salvucci of the Dilentaunts, and welcome to the latest installment of million dollar bash. 21 years ago, the whole world was stunned by the release of a new Bob Dylan project unlike any before, a feature length movie of his own creation aimed at a generalish audience led by a future Nobel laureate co crafting the satirical script, populated with a brilliantly star studded cast and helmed by a maverick director out to compose what he described as a great Bob Dylan song in film, mast and anonymous, was destined to be a masterpiece. It could not fail. But then again, the film had its origins in an inchoate scheme by Larry Charles of Seinfeld and later Borat fame and Bob Dylan to create a network sitcom, a slapstick comedy that reportedly drew from the antics of Jerry Lewis and would star that master of physical comedy, Bob Dylan. Instead, with only 20 days of production time, they cranked out a film that drew on Hollywood royalty who would work for scale just to be in the presence of the man himself. Although I've written positively about the film, I've never been fully comfortable with it. It somehow amounts to less than the sum of its parts. The actors are all game, no one holds back even in the least, and some even go habit overboard looking at you. Giovanni Ribisi there are many moments of comedy that just dont come off the way theyre supposed to. Perhaps the alternate universe dystopian setting is too off putting to frame this blend of sardonic wit, philosophical musings, and dad jokes. The Apple TV description reads in part, and this is a quote, music legend and Academy Award winner Bob Dylan best song Wonder Boys 2000 take center stage in the craziest, funniest comedy of the year. Dylan is Jack Fate, a former traveling troubadour who is sprung from jail by his scheming manager to headline a sketchy and misguided benefit concert. Yep, that really sums it up. A comedy in modern parlance, a comedy is just a production that is meant to be funny. Indeed, there is humor amassed. In fact, I would love to see the film accompanied by a laugh track. But comedy in the classical sense also refers to structure. In the most reductive understanding, a comedy ends with characters and circumstances better off than when they started. Well, a tragedy ends with things much worse off. A kid losing a quarter and finding a dollar is a comedy. A kid losing a quarter and then falling down a well while searching for it. F tragedy again, most reductively. En masse. It ends much as it began. Uncle sweetheart is being harassed by street toughs. Jack is in custody. The charity concert is in shambles. Nina Veronica is kowtowing in fear to authority, and Bobby Cupid is absent. Of course, it is not quite all things equal, since sweetheart is being walked off to his final fate. Fate is being walked off, perhaps to his. And poor Tom. Friend has already achieved it. Then again, friend was bucking for that status from the get go. Since the plot points downward, the film is no comedy, but it barely points dim. Perhaps it is more like waiting for Godot, which ends as it began. For that plot structure, Samuel Beckett applied the term tragicomedy. If only we had a Beckett scholar present to help us sort it out. I just want to add that we are not going to be joined by our stalwarts, Aaron Callahan and Robert Ginnio. Yeah, because they had other duties as assigned. But Rock and Robert did leave us with some thoughts that I want to address. He said, seeing this film's debts to the sardonic side of Twain, I think this project is Dylan most Mark Twain esque work. It is satirical, bitter, bittersweet. The uncanny Dixie performance, where it seems Dylan uses the jaws of life elegantly to rest affect from this sordid song and attuned to the republic's implications in or nature as an imperial project. He also said, I am, of course, really interested in the oxal scene. I imagine Ed Harris couldn't wait to wash the blackface off after filming that scene. So those are Rob's thoughts, and maybe we can consider those. But I first want to introduce everyone, and we will get started right after that. So first up we have court Carney. Say hi. [00:04:53] Speaker C: Oh, hello. Hello, everyone. [00:04:55] Speaker B: Greylee hearn. [00:04:57] Speaker D: Hey, everybody. Good to see you again. [00:04:59] Speaker B: And Nina Goss. [00:05:02] Speaker A: Hello. [00:05:03] Speaker B: Before we do anything, I just want to get your general take on this film before we get into that nitty gritty. Anybody? What do you think about the film? [00:05:12] Speaker A: It's heavy handed and I'm always impressed by the actors. Really bring it in every scene. And I. And that impresses me every time. I have set noodles and I. Yeah, I couldn't do. I don't know how much I can contribute to this. I watched, re watched about half of it before our meeting, and I will do my best. I think there's a way to Zeke to say this is one of the most fascinating deconstructed vanity projects in any artist's career. And I wonder, I try to watch this as though this, as though Jack fate were being played by an actor. I don't know. And this has nothing to do with a person named Bob Dylan. And what if that were the case? What if this were entirely fiction and it had no ground in Bob Dylan at all? What would the experience of this movie be? [00:06:22] Speaker B: What do you think? Have you tried that? Have you really tried to put somebody else there in that role? [00:06:28] Speaker A: I do, and I sound like a devil's advocate, but he's very frail and absent in his performance. He is not a charismatic figure in this. And there's just. He's literally frail. Frailer than he seems now, 21 years later, when I see him live and his deliberate dryness is over played, I think, scene to scene. So I really don't know what I would think of this creature in this dreadful fawn suit. Who is Jack's fate in this movie? So I really don't know. I find that. I don't know. [00:07:17] Speaker C: X we should AI Nina's cut and put in chalamet into the Jack fate scenes and see how that works. [00:07:27] Speaker D: Or Cate Blanchett or Kate. [00:07:28] Speaker B: Well, yeah, there you go. [00:07:31] Speaker A: Wouldn't that be interesting? Yeah. [00:07:33] Speaker B: And a dreadful faunce. