11 November 2024
Newsdesk
Timothée Chalamet sits down with Apple Music's Zane Lowe for his very first in-depth interview about his starring role in the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, "A Complete Unknown." Lowe joined Chalamet at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where the Academy Award-nominated actor first got his start, for an in-depth conversation about his experience playing Bob Dylan, how he prepared for the role, playing live music in the film, and more. This interview was part of a full day of conversation between Chalamet and Lowe about the film and the career of Bob Dylan. Coming in December, part two finds them at famed Electric Lady Studios in NYC, where they pick up the conversation around Timothée’s favorite Dylan records of all time.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about being worthy of playing Bob Dylan
Zane Lowe: You said this really cool thing to me when we spoke the first time, you said, "I hope and I feel like people will consider it worthy." But worthy is not a term that gets kicked around when you're talking about numbers or box office, worthy, you could do something totally worthy and it can only matter to you.
Timothée Chalamet: The experience I had, I know it was worthy, but I've joked about it with friends, just because it was the best experience I've had as an actor or the most rewarding experience I've had doesn't really necessarily translate to the effect of it, not only on people, but maybe in the finished product because I've also had more challenging experiences that come out great. So I don't think that things necessarily go hand in hand, but I do feel like that's a good word to revolve around is worthy here because when I got approached with this project five years ago or six years ago let's say, this is 2018, and I had just done "Call Me by Your Name," Bob Dylan was this name I knew was held in reverence and I knew I was supposed to respect. If you were in the in-crowd, that's a name you get behind. But truthfully, I didn't know anything about it. I did a Henry V movie called "The King," I thought it was to my advantage I didn't grow up in England, and I thought that would be my advantage with Bob Dylan if we did it in the first year or two years, because I could see online, the communities that revered him, how deep that reverence was. And I'm happy it took five, six years because I am now deep in that Church of Bob. I feel like that's my mission is the next three months, until the movie comes out, I feel like I'm in the Church of Bob, I'm a humble disciple, and I feel like I got this opportunity to kind of be a bridge to this music or this period, this time period
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about his connection to Bob Dylan
Timothée Chalamet: I was watching this Ed Bradley interview with Bob Dylan the other day, 60 Minutes, this kind of famous 2004 interview, and Bob, in it, says his connection to his sense of destiny was fragile. I like that he used that word fragile because I always felt my connection to Bob was fragile. I felt like I came into his music at a time where pop, culturally, not a lot of people around me were coming to Bob Dylan. So I felt very connected to it. I had to learn how famous he was in the '60s and '70s. At first, I thought he was the treat I found. And as I began to work on the movie and as everyone has an opinion about Bob, especially an older fan, I felt like my connection to him became fragile and I had to fiercely protect that and fiercely protect what, as an actor, or the kind of actor I am, is really important, which is a sense of play, I don't like to go about it mechanically.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about how the parallels between his career and Bob Dylan's
Timothée Chalamet: I've had a life experience, I want to say it's weird, but I can relate to some of these things he went through. So Bob wanted to be a rock and roll star, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, that was, depending on your point of view, the sort of rice crispy pop rock and roll music that was saturated and marketed to kids in the late ‘50s. Equally, I wanted to be a big movie actor. I wanted to be-
Zane Lowe: You did?
Timothée Chalamet: Oh yeah. But if I auditioned for the "Maze Runner" or "Divergent," things of that variety that were popping when I was coming up, the feedback was always, "Oh, you don't have the right body." I had an agent that called me and said, "You got to put on weight," basically, not aggressively, but why know. And then, I found my way into these very personalized movies or something, for him, it was folk music. He couldn't keep a rock and roll band because they would all get hired by other kids that had more money, literally, in Minnesota. So for me, it was finding a very personal style movie, "Call Me by Your Name" or "Beautiful Boy" or "Lady Bird" or "Little Women," "Miss Stevens," "Hot Summer Nights." Those were smaller budget, but very... I don't know how else to put it. ... personable movies that started in this theatre space. This is where I found my rhythm, my confidence, my flow, whatever you want to call it.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about his approach to portraying Bob Dylan
Timothée Chalamet: Somebody once said to me, "You can't make a movie about a painter because it's not interesting to watch paint dry." Yeah, and Bob has that element because I like to say about Bob, he's not one of these forward-facing musicians. In other words, it doesn't make sense to match the choreography the exact way it was, there was no choreography the way the Jackie Onassis biopic, Natalie Portman has a sequence in that that's step-for-step exactly what Jackie did. That was sort of my aspiration, my layman's aspiration going into Bob. And at some point, the vocal coach I was working with or the dialect or movement, all this stuff that I saw my good friend Austin Butler crush it with on "Elvis," and I thought, okay, I'll... And at some point, I was like, wait, I got to do none of this because this is not my style. And B, Bob did not have a vocal coach. He had two bottles of red wine and four packs of cigarettes, so there's no way to impersonate that.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about playing live in “A Complete Unknown”
Timothée Chalamet: It was the most unique challenge I've taken on, but where my confidence came through is eventually doing all the music live. Maybe it was the least responsible thing on the actor's part because the music exists and the performances exists, so maybe I should have been most concerned about spreading-
Zane Lowe: No, no, no, no, you're not wrong. Stakes is high for sure. And well, first of all, like you say, Bob is here, Bob is alive, Bob-
Timothée Chalamet: This is interpretive. This is not definitive. This is not fact. This is not how it happened. This is a fable.
