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Question:

On Dylan having a relationship with a model and Charlotte Gainsbourg’s role.

Todd Haynes:

Okay well, you know, Edie Sedgwick was a famous model of the underground 60s scene in New York.

And yes, there’s been a lot of mythology and speculation about their relationship. And they were definitely – they definitely knew each other. They definitely spent time together.

The extent of that relationship will remain a mystery but many of Dylan’s songs from 65-66 years have been interpreted as having something to do with her.

And I wanted that evoked in the film. So the character that Michelle Williams plays Coco Rivington is a nod to Edie Sedgwick who was from a very wealthy family so she’s described as this debutante in the film.

And Michelle really kind of personifies aspects of the Edie Sedgwick mystique in the movie.

Question:

On Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett:

Todd Haynes:

Yeah, I mean all the actors in the film I shared my own source material that – of research material that I used to write the stories and conceive of the stories and characters. And there’s so much stuff.

There’s so much great material that I could share with them starting with the music. I made little kind of mixed CDs for each on tailored to their story or character and then gave them all the kind of still images. I made these sort of collage books for each actor and then I gave them all the films that related to their particular story.

The reasons clearly obvious – the reasons like Christian’s – particularly his early protest character (Jack Rowlins) and Kate’s (Jude Quinn) are the most familiar are the most familiar is probably because they’re the most – the best documented and the most famous kind of public moments in Dylan’s life. And the actors – all actors, you know, I think make great use of that kind of concrete source material.

But everyone does it in their own way. We never wanted to do like outright like impersonations of Dylan from the outside in but I think these kinds of materials and the conversations that we had encourage the actors to kind of work from the inside out but still have a lot of concrete references to incorporate.

And the reason I put the two characters together, the two very different phases as you say of Dylan’s life into one is I found a lot of interesting similarities in the kind of moral and ethical kind of searching and solutioning – solution finding that characterized both his protest era and the civil rights period and later his Christian era.

And in both of these times in Dylan’s life, and they’re fairly unusual for this he felt he had the answer to social issues and personal perspective on the world.

And they became incorporated in his music and also in the kind of followings that manifest in each. And yet he would reject those answers or any kind of way that answers get consolidated into movements or into political or religious convention, you know, later in his career.

But I found that that was an interesting way of understanding these two moments in Dylan’s life and how they actually have unique and some surprising similarities.

Question:

On Bob Dylan’s reaction to the film

Todd Haynes:     

Well he hasn’t really been involved in any of the details of the film. He – except at the very very beginning – I wouldn’t have even considered going forward with the concept if I wasn’t going to get music rights from Dylan. And in seeking music rights from Dylan we had to, you know, I presented the entire concept of course to his manager and this was back in 2000.

And so – and the manager just asked me to sort of put the concept down on a sheet of paper, sort of like a single line description on each of the stories and send that off to Dylan with my DVDs of some of my films.

And, you know, even then I had absolutely no reasonable expectations that he would say yes. He never had before. And he did. And he gave us full life and music rights for this project.

But from that point on Dylan himself has pretty much been being Dylan and doing his own thing. And Jeff Rosen his manager, has been the sort of present figure on our production and became pretty close to all of us. He’s a wonderful guy.

He’s been very generous and very open and given me a great deal of creative freedom. And all we know now is that Dylan has a copy of the movie on DVD in his suitcase on his tour but we don’t know if he’s watched it or – that’s the last I’ve heard.

Question:

On Heath Ledger’s comment in the New York Times regarding Dylan - “I think Todd was aiming to represent him. He was not trying to sum him up or define him.”

Todd Haynes:

Yeah. Well anything Heath says I agree with basically. No – yeah definitely to try to sum Dylan up I think is just kind of missing the point in – and maybe you can’t sum up anybody, you know, I mean I don’t know if I’d want to be necessarily summed up.

But Dylan’s work and life and massive amount of, you know, songs and records that he’s produced over the years just defy that kind of premise and that’s why I chose to basically multiply the ways that he could be looked at as an artist. And that’s why I took the approach I took.