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Anyone said, am I just. I don't. Am I. Does anyone feel that he. There's an absence and a deliberate inertness to his performance, scene after scene? That's no. Yes. [00:07:49] Speaker D: Yes. [00:07:49] Speaker C: Yes. [00:07:51] Speaker D: It's astounding to know that he co wrote the thing and yet gives himself so few lines. He almost never speaks. And when he does speak, it's in these brief, enigmatic riddles, or they're not even enigmatic enough. [00:08:04] Speaker A: They're just tribes. There's a lot of trite aphorisms in this, a lot of what passes for gnomic, cryptic. [00:08:13] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:08:15] Speaker B: Which may be part of the comedy. [00:08:18] Speaker D: Maybe I've not done the research that Jim has, because I didn't realize that. That the thing had been pitched as a comedy, which that is comic to me. And when you made allusions to Beckett and waiting for. I thought of the same thing, right. That when it had its american premiere, it was billed as the laugh riot of two continents. [00:08:38] Speaker C: And it's. [00:08:39] Speaker D: And I do think that godot is funny in a lot of ways, but come on. And the same with the masculine anonymous. You're really going to. There are comic moments in it, but I don't walk away from this film chuckling to myself at how funny it was. [00:08:56] Speaker B: I want to talk about something that Nina brought up about the frailness of Dylan. It's really striking. I rewatched his film last night, and it was. There's a scene where he's in uncle sweetheart's trailer sitting in a chair, and he has his legs propped up. For some reason. He's sitting like a teenager. And keep in mind, he's like in his sixties at this point. And he looks tiny, miniature. He looks like a miniature Bob Dylan. He's not a big guy to begin with. And a lot of these actors he's up against in this are much taller than he is, which is striking. But he's physically posed in a way that makes him look even frailer. And as a director, Larry Charles is making choices. Do you think there's a reason for that, Nina? [00:09:46] Speaker A: He's supposed to be this broken figure who's been in prison for. I get that. That the character that he's playing is at the end of his vigor, certainly that this is literally a comeback of a has been in the film. And he's. But it, again, it's middle aged Bob Dylan, narrow shouldered and small. And it just. It doesn't feel like effective directing or acting. It just feels awkward. [00:10:30] Speaker B: And then at the end, he brings down. [00:10:32] Speaker A: Maybe someone else would feel differently. I don't. [00:10:35] Speaker B: Well, at the end of the movie, he brings down Tom friend, played by Jeff Bridges. With one punch. [00:10:41] Speaker A: Yes. [00:10:42] Speaker B: And apparently I'd read somewhere, I don't remember where, that, when they were filming it, there's a point where Bridges pushes him and bridges. A big guy. [00:10:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:50] Speaker B: And apparently he, like, inadvertently tossed Dylan across the room like a rag. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Oh, my. [00:10:57] Speaker B: But then the next scene, Dylan punches him. It looks like he punches him in the gut, but then Bridges is holding his crotch on the ground. [00:11:06] Speaker A: It's comic. That's supposed to be comic? [00:11:09] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:11:09] Speaker C: Those continuity errors in this film. [00:11:12] Speaker D: Oh, God, yeah. Like the bouncing in the backseat by Dylan when the guy sitting right beside. [00:11:18] Speaker B: Him is doing anything perfectly still. Yeah. [00:11:21] Speaker C: I do think it's great you brought that scene up, though, Jim, because, like, I was thinking when I rewatched it, I was thinking what an odd way to have him in the screen, in the shot. It's like it had to be a choice. [00:11:35] Speaker D: But to what? [00:11:36] Speaker C: Maybe it is all that. Maybe the thing is with this film is that I'm not a big fan of it. But I hesitate to wonder if, like, maybe you're missing the point of it. [00:11:45] Speaker D: Maybe. [00:11:45] Speaker C: I don't know if that's true either. I do think with the comedy, it start right. You have the Cheech Marin scene, which is cute. It's funny. It seems to be going a funny direction. But then it. But then you have Reblisi assassinated in all sorts of stuff. [00:12:00] Speaker B: He was assassinated for his over acting right after the scene with Cheech Marin, whose name is Prospero in the film. Prospero. [00:12:07] Speaker A: Right. [00:12:07] Speaker B: There's actually