Zane Lowe: Yeah. Right. Exactly. It's kind of softball to say the easiest thing would've been to sing along to the original songs or whatever, but it's a lot to take on because you're not just having to do it faithfully, in fact, you have to do it uniquely.
Timothée Chalamet: Right.
Zane Lowe: You have to do it in a way that isn't like the songs that exist because otherwise, just sing a lot of those.
Timothée Chalamet: Exactly.
Zane Lowe: So that's a whole other thing.
Timothée Chalamet: It's a whole other thing, but where you say uniquely, that's what Harry Shifman, one of my earliest mentors, when I was taking on this role, he said, "Don't worry about being Bob Dylan because people can go see Bob Dylan, they can watch the early footage or go see him now because he still tours." This is about not only myself interpreting Bob, but Edward Norton interpreting Pete Seeger, Monica interpreting Joan Baez and Boyd Holbrook interpreting Johnny Cash in this moment in the '60s where American culture was a kaleidoscope and Greenwich Village was a kaleidoscope, the way culture still is now too, but without being a history teacher, that was the beginning, personalized music, stuff with intention, stuff with poetry, it all started there in the movie. We did these prerecords, but I'm not playing the guitar on the prerecords with Nick Baxter, he's a super talented musical supervisor, and the music, and I would butt heads with Nick a lot, the guitar sounded really friendly. It's hard to get that sound. I mean, he's playing on a guitar that was basically falling apart. And I also found my voice had a baritone, it all sounded clean. And I was doing vocal warmups with Eric Vetro, who was this vocal coach who helped me on "Wonka: and helped me sing Grand on "Wonka." And then, here, I would listen to it back and I'm like, "Man, this sounds too clean." And then, when we would do it on set, it was 'Song to Woody,' which is one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs ever. It was the first one we shot in the movie. You couldn't do it to a playback because it's such an intimate scene. It's in a hospital room with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. And I did it live in it and it went-
Zane Lowe: Eclectic.
Timothée Chalamet: ... great. And I'm making mistakes in the guitar a little bit here and there, but you can kind of fill those in after. I went home and I wept that night, not to be dramatic, but it's a song I'd been living with for years and something I could relate to deeply. And I also felt, I come back to this word a lot, I felt like it was the most dignified work I'd ever done. And dignity might be a weird word there, but it felt like so dignified and humble, we're just bringing life to a thing that happened 67 years ago. I went, oh, of course, Leo and Daniel Day-Lewis. Of course, they do these biopics. It kind of all clicked because there's dignity to it. You're not pulling out thin air, this happened. When I did 'Song to Woody,' which is a song, like I said, I could relate too deeply, and it went great. Then I was like, all right, I'm going to fight this war until the rest of the movie. And Nick Baxter and I, we're great friends, and he came to my house the other night, and we're great friends, but over the course of the movie, it was a constant... The metaphor was like I was throwing this delicately made china on the ground each time we didn't use a prerecord, something we had crafted in LA for six months, but there's not a single prerecord in the movie. And then, Jim would say, to console Nick or myself, "Treat that as like a work session, you were practising to do it live." Because all of a sudden, Edward Norton would say too, something clicked in my voice, there was a certain rawness. Those microphones, those old school microphones we were using when playing in concert halls, I could get the strum better and I could get how he was singing.
Zane Lowe: There's also something really, really beautiful about the natural, comforting effect of reverb and the fact that it allows you-
Timothée Chalamet: Yes, absolutely.
Zane Lowe: And theatre has it. Anywhere where you perform, the idea of what you do being wrapped up and nurtured by the natural reverb of the room allows you the space to be more open and to be freer in there.
Timothée Chalamet: Absolutely.
Zane Lowe: You're in a studio meticulously creating pre-recorded tracks that feels to me confined and-
Timothée Chalamet: It's confined and contrived. And you can also hear that my arm's not going the way you don't hear Bob's arm going, but it's doing something to his voice.
Zane Lowe: But you're in that club and the cameras are rolling, but who cares about them right now? There's a spotlight on you and you're singing this song.
