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Idiot Wind: Bob Dylan's <em>Blood On The Tracks</em> Is Being Turned Into A Movie
By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 5, 2012
Modified Apr 5, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Apr 5, 2012
Modified Apr 5, 2012
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Maybe someone who has it in for Bob Dylan has been planting stories in the press: someone is turning Dylan's seminal 1975 album Blood On The Tracks into a movie! According to Variety, Brazil-based RT Features has acquired the rights to turn the album into a film—and they will be able to use the original music. Besides the fact that there's no director or writer attached, Bob Dylan is notoriously difficult to cinematize, and the idea of turning an album of semi-biographical Chekhov-inspired relationship songs into a film seems like an epic disaster of Don Quixote proportions, what could go wrong?
RT Features heads Rodrigo Teixeira and Fernando Loureiro, who will produce the film, are blindly optimistic about the project: "As longtime admirers of one of the greatest albums in the history of music, we feel privileged to be making this film," Teixeira said. "Our goal is to work with a filmmaker who can create a classic drama with characters and an environment that capture the feelings that the album inspires in all fans." Mind you, there already is a movie based on a Dylan song ("Brownsville Girl") that has been wasting away in development hell (which Brad Pitt has been connected to).
How they try to pull this off will be key: will the filmmakers turn the album into a series a vignettes, ala I'm Not There? Or will they try to create some unifying plotline out of the fragments, like Masked And Anonymous? "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts" and "Tangled Up In Blue" are both epics that could be given their own individual movie treatments, if someone felt the need—but piling on all 10 beautiful, brutal songs into one cinematic soup?
As Dylan himself said in an interview reflecting on the album, "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying that type of pain, you know?" We know Hollywood is completely out of original ideas, but what Dylan fan wants a movie based on this personal, beguiling work? When will Picasso's "Guernica" be turned into a Pixar feature? How long until some idiot turns The Great Gatsby into a 3-D IMAX experience?
Blood On The Tracks: The Movie is a terrible idea any way you look at it. We'd rather see a Travelling Willburys man-dude comedy than this. Then again, who knows: maybe the filmmakers feel the same way, but they just see it from a different point of view.
Tagged
bad ideas
blood on the tracks
bob dylan
cinema
film
movie
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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