a great little comic moment where Dylan steps on the bus and he says to the bus driver, is this bus heading the border? And she says, no, sir, you're going the wrong way. And he goes, all right. [00:12:21] Speaker C: And he. [00:12:21] Speaker B: But his comic timing there is perfect. So there is that. There's moments like that where it's really done very well, but I don't know that it's done consistently and that kind of comedy evaporates. [00:12:37] Speaker D: It is hard to imagine, though, anyone else playing the part. To take the Nina's question there, I agree with the deconstruction of the Dylan myth or Persona. And yet there are so many little, often visual Easter eggs that allude to Dylan pictures in the background that either are directly from Dylan's iconic 60 years or some kind of photoshop equivalent of that. Or. Or the big board when they're going over the prime time schedule. And so many titles. Yeah. [00:13:12] Speaker A: What if it was all fiction? The whole thing was fiction. There never had been a Bob Dylan. This is just about. Wasn't any. None of this had any purchase outside the film, so we can't even imagine that. [00:13:28] Speaker D: No. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I always pair it up with chronicles. Um, and I, and I've written on this about how it's. Chronicles was written just after this. And so they either juxtaposed or over as projects. And it must have overlapped with love and theft, which we also talked, and I've often talked about them being a trilogy of sorts. But there's definitely. Chronicles is about a young man from Minnesota who goes off, heads east to make good in the world. He has a despotic father, although his father is frail, leveled by polio. He has. He has all these weird encounters with strange characters throughout. It's really the same thing as mass Anonymous. It just heads in a different direction. Mask and anonymous is about a guy who's actually born to wealth and power, who rejects it. But they do pretty much the same thing. They play the same music, that's for sure. Jack Fate and Bob Dylan. [00:14:31] Speaker D: Yeah. And the music is definitely one of the highlights. Right. Not only certain performances, but Dylan. I love that. Cold irons bound, for instance. That's the best. The best recorded version, I guess I've ever heard of that song? And some others like Diamond Joe, I really like. And what is it? I'll remember you. [00:14:51] Speaker C: Is that the other one? [00:14:52] Speaker D: That's a good performance. And I love some of the COVID the spanish reimaginations of Bob Dylan's song. Some of that's really cool and put to effective use. The music. The soundtrack is interesting, for sure. I can say that without kind of equivocation or asterisk. [00:15:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. [00:15:09] Speaker D: But it's hard to say that about the film itself. [00:15:12] Speaker C: What's best about it, I think, is you're right. I think you have the soundtrack really is cool. I think that seeing Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton interact in those moments is it. There's a great scene. There's a lot you can do. And if we had Rob here, we could really dig into what his comment about Ed Harris. Everyone took a pay cut, right? That's the IMDb thing. Everyone but took a pay cut to work with Dylan. But Ed Harris went a step further. [00:15:40] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:42] Speaker C: But there's a scene, there's a part in Dixie which you can. That's a whole separate issue here. I know, but there's a part where Dylan maybe hesitates on a lyric, and there's a really great sort of, Larry Charlie eyes are matched up and they're, they keep going. And I think Larry always seems like he's about to laugh throughout this entire thing. But there's like a real moment of, real performance of this is a real group of people, and that's great. I love that. I love the soundtrack. That's cool. What it all adds up to. Oh, also, when I was thinking about that board that has empire, like you mentioned greatly with Empire burlesque and all that, part of me wonders almost that it was too obvious. Right? Like, maybe it should have been more of a, you pause it and you go, oh, hey, that's cool. Not sitting there going, oh, it's Empire burlesque. It's almost on the edge of corny for me, rather than Easter egg, or if it's an Easter egg, it's a pretty decorative. [00:16:40] Speaker D: And some of them may just be my imagination, not intentional, but that's equally valid. Just song. It matters what a song means to you, not what the intention of the artist was. And the same holds true as a spectator of this film. [00:16:53] Speaker C: But there's a lot of stuff in. [00:16:55] Speaker D: Yeah, the scene with Cheech that we were referring to when Dylan has his leg propped up on a bench and it feels like a visual allusion to the COVID of another side of Bob Dylan to me, or times when he's in the back of the van after he's been arrested at the end of the show, it feels a close up that we've seen in the getaway cars from don't look back or some of that rescued footage that Scorsese uses in no direction home. So it feels like illusions, even. I guess it doesn't matter if that, if it was intended that way or not. It makes me peel back my memories, my visual memories of Bob Dylan in ways that I like. So I guess that's a good thing. [00:17:41] Speaker C: I think you're absolutely right. I think there is a lot