Moody Center
Dylan Fan Defends 'Masked'
RECEIVED Mon., Aug. 25, 2003
Your review of the new Larry Charles/Bob Dylan film Masked and Anonymous calls it a "narrative mess," yet also states that "the viewer is able to follow along all right but will always feel as though a few salient bits of information are missing." It concludes by saying that as far as the meaning of the film is concerned, "The answer is blowin' in the wind." How original!
Your readers were shabbily served. Try this: The film is both a political satire about modern America shot on the streets of Los Angeles (not "some kind of fictional America" as you oddly write) and a riff on the mythology of Dylan himself. Satire is always hard to grasp; Dylan too, frankly, but the following two moments were key:
Mickey Rourke gives a televised speech as the new president near the film's conclusion, just after his own father, the former president, has died. Rourke's cadence in the speech is precisely that of George W. Bush, son of George H.W. Bush, and Rourke even speaks of ridding the world of "evil doers." Your reviewer missed that.
Jeff Bridges plays the reporter sent to get the story, yet he only wants to berate the Fate/Dylan character with questions about his past and what it all means. "You weren't at Woodstock, were you?" he asks at one point. "Come now, you're supposed to have all the answers," he says at another point. Bridges' character strikingly mirrors the Time magazine reporter with whom Dylan famously toyed in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Don't Look Back. I suppose your reviewer missed that, too.
The fact is that even with problems, the film (for a little, independent film) hangs together quite well, the storyline is positively easy to follow, and the actors (particularly Goodman, Lange, Bridges, and Cruz) are delightful. Nobody phoned in their work on this project. The screenplay about which your reviewer is clueless contains deliciously sharp dialogue, well delivered throughout.
One final point: Your reviewer casually mentions the film's Jack Fate cover band, "among whose members is Charlie Sexton." In truth, the band was Dylan's own real-life band which featured Sexton at the time, salient facts the reader should have been told. Just one more example of your reviewer being sent to cover something for which she was clearly ill-prepared.
Your readers were shabbily served. Try this: The film is both a political satire about modern America shot on the streets of Los Angeles (not "some kind of fictional America" as you oddly write) and a riff on the mythology of Dylan himself. Satire is always hard to grasp; Dylan too, frankly, but the following two moments were key:
Mickey Rourke gives a televised speech as the new president near the film's conclusion, just after his own father, the former president, has died. Rourke's cadence in the speech is precisely that of George W. Bush, son of George H.W. Bush, and Rourke even speaks of ridding the world of "evil doers." Your reviewer missed that.
Jeff Bridges plays the reporter sent to get the story, yet he only wants to berate the Fate/Dylan character with questions about his past and what it all means. "You weren't at Woodstock, were you?" he asks at one point. "Come now, you're supposed to have all the answers," he says at another point. Bridges' character strikingly mirrors the Time magazine reporter with whom Dylan famously toyed in the D.A. Pennebaker documentary Don't Look Back. I suppose your reviewer missed that, too.
The fact is that even with problems, the film (for a little, independent film) hangs together quite well, the storyline is positively easy to follow, and the actors (particularly Goodman, Lange, Bridges, and Cruz) are delightful. Nobody phoned in their work on this project. The screenplay about which your reviewer is clueless contains deliciously sharp dialogue, well delivered throughout.
One final point: Your reviewer casually mentions the film's Jack Fate cover band, "among whose members is Charlie Sexton." In truth, the band was Dylan's own real-life band which featured Sexton at the time, salient facts the reader should have been told. Just one more example of your reviewer being sent to cover something for which she was clearly ill-prepared.
Jackson Williams