1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

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mfunk9786
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1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#1 Post by mfunk9786 » Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:25 pm

1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

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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 investigation 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.

DIRECTOR-APPROVED SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
  • New 4K digital transfer, approved by director Martin Scorsese, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New 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 never-before-seen cut of “Tangled Up in Blue”
  • Trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
    PLUS: An essay by novelist Dana Spiotta and writing from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour by author Sam Shepard and poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman

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Secret Sharon Stone Movie (Martin Scorsese, 20??)

#2 Post by Dead or Deader » Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:38 am

mfunk9786 wrote:
Mon Mar 05, 2018 12:25 pm
Sharon Stone is on WTF today and she mentioned Paul Verhoeven making a movie (prior to Elle, which she called "Her") called "Mrs. Stone" where the lead character seemed based on her (to the point where it bothered Stone herself greatly) - and it seems... very likely that she imagined it because I certainly can't find anything close to this anywhere. Anyone have any idea what she could even have been referring to?

She also referred to the fact that she made something with Martin Scorsese "a couple of years ago" that's completed but she's been waiting for him to finish editing. There's indeed an IMDB listing for "Untitled Martin Scorsese/Sharon Stone Project," but beyond that, there is... like, absolutely no information anywhere about this that I can find.

She's an odd bird.
Secret Scorsese project starring Meryl Streep and Sharon Stone in post-production at Netflix.

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Re: New Films in Production, v.2

#3 Post by Professor Wagstaff » Thu Oct 18, 2018 1:04 am

Stone alluded to this early in the year on Marc Maron's podcast, saying that they filmed whatever it is years ago but Scorsese was still editing. I'll believe it when I hear confirmation from someone connected to the project other than Stone. I can't find any other links on the topic except this article and the podcast.

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Re: Secret Sharon Stone Movie (Martin Scorsese, 20??)

#4 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 1:48 am

Yeah, I don't know if it's a great sign that she's the only one who ever has brought it up. Especially with how she came off on Maron's show.

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Re: Secret Sharon Stone Movie (Martin Scorsese, 20??)

#5 Post by domino harvey » Thu Oct 18, 2018 1:50 am

It may indeed be nothing, or knowing Netflix, it could show up tomorrow. But if she's still talking about it, then no one's informed her it's dead, so I'll presume it is alive but still being tinkered with and presumably back-burnered by the Irishman

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Re: Secret Sharon Stone Movie (Martin Scorsese, 20??)

#6 Post by colinr0380 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:08 pm

This is not really about the films, but apropos Stone's 'oddness', it might be because she had a major stroke and brain haemorrhage in 2001
Last edited by colinr0380 on Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Secret Sharon Stone Movie (Martin Scorsese, 20??)

#7 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Oct 18, 2018 12:09 pm

The stroke has yet to be edited or released.

(I am so so sorry)

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Re: Bob Dylan

#8 Post by GaryC » Mon Apr 29, 2019 2:43 pm

Martin Scorsese's documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story lands on 12 June on Netflix. Also showing in "select cinemas".

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Re: Bob Dylan

#9 Post by Michael Kerpan » Wed Jun 12, 2019 11:46 pm

I don't think I've ever seen Dylan so chatty and forthcoming as he was in Scorsese's interviews for Rolling Thunder Revue. A very interesting documentary overall.

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Re: Bob Dylan

#10 Post by mfunk9786 » Thu Jun 13, 2019 2:28 am

Saw it in a theater the night before the Netflix release, and it's far and away my favorite film of the year at the midway point. So many elements of it are fabricated, it is Dylan and Scorsese having a blast with the documentary format's ability to create or dismantle myth - and Scorsese, ever the nostalgist, is using this to his own aims of restoring and presenting incredible archival performance footage. It's a stunning piece of work, and one of Scorsese's (10 or so?) best films, period.

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Re: Bob Dylan

#11 Post by Michael Kerpan » Thu Jun 13, 2019 7:53 am

Yes, pranked by Scorsese and Dylan (I had a few suspicions but the music distracted me).

