How Johnny Cash Letters Led To Major Book Changes Explained By Director & Star

Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for A Complete Unknown!A Complete Unknown director and star explain how the discovery of Johnny Cash’s letters to Bob Dylan led to a departure from source material. Adapted from Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric, which documents Dylan’s pivotal 1965 performance at the Newport Folk Festival, James Mangold’s 2024 musical biopic focuses on the musical aspect of Dylan’s (Timothée Chalamet) life from 1961 to 1965 and those who helped him along the way, which originally excluded Cash (Boyd Holbrook).

Mangold and Holbrook talk about how the discovery of letters between Dylan and Cash led to the inclusion of Johnny Cash in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Holbrook reveals he was cast for potential roles, but the role of Johnny Cash only came up after “some research with Bob [Dylan],” when Mangold discovered that the two musical icons were “pen pals.“ The director, who once tackled Cash’s life in his 2005 biopic Walk the Line, didn’t know because Cash no longer had the letters, and therefore lifted some from the letters for the new movie’s dialogue. Check out what they said below:

Boyd Holbrook: The Johnny Cash part wasn’t in [the book] Going Electric. It was only after doing some research with Bob that [Jim] found out that Johnny and Bob were pen pals. He didn’t know that when he made Walk the Line.

He found them through Bob. That really tells you which person is which. I read those and they’re great, man. They’re on the back of airplane sickness bags. These guys are at the pinnacle of their lives, road dogs traveling in the isolation of maximum fame. They’re a big insight into them and their lives and what made them tick.

James Mangold: It’s a beautiful series of letters. Johnny started writing to Bob after his Freewheelin’ album came out.

What This Means For A Complete Unknown

The Movie Draws Inspiration From Real Life

In the movie, the friendship between Cash and Dylan began through back-and-forth letters, which eventually led to the two meeting in real life at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. While most of this version is true, their first real-life encounter is one of the myths in A Complete Unknown. According to Dylan’s eulogy for Cash, they met each other long before the ’64 Newport Folk Festival. Cash’s son once shared that the two met in a hotel room in New York, as opposed to Newport, Rhode Island.

In the same interview, Mangold, who has become an expert through the making of both Walk the Line and A Complete Unknown, shared some insight into capturing Cash and Dylan’s lives on the big screen. He shared that even though Johnny Cash is in both, the two biopics offer “entirely different perspectives.“ Check out what the director said about Johnny Cash’s role in Bob Dylan’s musical life:

I found myself watching Boyd sing a song that Joaquin sang 20 years ago in a different movie, but the movies have such entirely different perspectives. Johnny Cash is crossing through the New York Folk world because he was such a fan of all music and was an early advocate of Bob’s. It’s a very different story, but one that does overlap.

Holbrook’s comments about how the two relate to each other as “road dogs traveling in the isolation of maximum fame” shed some light on A Complete Unknown’s take on their friendship. While it’s largely based on real-life nuances, the biopic is still a work of fiction, and therefore some aspects are changed for artistic purposes.

Our Take On A Complete Unknown’s Johnny Cash Inclusion

Still An Intriguing & Relevant Musical Biopic, Regardless Of Accuracy

The significant first meeting between Dylan and Cash isn’t the only piece of fiction in the movie. In fact, the film changed many important relationships Dylan had, as Joan Baez didn’t meet Dylan at an open mic night, nor was she an up-and-coming artist. It’s a well-known fact that Baez had already achieved international fame by the time she met Dylan. However, these changes have served to tell a more relevant story while introducing Dylan’s music to another generation of music lovers.

A Complete Unknown currently has a 96% audience approval rate and 79% critic approval rate on Rotten Tomatoes, with many entranced by the nuanced and fascinating relationships depicted in the movie. In Screen Rant‘s review of A Complete Unknown, Mae Abdulbaki praised Chalamet’s “solid performance,” the “lasting impression” Barbaro leaves as Joan Baez, and Edward Norton’s “interesting contrast” as Pete Seeger.

Source: EW

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Release Date

December 25, 2024

Main Genre

Biography

Cast

Timothée Chalamet
, Edward Norton
, Elle Fanning
, Monica Barbaro
, Nick Offerman
, Boyd Holbrook
, P.J. Byrne
, Scoot McNairy
, Dan Fogler
, Will Harrison
, Charlie Tahan
, Jon Gennari
, Norbert Leo Butz

Character(s)

Bob Dylan
, Pete Seeger
, Sylvie Russo
, Joan Baez
, Alan Lomax
, Johnny Cash
, Harold Levanthal
, Woody Guthrie
, Albert Grossman
, Bob Neuwirth
, Al Kooper
, Stage Manager

Studio(s)

Searchlight Pictures
, The Picture Company
, Automatik Entertainment

Distributor(s)

Searchlight Pictures

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