Bob Dylan as Filmmaker

Bob Dylan as Filmmaker, opens exciting new ways to think about the artistry of Bob Dylan. It offers a captivating exploration into movies that showcase Bob Dylan not just as a subject, but as the primary author. These include Eat the Document—a short, experimental television film shot in 1966 and released in 1972; the sprawling, genre-blurring epic Renaldo and Clara (1978), both directed by Dylan himself; and the darkly surreal Masked and Anonymous (2003), directed by Larry Charles but co-written by and starring Dylan. Bob Dylan as Filmmaker explores what these movies reveal about "how it feels" to be Bob Dylan during three defining eras of his career: the revolutionary 1960s, the introspective 1970s, and the enigmatic early 2000s. Just as crucially, they illuminate Dylans remarkable instinct for using film not merely as a medium, but as a deeply personal mode of expression.

The book also provides an essential survey of Dylans most recent movie projects, including those by other directors, in which Dylans influence is less overt but no less powerful. Here, Michael argues that Dylan operates as a kind of "invisible co-author": in Martin Scorseses Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), where Dylan appears as a slippery, self-mythologizing interviewee; Alma Harels haunting Shadow Kingdom (2021), a stylized livestream performance; and James Mangolds A Complete Unknown (2024), the Timothée Chalamet-led biopic shaped in part by Dylans behind-the-scenes "script approval."