of stuff there. And I think that board, which could have been maybe done a little bit different, that board is like a clue because it comes fairly early in the movie. I think the board is a clue that there's, hey, I don't know what audiences that it's got. To Nina's point, I don't know what audiences there. That's Dylan, therefore Dylan. And who would be well versed in all of this? But maybe there were people who were like, what's Empire burlesque? Is that a real show? [00:18:06] Speaker B: One of the titles is masked and anonymous. [00:18:09] Speaker A: Yes. From Anna self there. [00:18:11] Speaker B: Yeah, well, in terms of visual illusions. So the movie, it starts with imagery of cataclysms, right? These violent affairs. There's a volcano erupting, some natural disasters, and then there's human made violence, protests, people being beaten with no context. Just Larry Charles doing this semi creature thing over it. It's always like, on the radio, and that's apparently Larry Charles voice. And then it starts scanning the streets. It scans faces very closely, and there's all these people just sitting on the street. And that was actually picked up by Todd Haynes, and I'm not there. Exactly the same. And then there's also. He also pans the street like he's driving. They're driving along. You see people standing there, which echoes, don't look back. And Todd Haynes did his film several years later, I think 2007, but, yeah, so there's these. But there is definitely a don't look back feel to that. And I love, I hadn't thought about the one. Great at the end, though, in the van. That's very much the same thing. Driving away from the fans with the back window scene. [00:19:20] Speaker D: Give the anarchist a cigarette. That moment. Cool. [00:19:24] Speaker C: And I like that. [00:19:25] Speaker D: How long the close up is on. Extreme close up on his face there at the end. Because when you're watching it, you realize just how rarely you get to stare at Bob Dylan unobscured during that. He makes so many efforts with his hoodies and his glasses and his furtive, even on stage, the efforts he'll make to use mic stands to hide your view or the piano itself. And it feels like such a luxury to just get to stare at the guy's face for so long. So it is unmasked. Maybe that's partially what they were going for. There. A kind of naked truth there at the end. [00:20:03] Speaker A: Have you read CP Lee's book? Like a bullet of light on Dylan's films? It's really worth reading. And he makes the comment in it that no one can make the case that Bob Dylan is a. That his acting skills are worth examining too closely. But Lee does say that his face takes close ups as well as any significant actor that has ever been in films, and that I find that very true. There's a way that he's present and present on film in a way that is correlated. Saying is really arresting. And I think that Madison Anonymous does justice to that. Maybe a little too much. But the eyes. [00:20:54] Speaker C: Right? The eyes. And I was fortunate to see two of the kind of later or the last alleged rough and roddy way show in Austin, if we think it's the last. But that was general admission and the latin. The show before that I saw was general admission. And being against the rail or close to the rail with Dylan, there is a moment you're like, I've never been. Never been physically closer. You're not sitting back. And the lighting was a little bit different. You could see discernible things going on because there was a while, like what Graylee was saying, that it wasn't. You couldn't discern much with the amber whining. And it is interesting. And the film doesn't shy away from. I think you're right, Nina. There's a frailty to him, but it's also like it's him. It's literally him. And it's hard to. Yes, I think it works in some way. [00:21:45] Speaker D: Dylan is the second frailest thing in the film. The most frail thing is that bottle that he breaks on the bar. Because if every bottle were as delicate. [00:21:55] Speaker C: I thought. [00:21:58] Speaker D: We never drink anything. It would just shatter in our hands. [00:22:01] Speaker C: This limb. I got the. There's a list of stuff that Dylan wanted to do. I want the breakaway bottle. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:09] Speaker C: I want these. I want the rocking boss, that's not. I want these things in the movie. And we're to do it. The swinging and the punch. Yeah, I love all that. [00:22:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Another delicate thing in the movie we haven't even talked about is, is the character played by. By Penelope Cruz, Pagan Lace, who's this strange amalgam of religious fanaticism, OCD behaviors, and a relationship with Tom friend, which makes no sense at all. And at the end of the movie, she rejects booze. She rejects booze. But Tom friend's murdered. She's standing over him. And I don't know if you could see it, it's furtive. But uncle sweetheart John Goodman hands her a bottle, and she takes a swig at the very end of the movie after rejecting booze the whole time. Any thoughts about that character? Because I find that character just fascinating. It doesn't add anything whatsoever to the plot. Nothing. And yet there's several scenes with her in it. [00:23:10] Speaker D: It felt to me like something drawn from one of those old western ballads. Right. El Paso by Marty Robbins felt like so many things in the play, it felt, if not stereotypical, then at least