SUNDAY, JANUARY 26, 2025
A drunken blues man, plus Becka: Based upon his own implied account, James Mangold is a narrative genius.
As we noted yesterday, he isn't constructing Wikipedia entries. He isn't one of those Disney Hall of the Presidents types.
He knows how to take a real-life story and make it many times better. This also happens to be one of the three thousand ways we Blues let the other guy win.
With that, we return to A Complete Unknown, the name of the new Mangold "fiction." (We're quoting the New York Times review when we use that puzzling term.)
Mangold is a highly skilled, very high-ranking, big-time Tinseltown figure. He knows how to make major movies. (For the record, he may also be the nicest guy in the world.)
As noted, the title is A Complete Unknown. Presumably, that refers to what his film's leading figure remains by the end of the Oscar-nominated film in question.
What was the narrative arc of this film? What is supposed to have happened by the time it ends?
We saw the film on Thursday, and we have no real idea. On the other hand, we can tell you this:
Midway through A Complete Unknown, a somewhat funny thing happens. A character appears, then disappears. The character's name is "Becka."
That said, who the Son House is Becka supposed to be? Accurately or otherwise, here's what Vanity Fair and at least two other sources have said—and we've seen no one say different:
A Complete Unknown: What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in the Bob Dylan Biopic
[...]
A Complete Unknown also shows Dylan on the arm of a British woman named Becka, played by Laura Kariuki. She seems to be a complete fabrication. Someone who isn’t in the film, however, is Carolyn Hester, a significant figure in the folk revivalism scene who had Dylan sit in and blow harmonica on a version of “I’ll Fly Away” that became one of his first professional recording gigs. Hester was briefly married to Richard Fariña, the singer and author who later married and recorded with Joan Baez’s sister Mimi—just to show you how circular this whole scene was.
Hester doesn't appear in the film. Neither does Mike Seeger. (In his own memoir of the era, Dylan says, at some length, that he decided he'd have to start writing his own songs when he realized he could never perform traditional material anywhere as well as Mike Seeger could. We're speaking here about Mike Seeger, not about his older half-brother Pete.)
Hester is OUT, and so is Seeger. On the other hand, some person named Becka is IN. According to Vanity Fair, Becka is "a British woman" who also happens to be "a complete fabrication."
Becka appears in one fairly substantial scene. In that scene, she gobbles up a brace of concerns which, in the actual story of the actual lives, seem to have been borrowed from Suze Rotolo, Dylan's first (highly influential) New York City girl friend.
In one of the most grisly manifestations of Mangold's narrative genius, he dumbs the Rotolo character way, way down, turning here into a weepy girl friend who won't go away—a weepy girl friend who, judged upon her physical presentation, seems to have been picked up at a mixer at Miss Porter's. (More on that below.)
We'd call that portrait disrespectful and a disgrace. We'd say it reflects a grisly, highly familiar form of Tinseltown gender politics.
Luckily, Mangold is a narrative genius, so he decided to sub Becka in. Vanity Fair omits one somewhat surprising fact:
In the film, Becka isn't just British (and model-ready). Becka is also black!
Just like that, the young Dylan has a British-accented, model-ready black girl friend! At any rate, Becka comes and goes in that one fairly substantial scene. The Rotolo character is still crying over Dylan in at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, which in real life she didn't attend.
In the film, she's till crying at Newport long after the actual Rotolo and the actual Dylan ceased to be a couple. Also, it was just a few months before Dylan married Sara Lownds (in November of that year).
As of Newport, Lownds was already pregnant with the first of the four children of their eight-year marriage. She goes completely unmentioned in this improved-upon-reality film.
Lownds remains completely unknown. Rotolo is still weeping, and she still looks like a refugee from Miss Porter's
For ourselves, we still hadn't quit on this childish film when the Becka character appeared. That said, we found her presence surprising.
We did find her presence surprising. Then, the loudmouth, drunk black Mississippi bluesman named Jesse Moffette appears.
Moffette's a fabrication too—a gift to us from a certain Hollywood genius. In the film, he's shown appearing on Rainbow Quest, a little-known TV show hosted (for only one season) by Pete Seeger—a show which didn't yet exist at the time the fabricated black bluesman appears.
Here's the problem:
Moffette isn't just a fabricated person. And it isn't just the fact that no one had ever appeared on Seeger's show at this point of time.
