A complete unknown (title only cropped from movie poster)

Having watched “A Complete Unknown”, I am once again calling to cancel the pathetic egos of predator men in music (and generally)

CN: SPOILERS, refs to non-consenting sexual behaviour (not in the film)

For the first time in years I took myself on a date and went to see a film, “A Complete Unknown” directed by James Mangold. I was moved by the live music and sold a story. A story about Bob Dylan and his rebellious journey to make music which ruffled feathers, specifically daring to play original songs and performing electric when people wanted acoustic folk.

Turns out Bob Dylan crossed more than a few lines.

One of the key facts about this film is that it’s only semi-biographical. Calling it a story of Dylan’s life is some meta-fabrication game - boringly old hat in the world of cult icons.

In this piece, I’ve focused mainly on “A Complete Unknown”’s woefully inaccurate portrayal of Joan Baez.

Photo of Joan Baez by Heinrich Klaffs (details)

In “A Complete Unknown”, after Baez and Bob Dylan spend the night together, she makes coffee and noticed the lyrics to the song “Blowin in the wind”. She convinces him to play it to her for the first time and then she joins in, and goes on to cover it. He is shown to be sad about this and passively put up with it.

As a musician, this was one of the points I made to my musician friend, who responded that Joan Baez wasn't the kind of person to exploit and that the portrayal of her in the film sounded dubious. I regret to say I was at first incredulous. All the articles I’m quoting here were easily found online by the way.

“This scene takes place in October 1962. In reality, he’d been playing the song at Village coffeehouses since at least April 1962. It was published in a May 1962 issue of Broadside, and a June 1962 issue of Sing Out! Dylan recorded it in July 1962. By October of that year, it wouldn’t have been new to Baez or anyone on the folk scene.” (Rolling Stone)

I wonder why Dylan wanted to convey that he didn’t get to record or benefit from the song before Joan did.

When the director Mangold resisted the inclusion of a particular untruth in the script, “Dylan glibly replied: “What do you care what other people think?” (American Songwriter)

Ironically it seems that Dylan does cares a lot what people think or he wouldn’t have gone to the lengths he did to craft a plot of altered facts.

“Fake tidbits from Dylan’s life have become popular once more” (American Songwriter)

“In reality, Dylan was more fixated on Baez’s younger sister Mimi when they met for the second time. Dylan and Baez did indeed have a brief romance, but it didn’t start until much later.” (Rolling Stone)

Wait.. it gets worse.

In “A Complete Unknown”, Dylan is invited on to Baez’s tour, doesn’t get to shine as himself and hates performing “Blowin in the wind” to the point that he storms off stage.

Yet “the onstage spat is fiction.” (Rolling Stone)

The film omits to mention that Baez toured with Dylan and he treated her badly. By focusing largely on Dylan’s obscurity, struggle to record original music at first (at least something is true) and a sudden rise to fame, he is enshrined in a light of perpetual struggle and recklessness defiance. The only moment when he seems to face the consequences of cheating on his girlfriend Sylvie (real name Suze Rotolo) when she walks away from him at the festival didn’t even happen!

“By the time of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan was living at the Chelsea Hotel in New York with future wife Sara Lownds, and she was pregnant with their son Jesse.” (Rolling Stone)

“Baez explains in her 1987 memoir, And a Voice to Sing With (which now I really want to read!) that the promoter Bill Graham had originally promised Baez equal billing and the chance for a Dylan duet every night. Yet that’s not how it all transpired, Baez’s name was tiny on the post for the events, and she was largely disrespected throughout the tour.”

And I’m afraid it gets worse…

Baez went to Dylan’s dressing room to tell him to quit. She kissed Dylan on the forehead. He was covered in white face (I mean that says a lot too).

According to her, he complimented her then,

“Bob started running his hand up my skirt, around the back of my knee and partway up my thigh,” she wrote. “‘Wow, you got great legs. Where’d you get those muscles?'
In a scathing retort, she said: “From rehearsing. I stand up and rehearse a lot. Baez removes Dylan’s hand from under her skirt and places it on his chest. Baez exited leaving a mumbling Bob Dylan promising an invitation to duet that night.”

(Far Out Magazine)

I was an alternative rock and metal fan in the 90s, while living as a girl & woman. Finding out in recent years that many of my teen idols were sexual predators has given to many emotions ranging from volcanic disgust and fury, to severe disappointment, to bafflement…

Why do powerful, rich men assume every woman desires them?

Why does Bob Dylan who has fans all over the world anyway need to pretend he was victimised by Baez, who he treated badly?

In “A Complete Unknown”, it’s not Baez but Dylan’s girlfriend who introduces him to activism whereas she is conveyed as someone who is more conformist.

Actually, Baez “spent her life and career dedicated to civil rights and social justice issues both in the U.S. and throughout the world, for over 65 years. As a young woman she declined to play in any white student venues that were segregated, which meant that when she toured the Southern states, she would play only at black colleges. Among the seemingly countless causes she has championed are prison and death penalty reform, LGBTQ+ rights, protesting the war in Vietnam, civil rights in Iran, protesting the war in Iraq, and Occupy Wall Street. She sang at many civil rights marches and rallies in the mid 1960’s.” (Village Preservation)

In comparison with Dylan, I feel like Baez's interview shows self-reflection and humbleness. When asked about her "addiction" to activism, she responded,

“It was a time period when I had to fill a void. It’s a pretty lovely way to fill it. I did what I felt I had to do, and I took pleasure in doing it, even if it was dangerous and weird. I felt comfortable there, and at some point, I should have been doing less. Like, why did I go off to Cambodia when my kid really needed me?” (Vanity Fair)

“Monica Barbaro, who plays Baez in the Dylan biopic, called Baez to discuss the film. “She was really not fussed about the film,” Barbaro told The Guardian.
“Truly. I think I was more concerned on her behalf than she was for herself. I was sort of saying, ‘You deserve your own biopic!’ So many biopics with different chapters of your life!’
“And she said, ‘I’m just sitting in my backyard watching the birds.’ You know? I lived it. I did it.”
Baez’s indifferent response to her former colleague’s biopic is a testament to her entire career. The folk singer eventually traded her guitar for a painter’s easel and has pursued visual art and social justice causes ever since.”

(American Songwriter)

As I've been paradoxically (?!) fascinated by scummy characters lately, I was curious to see how Timothée Chalamet would play another dirtbag like his character in “Lady Bird”.

After I saw “Lady Bird” I tried to search on social media for a film poster or a slide of Greta Gerwig, who played the title role, but I just found Chalamet smouldering everywhere and thought, well someone has his PR sorted.

My friend tells me Chalamet is the It Boy of US. But what I am sad and cross about is that this means is that many people who like him could watch “A Complete Unknown” and be sold these fantasies and lies about Joan Baez.

It bothers me that we are sold the myth of another toxic cishet man celebrity.

Arguably you have to take any media with a pitch of salt. A quick online search tells you that music journalists are well aware of the inaccuracies - but I’m reminded that as a teen and into my mid 20s I would often take certain tellings at face value and I feel this the same for a lot of people. All the articles were easily found online, but I wonder how many members of the audience who are new to Dylan’s life would search up the facts?

Now I wish I had saved my £6.99 ticket fee and spent it on a trans zine.

Writing this has made me hope to spend more time researching women musicians as like my mum’s piano teacher Betty Drown (who co-founded the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra but seems unmentioned) they write history but are written out of it. I have a Joan Baez Songbook and I’m definitely going to check it out.

To me, the thing that is a complete unknown about this film is... a sense of integrity.