Timothée Chalamet: Exactly. And I didn't know of another music biopic where somebody was doing it live.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about not just starring in, but also producing "A Complete Unknown"
Zane Lowe: So what happens with success is you get to a point where you're able to have a little bit more of an invested interest in the end result.
Timothée Chalamet: Mm-hmm.
Zane Lowe: When you're an actor and you're starting out, it's pure trust in the director-
Timothée Chalamet: Oh, absolutely.
Zane Lowe: ... pure trust in the studio. Now you get to produce this film, it puts you in a more invested role, which, ultimately, people want you to be, but there's going to be moments when your instinct goes above and beyond protocol even where an actor and a director, an actor and a studio, an actor and a producer, you talked about some of the areas where you've already kind of had to put your foot down and say, "No, I want to do it like this."
Timothée Chalamet: Yes.
Zane Lowe: So what's that line to walk? As you take on more responsibility for the projects you say yes to, what's it like building a new form of trust with the people?
Timothée Chalamet: That's a great question. You can't meddle. A director has to have their singular vision. I've been spoiled where I've worked almost exclusively with auteurs in some way. I see people that are really all over it. Where I earned that justification is the music I snuck into the movie, so I feel like that's where I earn my credit there. Being an actor is about being a humanist at its core. That's my theory. You have a couple actors that alienists, you're watching them for their world view, and you don't really relate to it, but you go, "Oh, that's kind of fascinating." Most actors, you are relating through. I would put myself more in that humanist category, but I found, in my early career, when "Call Me by Your Name" and all this stuff was taking off and I was treated like a pop star or something, you can drink the Kool-Aid, for lack of a better expression. And when I was doing my play here, my dream was to, on Showtime or HBO, book a miniseries or something that I could have a great role in. I had humbled myself to that point. I really was like, this is a drying up business if I could just get a great role. But I found, for my work, I'm like, wait, I'm jealous of the musicians, of the pop stars, your music can be about your eroding humanity or if you're a post-modernist or something, it could be about anything, but I'm like pounding my nail on the wall, so I actually have to retain that sense of humanity. It's a long-winded way of saying, so if I have a producer credit on a movie, that's really not to any director I work with. I was just pitching Alfonso Cuarón on a project, but if I'd produced something that he's directing, I'm not going to be... because that would be foolish, unless I direct something one day, but I wouldn't direct myself in something.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about how he prepared to play Bob Dylan
Timothée Chalamet: So what I did for Bob, started during COVID, that was learning all the songs, learning maybe the Bob songs I knew how to play, 20% of which are in the movie. So that was the first education. Then I was working with Tim Monich, who's-
Zane Lowe: You had to learn how many songs?
Timothée Chalamet: For the movie, I had to learn 13, let's say, or something, but in total, I could probably play 30. So Tim Monich was a dialect coach. That's who I worked with for years on this. Worked with a harmonica coach for five years. And then, worked with a woman named Polly Bennett, who's a movement coach that actually we got more out of just working on the script together than anything physicality related. And then, for my own spirit-gathering, for lack of a better metaphor, I retraced Bob's steps through Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. And I started in Hibbing, in Duluth. And I spent about a week where he is from in Minnesota.
Timothée Chalamet tells Apple Music about how playing Bob Dylan has changed him
Zane Lowe: There's like 20 films that could be made about his life, really. This is going to be such an interesting one. Has better understanding what he went through, at least through the character that you're playing, the interpretation of it, has it changed you and how you are able to live your life ultimately? And does it happen often when you come out of roles in particular when it's a real life role?
Timothée Chalamet: Yes. Here, I felt like I went through a thing like Bob says at the end of Don't Look Back, I feel like I went through a thing. And on the other side of it is the bravery that don't look back. Our culture now, not only do we look back, we contextualise the back immediately. What happens if you see somebody take a picture and spend 10 minutes editing and putting it back? That's them contextualising what happened. Unless you're the rare kind of person that takes a picture and posts, right, which is no one. So here, I felt like I had the bravery, on the other side of it, to... I often ask myself, what would Bob do? That sounds so basic, but it's just the truth.
Zane Lowe: What do we know?
Timothée Chalamet: Yeah, no, but I mean in the sense that I'm ignoring what he would do by even being here because he would be on another planet. But just in my own day-to-day, just leading with your artistic foot first, not in a pretentious sense, but just doing the stuff that really challenges you. Who was I... It was an actor's interview I was reading the other day. Was it a Joaquin Phoenix interview? Something where, yeah, it was a Joaquin interview, but you just got to always push yourself out of your comfort zone and not be complacent. And man, I can't say, his songs are like the songs of life and you can't describe them, so if I got anything out of it, it was just the feeling of it in a moment I needed it, and it was a like new guiding light to how I want to feel when I work. I'd love to do more things like this, that's for sure.