Also, it isn't the fact that Bob Dylan never showed up on the set of Rainbow Quest to interrupt the proceedings and to sit in with a Mississippi bluesman, as he does in the Hollywood film.
In fact, Dylan never appeared on Rainbow Quest at all! The whole dumb scene is made up.
Here's the uglier problem:
It isn't just that "Jesse Moffette" is a fabricated black bluesman. Tinseltown's narrative genius also decided, for whatever reason, that "Moffette" should be presented a stereotypical black loudmouth and drunk.
According to the screenplay published by Deadline, this is the way the scene starts. This is basically the way the scene actually plays out in the film:
PETE (CONT’D) A friend from the deep Delta, Jesse Moffette, is in town this week headlining at Folk City, and he jumped a cab to join us live here at NJU. Jesse, good to see ya.
Pete sits down next to A TOWERING BLUESMAN in tie and jacket, holding a guitar. There’s a harmonica rack around his neck. High conk and wraparound shades. Jesse pulls out a bottle of peppermint schnapps, and interrupts [sic] a healthy swig.
JESSE MOFFETTE Not headlining. I open, then this white boy with a sketchy beard comes on after me and it’s like he’s reading the paper. He just sings the damned headlines.
Jesse holds the bottle out to Pete.
PETE Not while I’m working, thanks.
Sad.
Moffette's Fetchit-adjacent behavior continues along from there. Before too long, Dylan himself shows up and sits in with the fictional bluesman—with the fictional drunken black bluesman who didn't exist in real life.
Might we offer these thoughts?
As you can see by clicking this link, there were 39 episodes of Rainbow Quest in its one little-noticed season. Several "black bluesmen" did in fact appear.
You can see Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee's appearance by clicking this. Sonny and Brownie were dignified men. They weren't stereotypical drunks.
Neither was the gentle, soft-spoken Mississippi John Hurt. You can see him here.
How about the Reverend Gary Davis? If you want to see a stunningly beautiful performance of one form of American music, we'll advise you to just click this.
(Yes, that's Donovan on the same show, 19 or 20 years old at the time. As for Rev. Davis, his performance just grows and grows. He was a remarkably handsome man who performed with remarkable conviction.)
None of these people showed up drunk or drinking. None of them showed up complaining about white boys on some bill.
That came from the puzzling mind of a Tinseltown narrative genius. Then came the work song gang.
By now, we've reached this movie's clown-car car-wreck final scenes, at Newport 1965.
Johnny Cash wasn't at Newport that year. But he shows up there in the film, enjoyably wrecking several cars as he tries to drive away.
Joan Baez wasn't there on the night in question, but she gets shoehorned in too. It makes the reality better!
The actual person named Suze Rotolo wasn't present at Newport either. In the creatively brilliant film, the Rotolo character gets shoehorned into these closing scenes, still weeping and crying over the boyfriend she has lost to Joan, still looking like an escapee from Miss Porter's.
(The actual Rotolo was the Gotham-born daughter of Italian immigrant Communist parents. A narrative genius seemed to know that her physical affect—so memorable and so beloved from the iconic Freewheelin' album cover—would have had to be cleaned up.)
Cash and Rotolo and Baez weren't there. Famously, Dylan was. In the "fictional" film, just before he takes to the stage, this incongruous scene occurs:
PETE (O.S.) Let’s welcome the Texas Prison Worksong Group!
CUT TO:
EXT. NEWPORT FOLK FESTIVAL — STAGE — NIGHT
Pete Seeger, center stage... Behind him, SIX MEN IN PRISON GARB carrying axes, under the watch of AN ARMED GUARD.
PETE Six men serving life and the guard is not a prop! Neither’s the tree trunk!
THE MEN circle the tree, axes in hand, and start their singing and chopping.
Offstage: Alan Lomax approaches Pete.
ALAN LOMAX We saw Bob. Came away with a handful of air. It’s gotta be you, Pete
(“Hammer Ring” performed by Texas Prison Worksong Group featuring Oren Waters)
Say what? At the closing concert of the festival, Dylan is about to go on stage.
His opening act seems to be the Texas Prison Worksong Group—six men in prison garb, carrying axes, under the watch of an armed guard? With Pete Seeger on the festival stage, saying this?
Six men serving life and the guard is not a prop! Neither’s the tree trunk!
Is that what happened that fateful night? If not, why in the world did a narrative genius shove it into his film?
