Fin: Bob Dylan and Timothee Chalamet and Minnesota

Plus: Kate Winslet speaks again, no apologies needed from Francis Coppola, the "return" on Enron, and more in this week’s notes column.

People from Minnesota love a favorite son, and few favorite sons are more loved in the Gopher State than Hibbing’s own Bob Dylan. Sure, Bob hasn’t lived in Minnesota full-time since 1961, but he remains beloved there- and there’s even a whole book about his Minnesota history, published a couple of years ago. Another book was written by Louie Kemp, Bob’s old friend from Herzl Camp in Wisconsin, who I interviewed in 2019.

The new movie about Bob, A Complete Unknown, comes out at Christmas – I’ll have a review up here next week — and it doesn’t touch on his time in Minnesota, as the narrative starts with Dylan arriving in New York in 1961, presumably having hitchhiked from the Twin Cities.

Later, we see a girlfriend open a scrapbook with a Minnesota Golden Gophers banner and high school pictures, some of which made its way into the trailer:

A big theme of the movie is that Bob is unknowable, even to those close to him, and that he could make up whatever nonsense he wanted about his past and people would believe him. Dylan would do this with journalists for a long time, a habit later adopted by his fellow Minnesota superstar, Prince.

Although part of it, of course, was New York chauvinism, as people in the Big Apple would believe someone from the Midwest worked in a carnival, as Bob claimed at one point. (Joan Baez, alone, seemed to clock that he was full of shit in that regard.)

At any rate, the Minnesota love for Dylan appears to extend to the actor playing him, Timothee Chalamet, who visited the Twin Cities for a showing of the movie on Thursday, and shared that he made two trips to Minnesota while researching the role:

And yes, the news anchor is wearing a winter jacket indoors.

Watch for that review next Tuesday. And so you know: At last week's screening, I may or may not have violated the new, Wicked-inspired “no singing in the theater” rule.