Bob Dylan as Filmmaker: No Time to Think
About this ebook
The book also provides an essential survey of Dylan's most recent movie projects, including those by other directors, in which Dylan's influence is less overt but no less powerful. Here, Michael argues that Dylan operates as a kind of "invisible co-author": in Martin Scorsese's Rolling Thunder Revue (2019), where Dylan appears as a slippery, self-mythologizing interviewee; Alma Har'el's haunting Shadow Kingdom (2021), a stylized livestream performance; and James Mangold's A Complete Unknown (2024), the Timothée Chalamet-led biopic shaped in part by Dylan's behind-the-scenes "script approval."
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About the author
Michael Glover Smith is a Chicago-based filmmaker/writer, author, and teacher. Filming for Michael’s most recent film Hekla, starring Elizabeth Stam, has recently finished – the festival premiere will be in early 2026. Michael is also the director of four award-winning feature films, the most recent of which, Relative, stars Wendy Robie ( Twin Peaks) and is distributed by Music Box Films. It was the 23rd highest-grossing movie in the U.S. in its first week of release in 2022. His previous book, Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry (co-written with Adam Selzer), was published by Columbia University Press to acclaim in 2015. He has seen Bob Dylan 100 times in concert.
