Mr. Bob Dylan has been the subject of scrutiny lately, what with the Super Bowl premiere for Chrysler's new ad campaign (eh, did you watch--let alone care?).
But if you're not in the mood for his current installation--let's refer to I'm Not There, since we had six analogies of the Dylan persona, as it were, over the years--then maybe you can shoot over to YouTube for the just-now-resurfacing tour doc Eat the Document.
Originally intended to be a TV documentary on Dylan's 1966 European tour (i.e. Bootleg Series Vol. 4) for ABC, the film was reckoned "incomprehensible" by network heads and didn't see the light of day until the '70s (or post-motorcycle "accident," depending on who you talk to).
To wit, Pennebaker also filmed Dylan on his 1965 European tour and called it Don't Look Back, another famous tour chronicle of then frizzy-haired, skeleton-fingered Bobby.
Apparently, as Legs and Gillian over at Please Kill Me note, the Tambourine Man wasn't a fan of The Document, making it all the more apparent why you should see this immediately.
And it is 'incomprehensible." A seemingly distressed Dylan meanders all about the stage. He writes weirdly with Robbie Robertson. And he doesn't quite seem to get "acting" (something we were granted insight to via Pennebaker during Martin Scorsese's No Direction Home).
You even get a potential heroin-induced conversation between Dylan and John Lennon in the back of a limo. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that the clean-cut mainstream hacks have nightmares about.
So, before the Dylan authorities eat the proverbial document, catch Pennebaker's actual Eat the Document on YouTube while you can.