Full disclosure! A group called the "Texas Work Song Group" ("prison" unmentioned) did perform at Newport in 1965. Based upon the festival's brochures, they took part in a pair of workshops on Friday afternoon. They then appeared in the lengthy concert on Friday night, where they were one of fourteen different acts.
Based upon the official brochures, they took part in no events after that—not on Saturday, not on Sunday. Based upon the official brochures, they did not appear in the closing concert on that fateful Sunday night.
The appearance of this group in this festival was part of the slightly eccentric "folk music" culture of that particular time—a culture which might seem somewhat quirky today.
Newport featured some very famous performers. It also featured various people no one had ever heard of. For example:
In that Friday night concert, the Texas Work Song Group shared the bill with Peter, Paul and Mary and also with Pete Seeger. They also shared the bill with an act called "New York Street Games." For better or for worse, the world of Newport was like that.
(Here's Pete Seeger at Newport, playing for the Blue Ridge Mountain Dancers. They weren't a famous group.)
There actually was a "Texas Work Song Group" at Newport in 1965. Did they perform in the manner shown in the film? Did Seeger ever say the things he's shown saying in that screenplay?
We have no idea.
That said, why did the narrative giant decide to insert a gang of black convicts into the stew, following on his drunken Mississippi bluesman and the irascible, obnoxious black attendant who suddenly and strangely appears on the screen during one of Dylan's visits to see Woody Guthrie—during one of the visits which didn't actually occur?
Why were these black characters inserted into the film? More appallingly, why were these black character, British-accented Becka excepted, portrayed in the amazingly familiar old ways Mangold weirdly chose?
Regarding the stereotyping of the loudmouths, drunks and convicts, we have no idea. As to why these people are in this film at all, we do have a small idea.
James Mangold is a narrative genius. He may also be a seeker of prizes and of cash.
By clicking here, you can possibly start to see why these black characters were shoehorned in. It's part of the low-IQ rush toward "DEI" which followed the lonesome murder of George Floyd in late May 2020.
Those of us in Blue America often rushed to display our good faith in the wake of that highly visible killing. In a million different ways, we proved an unmistakable fact:
There's no such thing as a good intention which can't be unwisely pursued.
In our race toward "DEI" and "Woke," we gave the gang on the Fox News Channel a hundred and one easy ways to say how phony and dumb we are. We're still out there, this very day, continuing to hand them these gifts.
Why was the invented bluesman portrayed as a loudmouth and as a drunk? You'll have to ask Mangold himself—and no one ever will.
Why were the black performers inserted into the closing Sunday night concert a bunch of convicts from Texas? You'll have to ask him that too.
What was the point of that sudden intrusion by that loudmouth black attendant? Why was the invented "Becka" shoved into this film at all?
You'll have to ask Mangold those questions. As hosts on Fox News keep mocking our dumbness, none of us Blues ever will.
Our view?
The refashioning of the Rotolo character struck us as a pathetic example of throwback gender politics. The insertion of those invented black characters struck us as one of the strangest and most appalling things we've seen in recent years.
All along the watchtower, Blue America's elites have failed to question—even to notice—these puzzling choices by Mangold. So it has gone, for decades now, as we Blues pretend to be the kinds of people we pretty much aren't, but also as we name-call everyone else.
In making a "fiction" film of this kind, the money comes from using real names. The "fiction" comes when a self-admitted narrative genius starts changing real facts all around.
The wife is gone, the girl friend stays! Needless to say, she's a weeper.
The real Bob Dylan once recorded the words shown below. These words appear on the Freewheelin' album—the early album which featured an actual engaging young woman right there on its still-famous cover.
The young man's words were full of whimsy. This is what a very young man whimsically said:
Unlike most of the songs nowadays that are being written uptown in Tin Pan Alley—that's where most of the folk songs come from nowadays. This, this is a song, this wasn't written up there.
This was written somewhere down in the United States!
In our view, Mangold's remarkably empty film comes from Tin Pan Alley. To our eye and ear, it seems to contain some amazingly strange and weirdly familiar old hooks, and we Blues have been eating it up!
No one has questioned, or even mentioned, the puzzling hooks we've cited. Despite the claims we like to make, we Blues just aren't super sharp.
On the brighter side, Mangold managed to check the boxes which let him pursue a very big prize. This is one the three million ways that fellow got back to the White House.
Final suggestion: Don't fail to watch the Rev. Davis. That is an amazing performance—a piece of Americana.