it's going for some kind of archetype or abstraction. And that's some of the things I don't like about the movie. [00:23:30] Speaker B: Right. [00:23:30] Speaker D: It's just hard that every character in it seems to be a representative of a thing. Tom Friend, who's, like, the worst reporter ever, and Dylan gets to work out his wish fulfillment fantasy to murder a journalist with a broken guitar. Yeah, she seems like she is the south of the border faithful who is doomed to cry tears over her murdered boyfriend. [00:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't like. I don't like her character. There's the way she's the overall, the overdone, simple, pious woman figure that I don't like. And Penelope Cruz does a great job with this, but bringing that, this intensity and this driven strangeness to the character. But it was too much of a type, a female, female piety. [00:24:36] Speaker B: And she's almost the opposite of the other major female character played by Jessica Lange, who's Nina Veronica, who literally masturbates in a trailer on the set. [00:24:52] Speaker A: You can probably edit this out, but when I was worked at that Barnes and noble where everyone. Where I have all kinds of good stories about. So she lived nearby, lives on the Upper west side. And she would come into the stores in the middle of the day and just stand Stocksville in the middle of the first floor doing nothing with an unlit cigarette in her mouth. And she would pass 510 minutes in this strange. And people would walk by looking at this woman, and we were terrified. She'd light the cigarette and the security guard would have to come and she would do this. She really had a strange thing going. [00:25:35] Speaker B: On, and maybe she was in character. [00:25:40] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe she was. Yes. [00:25:42] Speaker D: So that was Francis Farmer. [00:25:44] Speaker A: She really is very. She's very. Makes quite an impression. And she would just stand stock still, silent in the middle of the Barnes and noble. I thought she was terrific. I really thought that everybody. It really makes an. Every time I watch this movie, I think, jesus, these Jeb Bridges and Ed Harris and John Goodman, they are on every single scene that they're in. Don't you think? [00:26:10] Speaker B: The cameos. [00:26:11] Speaker A: No one is phoning anything in for 2 seconds. Nobody. [00:26:16] Speaker B: Christian Slater and Chris Penn changing, exchanging quips. They're great. Luke Wilson, it's probably his best role. [00:26:24] Speaker C: Yes. [00:26:24] Speaker D: Wearing that snakeskin jacket from Brando's the fugitive kind, which is another visual illusion. I think Scott Warmth was the one who drew my attention to that. But he's totally right. [00:26:37] Speaker B: I did learn something about Jessica Lang when I was looking up a few things about the movie that I did not realize that she and Sam shepherd were partners at one point. [00:26:49] Speaker D: Oh, for a very long time. Yeah. [00:26:51] Speaker B: I didn't know that. So that was another sort of Dylan past connection there. [00:26:57] Speaker C: What's funny about this film, and I was watching it again, is that it seems. I don't remember what I thought that it seemed futuristic at the time or ahead of its time. I'm not. I don't remember. But it seems so of its time now. Like Luke Wilson, I am not going to take your Luke Wilson slander. [00:27:18] Speaker A: But. [00:27:19] Speaker C: He'S a tough one. Right. But like Luke Wilson, and like, the digital filming of it, it all seems so. If you put this on there, you'd be less 2003. That's 2004. And even the soundtrack, that was when a lot of that stuff was happening. These mashups. I think it works really well here. I think some of those performances are really great. At the same time, it seems like this is a very time of the place part of it, and yet it's set in the future, which I think is a nice little enigmatic touch, is. [00:27:45] Speaker D: Like, what is it set in the future? [00:27:48] Speaker C: And it's supposed to be. I thought it was supposed to be. [00:27:50] Speaker B: I think it's an old. I think of it more of as an alternate universe. [00:27:53] Speaker D: Okay. [00:27:53] Speaker C: To the side of us, it's set adjacent. That's fair. I'm learning all sorts of stuff about this film. [00:28:02] Speaker D: We've got to talk about the Oscar Vogel scene. [00:28:05] Speaker C: That's what I was going to say, though, Graylee. It's just. Is that you have that part which is such a deep crying, attempting to do something of some sort. Weird death. That's my take on. I greatly love to hear what you have to say about it. [00:28:20] Speaker D: The thing. It's such a risky move, and they squandered the risks completely. You think, wow, okay, as soon as you see Ed Harrison, blackface. Okay, he's going there. Let's see what Dylan has to say about his love and theft, his legacy to blackface minstrelsy. Right. And there's not a single reference anywhere in anything that Oscar Vogel says or that Dylan says. And he says almost nothing in that scene that even alludes to the fact that the guy sitting there in blackface or that alludes to the minstrelsy tradition in any overt way. Instead, if you were just reading the words on the page, it would never occur to you that the figure is taking the form of a character in blackface. He's talking about a kind of artist who dares to speak truth to power and apparently is murdered