Forgotten Bob Dylan Film Projects from 1966: From the Archives

By Steven Rosen
Denver Post, 10-17-98

(When I first wrote this story, the angle was that the newly released Bob Dylan Live 1966: The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert album might prompt some of this long-unreleased film footage to get out there. It didn't, but maybe now the new Basement Tapes packages will prompt the same thing -- even if the Basement Tapes period is a little later, it's still Dylan in the 60s and demand is great. -- SR)

   It's 1966 all over again in the world of pop music - and the

Denver International Film Festival, which just concluded, was in

the center of it.

   That's because the record "Bob Dylan Live 1966: The ‘Royal

Albert Hall' Concert'' was just released this week - some 32

years after the performance.

   It was instantly hailed as one of rock's great live

recordings. And the publicity surrounding the long-delayed

release has interested old and young music lovers in the story

of how folk singer Dylan switched to amplified rock 'n' roll in

1965 and 1966. He changed pop culture forever.

   Actually taped at the Manchester, England, Free Trade Hall on

May 17, 1966, the new album reveals Dylan and his band playing

majestically loud in response to hecklers who wanted to hear him

solo, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar and harmonica. In

July, after the European tour was over, Dylan was seriously

injured in a New York motorcycle accident and for many years

retreated from touring.

   The story of "Dylan goes electric'' has become contemporary

myth on the order of Arthur finding Excalibur and becoming king.

Now, after all these years during which bootleg tapes circulated

among collectors, a wide audience can hear a concert recording

from that time.

   But few people know there are still two never-released films

of Dylan's 1966 European tour, where he and his band members -

including Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard

Manuel of the Hawks - played blistering rock 'n' roll to a

sometimes-resistant audience. (Dylan opened shows with an

acoustic set.)

   But two people who do know about the movies were at this

year's Denver film festival - directors D.A. Pennebaker and

Harry Rasky. Both were involved, to varying degrees, in trying

to make a movie of the tour.

   "It is rather strange,'' Pennebaker said. "You go for a

long period of time and there's not much interest in it and you

think, ‘Well, it's not as great as I thought it was.' And then

suddenly something starts it back up.''

   Pennebaker is one of the pioneers of cinema-verite

documentaries. He was in Denver with his wife and filmmaking

partner of some 20 years, Chris Hegedus, to show their latest

work, "Moon Over Broadway.'' They also received the festival's

John Cassavetes Award.

   In 1965, Pennebaker filmed Dylan's solo tour of England,

which occurred just before the musician's shift to rock. That

movie became the now-classic "Don't Look Back.'' Dylan called

him in early 1966 to help film his upcoming European concerts.

Dylan had contracted with ABC to produce a television special

about his tour.

   "We had a meeting in Los Angeles and Bob said, ‘You got your

movie and now I want you to help me make mine.' And I said

‘sure,''' Pennebaker said.

   Dylan's plan, apparently, was to create a film that was both

structurally and emotionally confrontational and radical - just

like his music of the period. (A spokesman at Dylan's record

company said he was unavailable for comment.) But ABC had other

ideas, and hired Harry Rasky to be the director.

   Rasky, who now produces documentaries for the Canadian

Broadcasting Corp., was in Denver to show his new "Christopher

Plummer: King of Players.'' He recalled his Dylan '66 experience as

"one of the great traumas of my life.'' He had just completed a

program on Fidel Castro's Cuba, including a rare Che Guevara

interview, when ABC called him.

   "It seemed to me they chose me as a free-minded guy,'' Rasky

said. "But the minute Dylan found out I had been asked by ABC

to do the film, he thought I was the voice of authority.

   "He said, ‘OK, you can make the film but I won't listen to

direction.' I thought I could ingratiate myself to him. So we

all went to London and stayed at the Mayfair Hotel. Dylan said,

‘We're going to do things my way.'''

   After a week, Dylan's manager paid him a full salary to

leave. But he did have one unusual experience - attending a

private late-night screening of "Don't Look Back'' with Dylan

and the Beatles. When it was over, he said, he discovered the

Beatles asleep.

