#1062: SCORSESE, Martin: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019)
SCORSESE, Martin (United States)
Martin Scorsese was 77 when he directed Rolling Thunder: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.
Other Scorsese films in the Collection:
#1030: Scorsese Shorts (1963-1978)
#1198: Mean Streets (1973)
Commentary
None.
Interviews
With Scorsese, editor David Tedeschi, and writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman.
Restored footage
Of never-before-seen Rolling Thunder Revue performances of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” and “Romance in Durango,” and of a new, extended cut of “Tangled Up in Blue.”
Restoration demonstration
Trailer
Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese [2019]
Spine #1062
Blu-ray
Blu-ray
In 1975, in an America defined by both the self-mythologizing pomp of the upcoming bicentennial and ongoing sociopolitical turmoil, Bob Dylan and a band of troubadours — including luminaries such as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, and Joni Mitchell — embarked on a now-legendary tour known as the Rolling Thunder Revue, a freewheeling variety show that was part traveling counterculture carnival, part spiritual pilgrimage. Director Martin Scorsese blends behind-the-scenes archival footage, interviews, and narrative mischief, with a magician's sleight of hand, into a zeitgeist-defining cultural record that is as much a concert "documentary" as it is a slippery, chimerical invesitgation into memory, time, truth, and illusion. At the center of it all is the magnetic Dylan, a sphinxlike philosopher-poet singing, with electrifying conviction, to the soul of an anxious nation.
142 minutes
Black & White/Color
Black & White/Color
5.1 surround
1:85:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2021
Director
Martin Scorsese was 77 when he directed Rolling Thunder: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese.
Other Scorsese films in the Collection:
#1030: Scorsese Shorts (1963-1978)
#1198: Mean Streets (1973)
#1318: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974)
#1118: The Last Waltz (1978)
#1134: Raging Bull (1980)
#1185: After Hours (1985)
#70: The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
#913: The Age of Innocence (1993)
#1058: The Irishman (2019)
#1118: The Last Waltz (1978)
#1134: Raging Bull (1980)
#1185: After Hours (1985)
#70: The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
#913: The Age of Innocence (1993)
#1058: The Irishman (2019)
An anecdote from Sharon Stone about meeting Dylan while wearing a KISS t-shirt:
"He saw my shirt, and he was like, 'Do you like them?' ... I said ... 'I think they paint their faces in kabuki style.' And he said, 'I bet Izumo no Okuni never spat blood into the audience.'"
How cool that Dylan knew who invented kabuki, but how weird that he "filed the makeup idea away somewhere," and ultimately ended up painting his own face white for the tour.
Highlight: Joni Mitchell singing Coyote backstage.
The Extras
The Booklet
Sixty-page booklet featuring an essay by novelist Dana Spiotta and writing from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour by author Sam Shepard and poets Allen Ginsburg and Anne Waldman.
The Booklet
Sixty-page booklet featuring an essay by novelist Dana Spiotta and writing from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour by author Sam Shepard and poets Allen Ginsburg and Anne Waldman.
Spiotta:
"The film opens with clips from George Méliès's 1896 film The Vanishing Lady in which a magician makes a woman disappear and reappear. It is fitting that we begin with magic, as magic works partly by admitting that it is a trick. The fun is that it is a good trick, theatrical. But of course, The Vanishing Lady isn't a magic show — it is a film of a magic show. Movies, too, are illusion, with the appearance of movement coming from static images shown at twenty-four frames per second."
Shepard:
"BIG STAKES
A strong recurring feeling I get from watching Dylan perform is the sense of him playing for Big Stakes. He says he's 'just a musician,' and in his boots he needs that kind of protection from intellectual probes, which are a constant threat to any artist. Even so, the repercussions of his art don't have to be answered by him at all. They fall on us as questions and that's where they belong. Myth is a powereful medium because it talks to the emotions and not the head. It moves us into an area of mystery. Some myths are poisonous to believe in, but others have the capacity for changing something inside us, even if it's only for a minute or two. Dylan creates a mythic atmosphere out of the land around us. The land we walk on every day and never see until someone shows it to us."
Ginsburg:
"V
Snow Blues
Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine
Juggling yr kneeds blank-eyed in the rain
When it snows in yr nose you catch cold in yr brain
— November 12, 1975"
Waldman:
"& shaman he swings a skinny leg to the sky
& shaman he desires you be there watching
shaman don't care about eating now
he's got his paint on he's ready for jive
& shaman's going to sway & gesture in space
& shaman's shouting yeah for you
& singing your sorrow
shaman's not faithful except to you
shaman does it for you you know all this
shaman's got his eyes on the violin
shaman's moving his eyeballs around
shaman's in Rome
shaman's going to finish what he started
shaman grows old & never changes
O shaman leave your dog outside!"
<excerpt>
Commentary
None.
Interviews
With Scorsese, editor David Tedeschi, and writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman.
Scorsese:
"We're having fun, but we're serious."
"If I could play guitar like that, I wouldn't have to make these films."
Restored footage
Of never-before-seen Rolling Thunder Revue performances of “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here with You” and “Romance in Durango,” and of a new, extended cut of “Tangled Up in Blue.”
Restoration demonstration
Trailer
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