Trailer
Plot summary
Six characters carry different facets of one musician's life, their stories told out of order. A twelve-year-old boy rides the rails in 1959 as Woody Guthrie, playing blues with a guitar case marked "this machine kills fascists." Folk singer Jack Rollins becomes a star of the Greenwich Village scene with his protest songs, then stops singing them. Robbie Clark, an actor, plays Rollins in the 1965 film Grain of Sand, and his marriage to the French artist Claire strains as his fame grows. Jude Quinn, a former folk singer, performs with a full band and electric guitars, and his fans accuse him of selling out. Arthur Rimbaud answers unseen interrogators, and the outlaw Billy McCarty hides out near Riddle, Missouri, where Commissioner Garrett plans a highway.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about I'm Not There. (2007)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The scene in which Jude is called "Judas" by an audience member is based on a real concert in Manchester on May 17, 1966, captured on Dylan's album Live 1966.
- Todd Haynes and his producer Christine Vachon approached Dylan's manager Jeff Rosen for permission to use Dylan's music and to fictionalize his life; Rosen asked for a one-page synopsis and advised Haynes not to use the word "genius" or "voice of a generation".
- Six actors depict different facets of Dylan's public personas: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, in his last film to be released during his lifetime, and Ben Whishaw.
- A further Dylan-based character named Charlie, based on Charlie Chaplin, was dropped before filming began, and Adrien Brody and Colin Farrell were attached early in development, with Heath Ledger replacing Farrell as Robbie Clark after he dropped out.
- Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, both Black Panther leaders, listened "obsessively" to Dylan's song "Ballad of a Thin Man" while putting together the first issue of the Black Panther newspaper in 1967.
- Blanchett won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress for the film, and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