by the despotic king, the father of Jack Faith, for it. But in what universe do we associate minstrels, performers as speaking truth to power? And there are at least two directions, quotations from Shakespeare in that. So you think, why not just make it a shakespearean performer? If you're going to quote from Hamlet, if you're going the. What is the line about beggar, beggar, that I am even poor in thanks. Which is a quote from Hamlet. And then you've got all the worlds of stage. One of the most famous quotes from Shakespeare. I guess that's from as you like it, right? But he missed the figure. I think partly is meant to allude to Yorick the jester, who. The skull that Hamlet holds in his hand and has that last. Poor Yorick. I knew him, fellow of infinite jest, a jester back in the day when young Hamlet was. Was a kid in the court and sounds like a shakespearean figure. Why the hell I know that sometimes blackface minstrelsy included scenes from Shakespeare and Shake and Dylan includes some shakespearean illusions in his own love and theft album. But I just don't know. It's like you're going to go all the way to such an inflammatory image and then do nothing with it. It's just. I don't know, it's. I'm not a fan of that scene. It's willing to go there with him, but he doesn't go there himself. It's, I don't know, a missed opportunity. [00:30:40] Speaker A: We have to. It's an affected, heavy handed irony. And we have to do all the work of doing all the work of unpacking the minstrels. But the black face, it's through this. And that's very. I don't. I totally agree with you. It's heavy handed and overdone and affected. [00:31:02] Speaker D: And yeah, I will say the one thing that. And again, we're having to do all the work to fill this in. But I do think. And someone. I'm not the first person to think this. I feel like it was Murray Lee, Murray Lieder, the guy who wrote a good article on masculinity. I think I got the idea for there. So credit where it's due. But I do think Dylan on some level, has in mind some connection between Jack Frost and Jack fate and Jack Robin, right. The famous character played by Al Jolson in the jazz singer, where you've got a jewish character, Jakey Rabinowitz, who eventually goes into playing minstrel performer and changes his name to Jack Robin. There's something going on there. But the Murray leaders of the world have to do all the work to make sense of it. Because the film doesn't do anything other than just gesture in that direction and then leave you to your own homework. [00:32:02] Speaker C: What's challenging about it is it's challenging a lot of levels, but it's also. There is. And you have to be very careful with this. But there is like a nuanced argument to be made with how some of this stuff works. There's a coarseness, there's a vulgarity, there's an obvious racism to a lot of those pieces, or all of it. But it's also this element, like if you look at the Al Jolson in a jazz singer, he's able to access parts of his life he can only do through blackface. Right? That's like the emotional. Don't put value on that. But the idea that he can only appreciate some of the emotional tenor of life is through blackface. Not saying valid, not valid, but that's part of that whole story and that's playing into this. But you also have Dixie sitting there. Dylan is giving you Dixie, he's giving you blackface. And I think that without much structure, it's hard to really pull together if there's a larger meaning there. It's also just those two things. It's just they sit there. It's not like it's, oh, this is going some direction, necessarily. Mast and anonymous is all sitting there. We have. But it's. Again, you're pulling the strings on this. The other thing I'll say is that if you take the movie out of its moment, that's a period when Blackface was prominent. Again, you have tropic thunder. You had Billy Crystal, right? Was it. He had blackface for something, for the Oscars or something. There's a period when, like, people were trying to, like, are we making a comment on this? Mad Men. There's a scene of Mad Men where they use blackface, which I think is actually done very well because it's showing sort of the inherent elitism and racism embedded in that. But still, it's a character. I'm blackface. And they're done in a way that is not. You're not given footnotes, you're not given citations, you're not provided any larger text, really, other than the fact that here's Dylan Singh and Dixie, and here's Dylan talking to someone in blackface. And there's no real satisfying set of connectors other than what you can probably pull from it, which ultimately may be the film. Right. That you have a hodgepodge of things that might make more sense outside of the film. Again, that seems to be a little bit of an academic game. And I mean that in the positive way. That's what we do a lot of. [00:34:15] Speaker B: Times in terms of the moment and blackface. This was also just a few years after Bamboozle. [00:34:22] Speaker A: Spike Leesman. [00:34:23] Speaker D: Whoa. [00:34:24] Speaker B: Which features a lot of blackface. [00:34:28] Speaker C: It's interesting, though, like that late nineties, early aughts period. It seems like there's a lot of people trying to play with that again, maybe from a smart, intelligent, non racialized, or trying to create a non racialized racist element to it, but I don't. You've got it. Like Greeley was saying, you're on a tightrope with stuff and it's on