A Complete Unknown: Edward Norton on playing Pete Seeger in the Bob Dylan film
Ed Norton as Pete Seeger and Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown.
In the movie A Complete Unknown - a film about the musical legend that is Bob Dylan - Edward Norton plays another. Folk singer and social activist Pete Seeger was a regular on US radio over three decades and his music is celebrated to this day by artists including Bruce Springsteen.
Seeger was one of the earliest supporters of a young Dylan, and their musical relationship, as well as Dylan’s decision to “go electric” and the controversy that caused, are explored in the film.
For Norton, the opportunity to work with celebrated director James Mangold (Logan, Walk the Line) - and the approach the filmmaker wanted to take - were a part of the draw.
“I like Jim's films,” says the actor. “I thought Walk the Line was a beautiful music portrait. He was very clear that he didn't want to try to make an assessment of Dylan's life. He really wanted to do an immersion in a brief moment. I like the idea of something that's about the zeitgeist of a moment, as opposed to a plot or a Wikipedia page, if you will.”
Both men’s admiration for another filmmaker - legendary Czech-American Milos Forman (Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) - also came into the mix.
“Jim and I, in some ways, both had Milos Forman as a mentor, and I think that something about the way Jim talked about it reminded me of Amadeus. Again, not a plot, but more the examination of how a talent emerged within a time and defined it and had all kinds of reverberations in other people.”
When it came to finding the essence of Seeger for his role, Norton turned to the modern-day treasure trove that is online video. “In today's world, I must say it's astonishing how much access you have,” he says. “All 37 Episodes of Pete Seeger's obscure public channel folk show [Rainbow Quest] are all on YouTube. You can see him doing a performance in 1963 in a Berlin television studio.
“There is a treasure trove of opportunity to see him and hear him and absorb him. But at the same time, that just gives you voice and posture and things like that. As a director, one of the things I like about Jim is he says to everybody: ‘Go out and bring me more Pete Seeger than I can ever put in the movie. Bring me more Joan Baez than I can ever put in the movie. Bring me more Bob Dylan, improvise, tell me something they said that I never knew, and throw it all against the wall and trust me to sort it out’.
“That’s sort of the way it worked. I think all of us brought nuggets in from our mining. Jim allowed for an enormous amount of improvisation. I like that way of working - I love that Jim's a beautiful blend of great confidence then great openness to discovery as well.”
Both Norton and Timothée Chalamet, who plays Dylan, are generating awards-season chatter for their strong work in the film. Chalamet, in particular, is widely expected to get an Oscar nomination for his note-perfect yet nuanced take on the US star in his younger years.
“He was in a fierce and deep place and I loved being in it with him,” says Norton. “It was wonderful to watch. It was very unfussy - we didn't talk too much about it, we kind of just got at it. It's a very difficult thing to go beyond imitation and kind of get at the essence of someone, a human being who was creating that music and grappling with what was happening to him,” he adds of his co-star’s work.
He’s a fan of Dylan’s music. What is his own cultural and musical relationship with him? “I've seen him a few times. I've seen him some nights I thought he was amazing, but I don't look at Dylan the way... I don't have expectations of him. I think he's a mystic. He's like wine - you're going to uncork a bottle, and you're going to love one bottle and you're not going to love another bottle, but you love wine. He has always retained a mysterious and elusive quality, which I love about him.”
Like virtually everyone who works widely in Los Angeles, the US actor has been horrified by the wildfires in the city and the massive human cost the disaster has inflicted. “I think we're all having the same reaction,” he says. “It's sort of beyond place or specific community, these moments of catastrophe when a terrible thing happens to too many people.
“Right now, honestly, I'm just staying up late kind of figuring out how to fundraise for the various great groups that are on the ground and the Firefighters Foundation. In some ways the magnitude of it all is hard to take in, and the thing to do is just knowing that there are people working so hard, to put your shoulder against the wheel and try to try to help out in whatever way you feel you can. I think that's about all one can do right now.”
- A Complete Unknown is in cinemas from Friday, January 17
A Complete Unknown is not a typical biopic of Bob Dylan’s life story, but zones in on a crucial time in his life. Still in his early twenties, Dylan wanted to expand and explore his musical horizons by ‘going electric’. It caused huge conflict among some of his fans and peers in folk music, who had embraced the young performer.
“I felt that this particular period between 61 and 65 in his story, was evocative, almost a fairy tale, or a kind of fable about genius,” says director James Mangold, who also co-wrote the film’s screenplay.
“It becomes about much more than just Bob Dylan, but becomes about how all of us relate to people who are touched in a way, and how it feels to be the person who is touched, and how it feels to be one of the mortals around this strange creature who seems to have a creative tiger by the tail.
“In many ways, I took inspiration from my old teacher, Milos Forman's Amadeus, which, even though his name is the title, is less an exploration of how Mozart came up with this music, and more an exploration of how we regular folk react to someone who has this volcanic creative ability.”
The film centres on how the young Dylan’s talent shone through, making him revered in folk circles. Still in his early to mid-twenties, his urge to explore his potential further came at a time when many other artists were doing the same. Why does Mangold think that there was such a strong response to his decision to do so?
“I think he really did change the culture, and his early folk music really did produce such intense adoration that when he started to shift, when he started to feel like he was in a creative dead end, and he couldn't continue just to pump out Blowing in the Winds and Times They Are a Changing every six months, his fans were shocked,” says the filmmaker.
“I think fans still feel about filmmakers and rock stars and songwriters and novelists: ‘Why can't they just keep doing what I loved?’ But the answer to the question is almost inherent in the question, which is, of course, they can't just keep repeating themselves, just like time moves on so do they. They need to keep exploring. That's how they found the thing you loved in the first place.”
