I have a perverse interest in watching people do dumb things when they know there on camera. There is something compelling when someone is so arrogant as to think that they can say and do whatever they want, to whoever they want, while a filmmaker is recording everything. Perhaps there is nothing that is quite as (wrongly) gratifying as watching a really, really arrogant person get put in his place.
After Don't Look Back was released, Bob Dylan, who was not exactly known for good relations with the press to begin with, became a minor recluse, rarely giving interviews, and certainly never giving anyone such complete access as D.A. Pennebaker had for this movie. And with good reason- Dylan comes off as an incredibly conceded, egotistical, and mean-spirited jerk in this movie. Don't Look Back can be compared to another documentary, Overnight, with a crucial difference. Overnight documents Troy Duffey destroying his career due to his arrogance, where Dylan is already famous. This makes Dylan actually more frustrating. Surrounding himself with groupies who think he's God, Bob is free to be insult anyone he pleases, because hey, he knows the answer that's blowing in the wind.
At first, you wonder if maybe Pennebaker caught the guy on a bad day, but no, this movie documents Dylan's 1965 tour of England. Some of the highlights of the tour: Dylan bullies and insults a respectful kid from a student newspaper who somehow got permission to interview him, Dylan annoys Joan Baez by typing loudly while she practices a song, Dylan gets into a shouting match because some loser in his entourage throws a glass into the street, Dylan's pig of a manager, Albert Grossman, insults pretty much everyone, and most famously, Dylan refuses to answer the questions of a Time magazine reporter because, you know, he just doesn't get the Truth, man. At the time, there was a minor (and in retrospect, stupid) controversy in Britain over whether Donovan, the "Hurdy Gurdy Man" guy, was too derivative of Bobby D. When the two finally meet, it is disturbing. Donavan is clearly in awe of Dylan and is just looking for a bit of encouragement from the master. He plays an okay song and instead of giving him a pep talk or even helpful songwriting tips, Dylan then plays a great tune, just to prove how superior he is. What an asshole.
In fairness to its subject, Pennebaker does show some of the madness of fishbowl lifestyle the artist must have been living in. It also understandably that Dylan might have hard time adapting to becoming rich, famous and considered a genius at his young age (he was only 24 when the movie was made), but that doesn't excuse his lack of human decency. Pennebaker also documents a strange thing- despite the fact that Dylan likes to portray himself as being a voice of the working man, the only people he acts respectfully toward are people who will give him money or members of the aristocracy.
But the movie is more than just a character portrait. It's a strange evocation of a crossroads in popular music, when it was become more sophisticated but "intellectual" folk and "mainstream" rock audiences had not yet merged. Although the film opens with a video for Dylan's first electric song, "Subterranean Homesick Blues", the tour is entirely acoustic and folk oriented. It's nice to see footage of this era of Dylan performing (he avoided television appearances) but I was never a fan of this period of his career- it always seemed a little too cerebral and preciously defiant of The Man. It's also worth nothing that few people around Dylan come off as that much better than he does. The only actual likable people in the film are other musicians: Baez, Donovan, and Alan Price, the organist of The Animals, who starts to hang out with Dylan after he leaves the group.
It's not surprising that Dylan became reclusive at this film was released. If someone made that made me look this bad, I would probably never wanted to be seen on camera again. Sure, Bob Dylan was a great musician, but in terms of being a decent person, he sure ain't no Bob Geldorf.
Don't Look Back (1967)