“This is good, but I really prefer when you write touching, funny stuff. You should stick with that.” A filmmaker friend and fellow screenwriter told me that a year or so ago.
He’d read a script I’d written that, while funny at times, deals with someone trying to recover from an unspeakable tragedy and not making much progress. He didn’t hate the screenplay, but he didn’t love it and didn’t want to make it. I think it’s a good script and could touch a lot of souls, but the reaction of those who have seen it has been generally the same, which is, “Stick to what you do well.
” That’s what “A Complete Unknown,” the new biopic about Bob Dylan, deals with as much as anything. It’s about how it’s essential for an artist to grow and change if that artist is going to feel fulfilled in his or her art. Yes, a substantial portion of the movie is about Dylan’s creation of his own myth and his cantankerous, self-indulgent personality, but the film is mostly about Dylan challenging himself musically.
Dylan rose to prominence as a phenom singing folk music, accompanied by his acoustic guitar. Dylan, though, never considered himself solely a folk musician. He thought of himself as simply a musician, and he did not like being told he had to stay within the strictures created by folk music purists.
After a few years in the spotlight, Dylan and his bandmates plugged in their instruments and started rocking out. The music was still folk in its essence, but it was e.