fire. [00:34:50] Speaker B: And bamboozles hard the other way. [00:34:52] Speaker C: That's a separate story. I'm not saying that they're all the same thing, but there was a moment and it seemed like filmmakers and people were trying to. Can we create this? You have it on television, some of the sitcom, not sitcom, but like sketch shows and stuff. It's a tough one. [00:35:08] Speaker B: And then the whole Ed Harris character is Oscar Vogel is completely anachronistic. [00:35:16] Speaker D: If. [00:35:17] Speaker B: Even if this world of the film is our time, because the president isn't that old, I don't think that he would have been the president when there was during the years of Minstrelsy. And there's all these references to history, mostly musical history, that are accurate to our own history. About Woodstock and whatnot. And so it makes no sense at all in terms of the context of the world building. [00:35:49] Speaker C: Jim, I think you found a flaw in the movie. [00:35:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:55] Speaker D: It's such a mashup. Right. Because it takes place in its own civil war context. And so apparently that justifies these reaches to have Abraham Lincoln walking in the background and the Dixie and blackface, menstrual sea and the Shakespeare thing. There's definitely someone could write a whole paper on what he's doing with Shakespeare in this, too, because I mentioned Hamlet, and I still like Hamlet is partially behind certain scenes in this play, but I feel King Lear, too. The rival brothers here, Jack fate, and the character played by Mickey Rourke. Phil, very Edgar and Edmund. [00:36:34] Speaker B: His name is Edmund. [00:36:36] Speaker D: That must be why. Yeah. [00:36:40] Speaker C: When I thought when I was watching this, which has nothing to do with 2003, is I just seen civil War twice. I've seen Civil War twice. The current film, Civil War, and having that in the background as, like, opening those opening shots is really interesting in terms of people still want to play with that. And also, just to bring this all around, we have Taylor Swift saying that if she could live at any time, it'd be the 1830s without all the racism. And there's a great person online who was like, is she there for the banking crisis? What part of this is it? The cholera? What part of any race? There's this playful time. I shouldn't say playful, but there's a period right now that people are playing with these issues then, too. So maybe in this way, there is, like, a discussion as that. Maybe. But again, I think that this is something that is set up for other people to do that's not in the film itself, which might be fun, but it's also not necessarily making it a rewarding film in the sense of, oh, that's really cool. All those things are juxtaposed. Is that those juxtapositions that are being discussed elsewhere, does it make it dated? [00:37:47] Speaker A: Like, do you find that this film is dated? That's one. I don't know that I would call it that. That isn't the flaw, that in the film that it looks dated. [00:38:01] Speaker C: I don't know if it. I don't know if it's necessarily dated. [00:38:03] Speaker A: As a. Yeah, but now it has a real steampunk look to. It's not an easy, retro dystopia mess. I think that the production value and the use of space in the film is really interesting, that spaces have no borders and no, the characters move from one space that, see that's ambiguous. Yeah, a lot of caves. Yeah, I like that about that. [00:38:38] Speaker D: That's done well in the circus carnival atmosphere, which Dylan always loves, all set. [00:38:45] Speaker B: Up just to have man eating chicken. [00:38:47] Speaker A: Yeah, chicken. [00:38:50] Speaker D: That's right. I was just going to say a chicken who doesn't fare so well is in the scene with Val Kilmer. And that is, I do find that an interesting scene. I can't make any sense of it, but it seems appropriate to be a scene in this film, even in its senselessness. Right. In fact, before I knew you were going to mention Beckett in your intro, Jim, I had said that the character seems lucky and godot. Right. This kind of stream of nonsense that you feel like on some level it's making sense. He's this, this autistic shepherd who's also feels like he's making some sort of grand existential statement. And the title of the film comes from one of his lines. Right. Humans, they're masked and anonymous. [00:39:38] Speaker B: Yeah. I have a question about the plot, because I'll tell you, the first couple times I watched this, I was really baffled by exactly what Jack fates relationship was to the present. I got him as a son, but I didn't understand the whole, I can't remember her character's name, the role played by Angela Bassett. There's the scenes where it's like a Bob Dylan esque figure. There's a flashback seen through a closet door, and then there's a reference by Tom friend, the reporter, to a brother, to Jack Fate, who disappeared. And Jack fates is, oh, it was a hunt. He went hunting and he never came back or something like that. And I always thought that maybe Jack fate was the one in the closet and it was the brother who got thrown down the stairs. But then later on, Jack Fate makes some reference to his fall, right, while they're showing him being thrown down the stairs. And I actually, a number of years ago when I was writing it, I actually wrote on this film, and I was doing some research and I found a screenplay that had some more