Question:

On the songs

Todd Haynes:

Yeah. I worked really closely with (Randy Poster) who is the music supervisor and (Jim Dunbar) who worked very closely with both of us on this project. I worked with (Randy) on my film called The Goldmine and we kind of did something similar on that film where we, you know, we combined and most of the song choices were things that I had decided in the writing stage. But – and some of them I knew would be the Dylan original recordings.

But there were all of these other songs that we needed cover versions for. Obviously whenever any of the actors performed a song I wanted a new cover so that, you know, it wouldn’t be them lip syncing to Bob Dylan or something.

And so what we did is we – for particularly places where there were several songs or a whole sort of sound associated with one of the stories like the (Jude Quinn) story we kind of brought creative producers into the mix.

So Lee Rinaldo from Sonic Youth was the guy we elected for the – for creating the sort of – the electric sound. And they call themselves the million dollar – the band they put together call themselves the Million Dollar Bashers on the soundtrack.

But in includes a collection of incredible musicians from, you know, Tony Garnier who’s Dylan’s base player currently, John Medeski from Dinosaur 3, Smokey Hormel who’s this unbelievable guitar player I actually went to high school with, Steve Shelley on drums and Tom Verlaine on guitar.

 And they would perform the backing tracks for all of the songs that Cateperforms in the film – Cate Blanchett – that (Steve Malcom) has - did vocals for. And then Tom Verlaine sings Cold Iron Bound in the film and Eddie Vedder sings All Along the Watch Tower with the same lineup.

But we also asked Joe Henry to produce a bunch of songs for us including the John Doe song and Calexico produced a bunch of stuff for us. Otherwise the rest of the covers were just covers that different bands produced themselves.

Question:

On perhaps losing viewers who were unfamiliar with Dylan’s life.

Todd Haynes:

You know, I really took my cue from the adventures that Dylan himself embarked on in popular music, you know, like – and in that regard I, you know, I wanted to be as risky and as kind of wild and unorthodox as he was with popular music in his day.

The amazing thing is just that he had a kind of culture in the 1960s of audiences that kind of wanted to have their minds blown all the time and their old – the old categories kind of ripped apart, you know, and reinvented.

And, you know, even if that isn’t necessarily how you define today’s audiences I didn’t want to shortchange that unique time and the unique results of that time in Dylan’s life and work.

I just always try to tell people to not worry about getting all of the details, that each of these stories in and of themselves are pretty, you know, things we’ve seen before.

They aren’t completely – they might have stylistic approaches that are a little wacky or funny or twisted or kind of arty. But the actual narratives are pretty clear and the characters and the performances are incredibly accessible.

And the music is – but you kind of have to go with it. And the movie really in many ways, I think the best way to enjoy it is like it’s taking a drug or having a dream or getting inside a great Dylan record.

Question:

The most challenging part of putting all this together

Todd Haynes:

It was an adventure. It was a crazy terrifying thrilling process. And, you know, I really couldn’t have pulled it off and I – without the kind of creative commitments of these actors and the creative heads of my departments in the film, on the crew and the production.

But in particular working with this collection of actors was just, you know, it’s just one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had because I mean it always – I’ve always been really lucky with the actors I’ve worked with.

This one just was just like – there were just so many of them and, you know, each one of them just poured themselves into what they were doing even if it was like two days of shooting for Michelle Williams.

She just completely transformed in front of my eyes for this role and even Julianne Moore as well who I’ve had, you know, a really rich relationship with over the years – she just did something I’ve never seen here do before in this character of Alice which is, you know, drawing from the (Joan Baez) legacy.

But yeah, it was scary. I mean every director is terrified and they are trying very hard to just deal with the immediate crises in front of them every day and keep moving forward.

If you look back you’ll turn to salt, you know? You just have to keep marching ahead and that was definitely the only way we could get through this very complicated film on a very tight schedule.

But the amazing thing now when I look at the film is how much you actually can appreciate the performances, that it’s a very crowded stage and yet, you know – and obviously Cate Blanchett is one of the leading, you know, performances in the film but, you know, so many people talk about Charlotte Gainsbourg or talk about David Cross or talk about Bruce Greenwood – smaller roles in the film but still – there’s still room for them to make an impression. And I’m just – I’m sort of fascinated in how that all worked out so well.