   Once the tour began and filming started, Pennebaker recalled,

Dylan intentionally tried to keep people around him on edge.

   "He was getting a big pot boiling, with everybody kind of at

odds and uncertain and confused and even a little ... (annoyed)

and then film that condition in various ways,'' Pennebaker said.

  "It's a way for people who aren't filmmakers but are

consummate dramatists in one way or another to create a kind of

scene for a film,'' he said. "They're not writing; writing

scenes is an art in itself. So Bob just simply said, ‘I'll get a

lot of people together and we'll see what happens.'''

   Pennebaker, who, along with Howard Alk, was filming selected

concert dates, doesn't recall crowd response because he was

watching the musicians. "The music was wonderful,'' he said.

"They were some of the best concerts I ever shot. It was

wondrous. And I was taken up with how to film them.''

   In particular, he wanted to get close - right on stage, if

necessary - to film the musicians. "Dylan and Robbie (guitarist

Robertson) really were into it, and cut themselves off from

everything else, as if they weren't even aware there was an

audience there. It was an amazing thing to watch.

   "Always up to that point, when Dylan would go out acoustic,

he was completely aware of the audience - he dominated that

audience,'' he said. "He almost dared them to make a noise or

get out of line. And in this case, it was as if he didn't ...

(care) what they were doing or thinking. And in order to get

that, I began to think we couldn't film that with long lenses.

   "I had to get out on stage, put a wide angle lens on the

camera and get into it, myself. That was a big decision. It

meant the first time Dylan came out on stage and I was standing

there with a camera, he almost flipped. He laughed because he

hadn't expected it, but it made it possible to get the kind of

performance we couldn't otherwise get.''

   In June, after the tour concluded, Pennebaker said, Dylan's

management found itself with no movie and facing an ABC

deadline. So at management's request, Pennebaker edited his

footage into a 45-50 minute "rough sketch'' called "You Know

Something Is Happening.'' (The title comes from a phrase in a

Dylan song.)

   "It would be like a continuation of ‘Don't Look Back,'''

Pennebaker said.  "‘Don't Look Back 2' - what happened when the

electricity was turned on.''

   But Dylan didn't like it and, with Alk, used different tour

footage to construct his own anti-documentary called ""Eat the

Document.'' ABC rejected it, and both movies have been more or

less forgotten.

   But with the release of the new record, there has also been a

revival of interest in "Eat the Document.'' The Museum of

Television & Radio branches in New York and Los Angeles are holding

special screenings of the film. There are no plans, however, to

make "Something Is Happening'' available.

   Rasky meanwhile said he still regrets not having the chance

to help Dylan make the kind of film he wanted - one that

explores a highly regarded, singer-songwriter's personality and

relationship to his audience while also featuring music.

   "But I made it up a few years later by making that film with

Leonard Cohen – ‘The Song of Leonard Cohen,''' he said.

   That, too, has remained virtually unseen seen since its

Canadian TV broadcast.

   Steven Rosen's e-mail address is srosenone@aol.com.

D.A. Pennebaker Reconsiders "Don't Look Back"

Film: Dylan Revisited


D.A. Pennebaker looks back for the deluxe edition of 'Don't Look Back'

By Steven Rosen · March 7th, 2007 · Cincinnati CityBeat


For D.A. Pennebaker, the time has come to look back. For the new digitally remastered "deluxe edition" DVD of his classic documentary Don't Look Back, which followed Bob Dylan during a 1965 solo acoustic tour of England, Pennebaker went back to his unused footage to make a film called 65 Revisited.

In doing so, he found himself confronting and challenging the very essence of Don't Look Back. That film, shot verite-style, is as much a freewheelin' narrative about the pivotal tour as it is a concert film. Much of it occurs in rehearsal rooms and hotels before and after the shows.

