The rise of a young man destined to change the course of American music is documented in Director James Mangold’s biographical drama, A Complete Unknown.
Mangold’s film takes us back to the early 1960s when 19-year-old Bob Dylan arrived in New York with his guitar and revolutionary talent. Once there, he sets about forging relationships with music icons of Greenwich Village but his restlessness with the folk movement leads him to make a controversial choice that reverberates worldwide.
On December 7, after the DGA membership screening in Los Angeles, Mangold discussed the making of A Complete Unknown during a Q&A moderated by Director Guillermo del Toro (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio). He also spoke about the film with Director Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher) following the New York screening on December 14.
During the Los Angeles conversation, Mangold revealed how he used what he learned from action films and used Dylan’s songs to build scenes.
“One of the things that was strongly occurring for me was this idea that we talk about the music, and then the scene and the music. It’s not unlike what we’ve learned making action films, which is that there is no set piece and then drama, they’re all just the movie and you can’t divide them into these parcels for production purposes. We have to be really conscious of it’s not a scene and then a song, it’s the song is a scene. It’s part of the reason we were so insistent on trying to do so much live and it’s also a kind of dramatic awareness you have that if it’s just the song and there’s nothing else going on triangulating underneath the song in terms of the looks and glances and subtexts and actions. Then it’s just a variety show and that’s not what we’re doing. So, this maintenance of awareness is really important.”
Mangold’s other directorial credits include the feature films Ford v Ferrari, Logan, The Wolverine, Knight and Day, 3:10 to Yuma, Walk the Line, Kate & Leopold, Cop Land and Girl, Interrupted; and the pilots for the series Vegas and Men in Trees. Mangold won a Special Jury Recognition and was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for his 1995 feature Heavy at the Sundance Film Festival. He has been a DGA member since 1985.