information. And the way it was originally conceived, and I don't know why it got cut, was that the mother, his mother put him up to trying to seduce his father's lover in order to expose him, and that there was a person in the closet with a camera who was supposed to film the whole thing. Where the brother comes from, I don't know anything about that. No explanation for that. But until I read that was with. [00:41:13] Speaker D: The 7th son and they were both Highway 61, Jim, something like that. Uncle sweetheart also feels like one of the promoter figures from that song to me, too. [00:41:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely. [00:41:23] Speaker A: Yes. [00:41:23] Speaker B: Definitely. For sure. But so I guess my. So that. That's the plot explanation, but I'll be honest with you, that never crystallized for me until I found the screenplay, which, by the way, is attributed to a short story written by a spanish writer who apparently never existed. But anyhow, what are your thoughts about that? Have you ever been able to make sense of that on your own? Or did I just solve the mystery with this? [00:41:49] Speaker D: Having read the screenplay, the thing that. One of the things that's so hard for me to buy is that Jack fate is the son of this guy, because he'd have to be impossibly old since Jack fate. In this braille. Jack fate seems to be about 200 years old himself. And so I don't know how this despot has been hanging on for so long. If you find a thin point in the plot, the greater challenge is to find a thick point in the plot. [00:42:15] Speaker A: Yes. Isn't it a flashback that he had this tryst with Angela Bassett's character in the hotel, the Whitman Hotel. And so when he goes into his room, he's having a flashback to this, but I don't. [00:42:33] Speaker D: That's how I read. [00:42:34] Speaker A: Understand the brother. [00:42:35] Speaker D: Yeah. [00:42:36] Speaker A: I don't know any. I can't. [00:42:37] Speaker B: Yeah, I read much more into the brother. [00:42:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:40] Speaker B: Oh, when I first saw it, thinking, oh, it's the brother in the. Or, he's in the closet, and it's the brother having the tryst or something like that. Or the brothers. And I couldn't figure it out, but it's messy, even with the explanation, it's a little thin. And the mother is the opposite of his mother. [00:42:59] Speaker D: Right. [00:42:59] Speaker B: Beatty. He was devoted to her. She was devoted to him right up until the end. And that's another one of those things where Jack fate and Bob Dylan diverge in opposite directions. And that happens quite a bit in. [00:43:12] Speaker D: This, that brief scene between uncle sweetheart and Bobby Cupid. So John Goodman and Luke Wilson characters, when they were offering competing interpretations of drifter's escape. I love the idea of Bob Dylan trying to imagine his way into the convoluted interpretations folks like us come up with his songs. And I thought it was a pretty good job of their. I thought both of them had interesting interpretations. Too bad Rob, our John Wesley Harding expert, isn't here to weigh in on that, because that I like it was so heavy handed, the way he treated Tom friend and murdered him off as one of those times reporter or San Francisco press conference style. Idiots asking inane questions. But that part, the kind of more someone who loves the music is trying to do justice to interpreting it. I thought that was an interesting scene. [00:44:13] Speaker B: And Pagan lace just before that says something like, I love his music because it can be interpreted in so many different ways. You never know what it really means. Which kind of harkens back to diamonds and rust. You were always so vague. [00:44:32] Speaker D: And I think the only smile that Dylan cracks in the whole thing, though, there's a kind of smirk on his face in that long close up at the end. But the only genuine warmth and smile where he breaks out of this dour, somber thing he's doing. The whole thing is when the little girl sings, times they are changing. So that's a sweet moment there. [00:44:53] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:44:54] Speaker A: Likes children. Yes. [00:44:56] Speaker B: Although apparently he complained that she got one of the words wrong. [00:45:02] Speaker A: Oh, really? [00:45:04] Speaker B: I don't know. That's true. You read these things, you don't even remember where. And by the way, the mother of the girl was Dylan's daughter in law. She was married to one of. One of his sons. [00:45:15] Speaker A: Oh. [00:45:16] Speaker B: Not sure which one. So that's another weird tidbit again. I don't know how I know that. It's just one of those things I've had in my head for a long time. I know more about this movie than I realized before. [00:45:26] Speaker A: This clearly. [00:45:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little frightening. Any final words here? We worn out? Are we all masked and anonymous? Doubt. [00:45:36] Speaker A: Yeah, we got more out of this than I expected. [00:45:40] Speaker B: Somebody says that every time. [00:45:43] Speaker A: But this time we really did. [00:45:47] Speaker B: Bye everyone. [00:45:48] Speaker A: Bye everyone. [00:45:50] Speaker D: See you next. [00:45:52] Speaker B: Thank you for listening to the Dylan Ponds podcast. Be sure to subscribe to have the Dylan Tons sent directly to your inbox and share the Dylan tons on social media.