It's especially about an edgy, prickly young Dylan -- just on the verge of transferring himself from folksinger into Rock & Roll star -- cagily sparring with the press and others who try to get to know him. While it has a generous number of songs performed onstage by Dylan, many are excerpted so as not to detract from the film's own pacing and behind-the-scenes glimpses.

65 Revisited is a companion piece to Don't Look Back rather than a replacement. It's just a shade over an hour, and in places the sound and lighting are problematic. But it nonetheless serves as a meaningful alternative, a new take.

For one, Dylan is relaxed and even boyishly sweet with the fans he meets. He's also honest rather than evasive when asked questions.

He's generally happy and shows it -- in one scene he smiles with delight hearing his new Rock & Roll single, "Subterranean Homesick Blues," on the radio.

And Revisited contains riveting, electrifying full concert performances of "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," "She Belongs to Me," "To Ramona," "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and the rare "If You Gotta Go, Go Now." There are also short scenes of Dylan composing new songs "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry" and "I'll Keep It With Mine" on piano.

Talking from his New York office, Pennebaker -- now 81 but still busy -- said the catalyst for Revisited came from his editor getting him to watch Don't Look Back's outtakes.

"It was like a towel being taken off my head," Pennebaker says. "I saw something I hadn't bothered to think much about for Don't Look Back. I saw that those performances themselves were really the whole reason Dylan had an effect on people.

"It wasn't just that he was this little Kerouac kid running around being funny with the press. It was those performances to those huge, hushed masses of English guys who thought it was poetry and music put together in an amazing way. So we sat down to make a film about that.

"I don't feel this knocks that one out of the box. It was just a further insight for me where I hadn't been looking before. The charisma that came off that stage when he got up and sang those songs is just startling."

When Pennebaker first agreed to make Don't Look Back, he knew virtually nothing about Dylan. He's still unsure why he was invited, although during the ensuing tour Dylan mentioned he had seen a documentary on cellist/conductor Pablo Casals that Pennebaker and partner Richard Leacock had shot for CBS.

"Albert Grossman (Dylan's manager) came into our office and asked would I be interested in accompanying his client to England for a tour," Pennebaker recalls. "It wasn't a job. I was going to have to pay for it, I suspected. But that was the offer and I said yeah.

"I think I knew one song by him, the one Peter, Paul & Mary were singing ('Blowin' in the Wind'), but I didn't know anything about him. I had read a piece in Time magazine suggesting he was a guy singing Folk music and wasn't very good at it. That sort of intrigued me."

Pennebaker thinks Dylan wanted to see how the director's intimate, fly-on-the-wall style of filmmaking worked.

"I think he wanted to see what making a film on this level was like -- not big-time filmmaking, just a single person. But I never knew, and he never talked about it."

The next year, when Dylan toured Europe with a Rock & Roll band called the Hawks, he directed a film called Eat the Document for an ABC special. Pennebaker served as his cameraman. Overly arty, that film was rejected by ABC and never released. Pennebaker prepared his own more straightforward film of that tour called You Know Something Is Happening. It, too, hasn't been released although portions were used in Martin Scorsese's 2005 Dylan film for PBS, No Direction Home.

Don't Look Back also is famous for starting with what has been called the first music video -- it opens in an alley, with Dylan holding up and discarding pertinent cue cards while "Subterranean Homesick Blues" plays on the soundtrack. His friend and road manager, Bob Neuwirth, and Allen Ginsberg stand in the distance. The deluxe set includes two alternate versions -- one shot in a park with Neuwirth and Ginsberg, another on a hotel rooftop with Neuwirth and record producer Tom Wilson.

"Originally, when I did the film I started off in the dressing room with Bob singing, 'You will start out standing (from the song 'She Belongs to Me'). I thought, 'That's a good way to start a film,' " Pennebaker says. "But as I looked at it before doing a final version, I said nobody knew who this guy is yet. So we had this thing we shot that we didn't have any reason for shooting. It was just a funny thing. I stuck it on the beginning and that was it. It never came off."