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Re: Bob Dylan

#12 Post by AWA » Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:43 pm

I thought Rolling Thunder Revue was brilliant. I'm way too big of a Bob fan to have fallen for the fictional parts, but I thought that was a great way to play with the spirit of the original tour (and Bob's general trickster magician ways). Some controversy in the Dylan fandom circles as it "re-writes" history, including leaving the original filmmaker - Howard Alk - completely out of it. I think that misses the point. I had super high expectations for this, knowing the great footage that was in Renaldo & Clara to begin with and having seen even more great stuff on bootleg (plus the concerts themselves are often considered to be among if not Bob's very best live performances ever).

Here's a question though - the use of US Rep. Jack Tanner is a particularly curious choice.
SpoilerShow
considering it's a fictional character, but more so that it's a fictional character created by a completely different director (Robert Altman) and not part of Scorsese's creative universe at all. It's kind of like if Coppola cast Dustin Hoffman to play Benjamin Braddock again even though it was Nichols' character and he's not around to agree to the idea. Having Sharon Stone talk as herself is one thing, but using another director's character is a particularly ballsy move on Marty's part, no? What examples are there of that prior to this?

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Re: Bob Dylan

#13 Post by Roger Ryan » Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:41 pm

AWA wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:43 pm
...Some controversy in the Dylan fandom circles as it "re-writes" history, including leaving the original filmmaker - Howard Alk - completely out of it. I think that misses the point...
Exactly. The joke is on Dylan himself who was, technically, the director of the original footage - he's the one who asked Sam Shepard to come on-board to fashion a script around the events and sought to turn the footage into an arty vanity project.
AWA wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 1:43 pm
...Here's a question though - the use of US Rep. Jack Tanner is a particularly curious choice...
Although he's playing Jack Tanner, I was reminded that Michael Murphy also played the presidential campaign manager in Altman's Nashville, the one who organizes the big fund-raising concert to honor the bicentennial. Given that Ronee Blakely, who sang back-up with Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue, played the ill-fated Barbara Jean in that movie, I feel that Murphy's appearance seemed appropriate.

Since the real stuff in Rolling Thunder Revue is so spectacular, the fictitious elements didn't bother me at all. What they imply, actually, is that Dylan and Scorsese must have collaborated a lot more closely than they did on the earlier No Direction Home: did Dylan come up with the whole "Von Dorp" idea and Scorsese brought it to life or did Scorsese initiate the conceit and Dylan played along?

Those who have seen the movie may be amused to learn that the actor who plays the independent filmmaker is Martin von Haselberg, Bette Midler's husband and the guy who performed as one of the Kipper Kids in Forbidden Zone and UHF. Another intriguing discovery: Since the band Shocking Blue plays such a pivotal part in Von Dorp's early career, I was checking out some information on the band and found that the late lead singer Mariska Veres had been in a long-term relationship with a guitarist named André van Geldorp!

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Re: Bob Dylan

#14 Post by AWA » Tue Jun 18, 2019 12:59 am

Roger Ryan wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:41 pm
Exactly. The joke is on Dylan himself who was, technically, the director of the original footage - he's the one who asked Sam Shepard to come on-board to fashion a script around the events and sought to turn the footage into an arty vanity project.
Also, one strong reasoning for doing this seems to be to keep Sara out of this completely. Supposedly they are (and have relatively always) been on good terms, but Rolling Thunder / Renaldo & Clara is, even through all the improvised fiction off-stage, a detailed look at his marriage falling apart. It of course got worse on Rolling Thunder Pt2 / 1976, but it was still quite obvious throughout in this footage. He couldn't reconcile his need to perform and engage his art with her desire to keep him home and away from the vices of the road, his erratic nature, etc.

