Terri Thal #2: That Dylan movie

Informed take on singer's bio-drama

Bob Dylan’s own lyric might have supplied the title for James Mangold’s much-discussed 2024 picture A Complete Unknown, but the singer, just arrived New York City in January 1961, would be quickly familiar to TERRI THAL and her boyfriend Dave Van Ronk, Greenwich Village stalwarts at the heart of that neighbourhood’s thriving folk scene.

Van Ronk, the man widely known as ‘the Mayor of MacDougal Street’, and Thal, soon to be his wife, made Dylan welcome in their apartment home, modest but welcoming premises that became folksinger central during much of the 1960s.

The would-be performer and recording artist, only recently escaping the Midwest for Manhattan, learned much from this dynamic couple – politics, literature, repertoire, stagecraft – and slept regularly on their well-used couch.

Thal quickly became Dylan’s first manager, also looked after Van Ronk’s business affairs and worked tirelessly as musical promoter, ardent socialist and political activist.

Her first-hand memories of these times are lucidly laid down in her autobiography My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me, published by McNidder and Grace in 2023. She remains an avid campaigner for social justice and environmental reform.

Now, Thal has written three related essays on that remarkable Village world for Rock and the Beat Generation, including memories of the Beat writers and the place of the Beatles in the folk story.

In her second article, she reflects on that very recent Dylan screen portrait…

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‘That Dylan movie’

By Terri Thal

I TEND TO think literally, not metaphorically, so I thought I’d dislike A Complete Unknown, the movie about Bob Dylan, because I knew it wasn’t an attempt to be an accurate biography but a biopic, which dramatizes someone’s life rather than tells the story of the life.

To my surprise, I liked the movie. It sets Bob up as a somewhat sympathetic person immediately, in its first ten minutes, by taking him to visit his hero Woody Guthrie, the labor hero folk singer songwriter who was dying of Huntington’s disease. At the hospital, Bob also meets Pete Seeger, the figurehead of the folk music world, who is struck by the young man’s intensity and interest in folk music.

In the movie, Pete sort of adopts Bob, certainly to a much deeper extent than happened in real life. This is one major arc of the movie: will Bob remain within the folk music community and its limited musical and commercial outreach?

The other arc, or the other major theme, involves collapsing Bob's romances with Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez into the same timeframe covered by the movie: 1961, when he came to NYC, through summer 1965, when he brought an electric band onto the stage of the Newport Folk Festival.

So, where am I coming from?

I was part of the folk music world from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. I can’t totally separate out what I know about many of the people and situations in the movie from the real world…especially the people I was close to.

First, Dave Van Ronk. The movie is insulting to Dave. I am not big on symbolism, but the movie shows Dave twice: the first time, telling Bob, who has just entered New York City, where to find Woody Guthrie (the second time Dave is at a party and is barely recognizable; I wasn’t sure I’d seen him).

This says that, from the start, Dave represents a world Bob will reject. It in no way shows how Dave helped Bob get to where he was able to move on…which is a role DVR (and I) played.

Pictured above: Timothée Chalamet as Dylan in A Complete Unknown

Secondly, Suze Rotolo and Joan Baez. Also insulting. Typical movie portrayal of a girlfriend. In it, Sylvie (Suze) is a soppy, sulky, unhappy young woman who says upfront that she is busy but then is shown only as a creature supporting Bob, waiting on Bob, wanting Bob, crying when Bob clearly is betraying her.

Suze was active in CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) while she was with Bob. I think her concern with Civil Rights affected his songwriting and led to some of his more politically-oriented songs. She introduced him to Arthur Rimbaud, an early Symbolist poet who used odd rhymes, apparently disorganized structure, mixing profane words and ideas with sophisticated verse.

She also introduced him to Bertolt Brecht’s songwriting. She herself created art. In my book My Greenwich Village: Dave, Bob and Me, I show a photograph of a small book she made in 1993. She wasn’t yet making book art when she was with Bob, but she was making art and using found objects to make interesting jewellery.

She wasn’t soppy and she didn’t stand around and cry and mourn when Bob was busy. Further, the triangle between her, Bob and Joan Baez didn’t exist. It was created to be part of that arc of tension I mention earlier. Joan lived in Massachusetts, was not in New York very much at all, she and Bob were not having a romance while he and Suze were together…and it’s demeaning to Joan to suggest that she bounced into bed with Bob whenever Suze was away.

This is highlighted in a scene that both is good and bothers me. The scenes about the Cuban missile crisis clearly show the fear everyone had…people frantically trying to visit relatives, people calling family members just in case they won’t be there tomorrow.

The movie shows Bob working at the Gaslight, with a small, terrified group of people riveted to him. Meanwhile, because Suze is away, Joan quickly packs a suitcase, rushes to the Village, to the Gaslight, and she and Bob go to his and Suze’s apartment, where they tumble into bed.

It’s well done. So, why does it bother me? First, because as I’ve said, that triangle didn’t exist, and I think it’s cavalier and rude to suggest that Joan Baez jumped up and dashed to find Bob for comfort when Suze was away. It’s simply another example of filmmakers using women to make points they have no other way of making.

Pictured above: Terri Thal and Dave Van Ronk, friends and supporters of Dylan

More personally: Dave was working at the Gaslight that night. I don’t know where Bob was, but he certainly wasn’t in the Gaslight. There was a small crowd there, which was unusual – Dave usually packed the place.

Afterward, we took about 10 people to Sam Wo, our 'go-to’ place in Chinatown, for what we hoped wasn’t a last meal, and several came back to our apartment. Neither Bob nor Joan were among them. Again, the movie simply erases Dave…and me and Danny Kalb and everyone else who was in the Gaslight that evening.

Another scene I found insulting: Muddy Waters’ son Big Bill Morganfield plays a blues singer who was purportedly on Pete Seeger’s PBS show. Dylan, who had been booked to be on the show, is late, and the blues musician, who clearly is drunk, sits at a table holding a paper bag containing a pint of whiskey.

Bob gets there late, swigs the booze, asks to play with the musician, and more than holds his own on guitar. Voila! Dylan earns respect from the guy. I don’t know why Mud Morgenfield, who is a talented blues musician – yes, I’ve seen him perform –agreed to play that role.

Why was the situation created? Bob had worked hard at becoming a good guitarist. If the producers or his manager or whoever wanted to show off his guitar-playing, OK. But why show a stereotypically drunk Black musician? I’m sure the people who made this movie aren’t racist, but I don’t understand what was behind this.

©Terri Thal 3/2025

See also: ‘Terri Thal #1: The Beats and me’, April 14th, 2025; ‘Film review #1: A Complete Unknown’, January 8th, 2025; ‘Interview #29: Elijah Wald’, December 21st, 2024; ‘Book review #36: Dylan Goes Electric!’, December 11th, 2024; ‘Book review #12: Bob Dylan in the Big Apple’, November 26th, 2022