A Dylan fan film — How Many Roads

In 2005 director Jos de Putter was working on a Bob Dylan fan film. This later became How Many Roads. He was in touch with Peter, and Peter wrote him his own outline for what the film could be.

The Bob Dylan fan film by Jos de Putter It should run 2 hours maximum, probably closer to 90 minutes, with 8 to 10 main characters

General idea:

Main characters tell their story of what attracts or attracted them to Bob Dylan.  Characters should be interviewed in such a way, possibly with a similar list of questions that will hopefully show that they have good reasons for listening to Dylan’s music, that he is far more than another pop star or even another songwriter, while of course being a pop star and a songwriter.  But perhaps a visionary signaling the last call of the real America, the true America, the America that never lived up to its potential and probably never will.

The film could follow all or part of a Dylan tour, perhaps rumored tour with Willie Nelson in summer of 2005 (which unlike last year’s tour may be in the South and West as opposed to Northeast and Midwest).

It could start where the tour starts, it could start at the house of someone who is going to shows on the tour.  Some Dylan fan’s houses are loaded with pictures of Bob or even Bob rooms.

The interviews could take place on the road, in cars, at people’s houses, in line at stadiums, diners, after the shows, motel rooms etc.

The fans are of all ages, various political persuasions, hard left, hard right, and in between and of course a-political.  The same can be applied to religion since much of Dylan’s work involves religion and both the Christians and Jews try to claim him as their own and the atheists and agnostics would like to think so.

There will be two or three people who have been there from close to the beginning and then people of various ages follow – the order can be of course be worked out depending on what the footage yields.

If the film starts say with someone (maybe myself) who’s been into Dylan for 40 years, then as the various younger people enter it is important to ask them what led them to him, and why a singer in his sixties is still so important to them.

Along the way, depending on where in the USA the film leads us, it might be a good idea to contrast images.  The endless strip malls, shopping malls, corporate and industrial parks with what is left of “real” country, farmlands, prairies, mountains, small towns versus cities and so on.  Both highways and trains of course are major images in Dylan’s lyrics so it would be good to get them.  Perhaps if we can find one, a center of a town with local stores versus a town with Walmart, Staples, McDonalds, etc.

By contrasting the various fans and their stories, one hopes to offer the contrasts in Dylan’s music and perhaps his own story.  In a certain sense, he embodies all: revolutionary and conservative at once.  A resisting of change while at the same time a major heralder of change, but wanting to hold onto certain traditions and values. 

If the tour the film depicts, again revolves around baseball stadiums, and not the big stadiums, but the small minor league stadiums, is the metaphor for returning to the simpler life as well, not to mention the recent pairings with major country-western singers. 

Again depending on where, the film could start with me, a left wing secular Jew and longtime Dylan fan, struggling musician, writer, music historian.  Or it could start say with Howard Mirowitz, very southern Californian, Jewish businessman, but who (like most Californians is originally from East Coast (or maybe Midwest), who unlike me is involved with business, his family, school boards, etc., but still somehow has time to develop and write long articles and theories on what Dylan songs mean.

Or it could start with Marty Grossman, transplanted from mid-west who probably saw Dylan the earliest. A religious Jew and Zionist with right-wing political ideas although every other thing about him at least in terms of music suggests he shouldn’t be thinking that way at all. 

Or it could start with Manor Folsom, born (I believe in Georgia), is maybe in his 40s at most, somehow found out about Bob and other music.  A musician at home, extremely knowledgeable, an amazing writer, one-time disc jockey on radio, has lived in NYC and returned to the South and will defend the South in many ways even though politically he doesn’t necessarily agree with what goes on in the South by any means!

Along the way, the film encounters various people – of course the order can always be changed in editing.  The film might go to a show with one person, could be someone in their 50s and leave with someone in their 20s or 30s. 

Obviously discussions can be crossed, Born Again Christian crossed with Conservative Jew and so on, same with politics, or even with music, acoustic versus electric and so on.

Other possible prototypes: 

A veteran (Vietnam?), the people who were around during the sixties but weren’t paying attention and now trying to catch up, a Black person, the people who left and came back for various reasons.  A lot of people stopped listening with Slow Train Coming and came back with the two folk albums of the nineties, to there are a couple of different ways of catching up.

My role in all of this: 

Other than being one of the people interviewed, and one of the people finding the people to be interviewed, I could be a possible narrator – of course I’m fully aware the film may not need it or need it just in parts. 

If the budget allows, then I could also see going along for the whole ride as assistant, but also to help shape it, help write it (as much as documentaries are written) and help as well in interviews.  In this last, I feel I can be especially useful, because with some of the participants I know a bit of their stories, but more to the point, I pretty much know all things Dylan, so if there is a lag or lull in the conversation (being a fairly experienced interviewer) I could hopefully find another aspect of Dylan to keep the conversation happening and to be alert enough to let things happen, be able to go with spontaneity.  It could provide the best moments.

To me, ultimately the idea is by exploring the stories and ideas of various people from all parts of the country and all manner of backgrounds we build a portrait of Bob Dylan through the eyes, ears and voices of the people he’s most affected.  But also that portrait should not only be of Bob Dylan, but of America, an America that is vastly different from the one in which Bob Dylan emerged.  An America that if Bob Dylan were to surface today, he would more than likely go unnoticed.

The America in which Dylan created himself was one of hope and promise, still recovering from the Depression, from World War II (and Korea), and freeing itself from the witch-hunt and blacklist of McCarthyism.  One in which a new kind (a cultural) revolution was in the air, in all the arts, of which Dylan is the primary survivor.  This was the America of the great middle-class.

The America now is the one perhaps that Dylan warned about.  The middle class is being run out of town, the hope and freedom of the sixties almost laughable, and a country teetering near the edge of some hideous collapse while imposing its will on the rest of the world.