Roger Ryan wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:41 pm
Although he's playing Jack Tanner, I was reminded that Michael Murphy also played the presidential campaign manager in Altman's Nashville, the one who organizes the big fund-raising concert to honor the bicentennial. Given that Ronee Blakely, who sang back-up with Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue, played the ill-fated Barbara Jean in that movie, I feel that Murphy's appearance seemed appropriate.
I realized all that, but still - it's another person's creation, not Marty's, and it's strange to think Scorsese would take another director's creation and write new fictional background for it.

However... on the other hand... Bob has made his entire career doing the musical / writing equivalent of that (especially from Time Out Of Mind onward, drawing from a dizzying array of sources to bring artisitc deconstruction and recontextualizations to unprecedented levels of which the full scope of which we may never truly know). So, in a way, I suppose it is fitting that Scorsese, embracing the spirit of Bob's own creative forces, saw something he liked from another director's canon and just flat out took it and made it his own.
I would venture an educated guess that if Robert Altman were alive today, he would have enjoyed that, but he isn't and you can't ask him. It did remind me ever so slightly of The Long Goodbye, in which Altman played with Raymond Chandler's "Philip Marlowe" character (which had been done before many times, of course, but never in that manner that Altman did it in). Altman's Marlowe was somewhat Dylan-esque in many ways as well (and I recall reading somewhere that Elliot Gould played it like Dylan as well).

Roger Ryan wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:41 pm
Since the real stuff in Rolling Thunder Revue is so spectacular, the fictitious elements didn't bother me at all. What they imply, actually, is that Dylan and Scorsese must have collaborated a lot more closely than they did on the earlier No Direction Home: did Dylan come up with the whole "Von Dorp" idea and Scorsese brought it to life or did Scorsese initiate the conceit and Dylan played along?
Apparently Bob wrote all the lines for Von Dorp - and, as usual, Bob leaves a few breadcrumbs for us to find our source - the comment about Von Dorp talking about Dylan being "like looking in a mirror" is the obvious one. When taking that into account, it is interesting to read Von Dorp's commentary as being by and about Dylan himself. In that sense, it reminded me much more of Bob's writing in Masked & Anonymous.

Roger Ryan wrote:
Mon Jun 17, 2019 3:41 pm
Those who have seen the movie may be amused to learn that the actor who plays the independent filmmaker is Martin von Haselberg, Bette Midler's husband and the guy who performed as one of the Kipper Kids in Forbidden Zone and UHF. Another intriguing discovery: Since the band Shocking Blue plays such a pivotal part in Von Dorp's early career, I was checking out some information on the band and found that the late lead singer Mariska Veres had been in a long-term relationship with a guitarist named André van Geldorp!
Funny too considering Bob and Bette had a brief thing back in the late 70's, not too long after the Rolling Thunder days.

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Re: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

#15 Post by Big Ben » Tue Jun 18, 2019 9:05 am

I've seen a few people quite miffed that Scorsese and Dylan decided to make a film this way and I must confess I'm a little confused as to why they'd be mad. Part of Dylan's appeal to me has always been his impenetrability which has always been a part of his mythos. I had the privilege of seeing Dylan about fifteen years ago live, right here in my rinky dink home town. I was much too young to appreciate the music but I understood the gravitas that Dylan carried. And that film recreates that feeling. One of my favorites of the year so far.

And Dylan's response to the press here as to why he came? " Money is nice but I really. just wanted to people to hear my music."

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Re: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

#16 Post by GoodOldNeon » Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:53 pm

As amusing as it has been to read up on all the fictional parts that I missed when I watched the film (Stone's Just Like a Woman anecdote being the highlight), I'm not convinced that the film Scorsese made is the best film he could have made with the materials at his disposal. For all the attention the fakery has received, I still think all of the best stuff in the film is the onstage footage, and even if there are diminishing marginal returns, replacing the interviews (both real and fake) with more performances would likely have resulted in a better film.

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Re: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

#17 Post by AWA » Wed Jun 19, 2019 2:00 pm

GoodOldNeon wrote:
Tue Jun 18, 2019 2:53 pm
As amusing as it has been to read up on all the fictional parts that I missed when I watched the film (Stone's Just Like a Woman anecdote being the highlight), I'm not convinced that the film Scorsese made is the best film he could have made with the materials at his disposal. For all the attention the fakery has received, I still think all of the best stuff in the film is the onstage footage, and even if there are diminishing marginal returns, replacing the interviews (both real and fake) with more performances would likely have resulted in a better film.
It is worth noting that the original footage is, apparently, lost. In fact the original print of Renaldo & Clara is also "lost" (at least, for now... or lost to the official Dylan archive). The only reason they had previously unseen footage is that they did have a (scratchy and grainy) Super16mm dupe of the working print of R&C, which they were able to edit from. (I read that the plastic mask footage of Bob singing Masterpiece could only be used at the end as they had already printed the R&C titles on that print as the beginning of that film - which explains why they cut to a couple still photos of Bob in the plastic mask before finally catching the end of that footage.

And, as noted above, much of the other footage consisted of the madness of improvising the R&C story, which hardly makes sense and definitely wouldn't have made any sense in this, and the other moments which included Sara Dylan and/or the tension / dissolution of Bob's marriage (one scene of which makes it into this film - Bob & Joan talking at the bar... where Bob is clearly feeling old feelings for Joan, possibly informed by his doubts about his wife, and takes a long pregnant pause to answer that he "married the woman I love" to Joan.). Keeping Sara and all those old wounds was likely a key for Bob to agree to allow this project to happen, as he is obviously very protective of his private life and family. In fact, one could watch this new documentary and never assume at all Bob was either married or had several children at that point. The scenes with Baez, Patti Smith, Ronee Blakey, etc (as well as the Sharon Stone story) would lead any uninformed viewer he was single as single could be, certainly not that the tour fun was also counter balanced by increasing martial tensions which were captured on film just as much as the concert performances themselves.

So... factoring in those restrictions - the fabrication of the fictional elements to play with the material and also make commentary on artistic / objectivity was a solution to structuring this. And I believe this is the best film that could be done with that as it now aspires to something more than just a scrapbook of memories from a period long gone. A great concert film of nothing but performances could also be made from this, but aside from presenting how great Dylan is live, would not have counted much as an artistic film experience.

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Re: Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese, 2019)

#18 Post by britcom68 » Sun Mar 01, 2020 6:59 am

At the Wexner Center last night, Grover Crisp and Margaret Bodde confirmed this as forthcoming from Criterion. No discussion though about release dates, supplements or timelines.


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Re: 1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#20 Post by FrauBlucher » Thu Oct 15, 2020 7:23 pm

Good release, though it is soft on extras

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Re: 1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#21 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:46 pm

I wonder when Scorsese stopped doing commentary tracks

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Re: 1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#22 Post by Calvin » Sat Oct 17, 2020 3:02 pm

Are there rights issues preventing a release of Renaldo and Clara or is it just lack of enthusiasm for it?

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Re: 1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#23 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Oct 17, 2020 3:08 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Sat Oct 17, 2020 12:46 pm
I wonder when Scorsese stopped doing commentary tracks
I wonder if he just doesn't have the time or energy anymore. Despite his age, he works just as much now if not ever, and he's got a big family now so his home life could be just as busy if not busier. About nine years ago, I saw him at a screening of Mean Streets at Lincoln Center and I was stunned that he said he rarely was seeing new movies anymore. He simply didn't have the time.

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Re: 1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#24 Post by FrauBlucher » Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:55 pm

Besides his own films the various restorations through the Film Foundation have to take up much of his time. He strikes me as someone who would say if he stopped working he would die. It seems like he doesn't have many interests outside of film.

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Re: 1062 Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese

#25 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Oct 17, 2020 6:32 pm

FrauBlucher wrote:
Sat Oct 17, 2020 4:55 pm
Besides his own films the various restorations through the Film Foundation have to take up much of his time. He strikes me as someone who would say if he stopped working he would die. It seems like he doesn't have many interests outside of film.
He actually showed up with DiCaprio during Dylan's Beacon residency last fall, so at least he hasn't given up on going to concerts.

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