I had read that there was a PBS documentary for airing on American Masters was in the works about Bob Dylan's early years --but discovered that it was on about ten minutes before it aired Pacific Daylight Time by way of a blog post ""No Direction Home: Bob Dylan on PBS Tonight"" on Root.Celler
I was prepared to be bored by Dylan doing his usual act — with glib sarcastic comments and with real feelinsg hidden behind his well-practiced poker face. Well, this time we didn't get the act.
Perhaps concerned about his place in history, Dylan opens up about that period of his life when he was so influential to my generation during our youth in the 60's.
PBS presented the documentary in two chunks.The first was a full two hours. which is a long time to sit through a documentary. Those first two hours are so good you hardly notice the length. I just called my mother and told her
to watch the second part. I just finished watching it before I wrote this and I'm a bit sorry she had not seen the first part. I posted about the first part on my blog but the second part was much different.
I had not been aware that director Martin Scorsese did documentaries but I will probably try to see any documentary he does in the future. He restates in an interview done by an over effusive PBS guy his technique for the documentary. He sets a 1966 during a tour that Dylan did of England as the present. During the series of concerts, the American folksinger was consistently jeered by crowds of English folk fans who thought he had departed from propriety by having an electric backup band.
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Article comments
1 - Amy
Martin Scorsese did a documentary about Tha Band's last performance (tour?) called "The Last Waltz" which is quite wonderful. Definitely worth finding particularly if you enjoyed the Dylan documentary the last two nights.
2 - Bruce Eisner
Thanks for the suggestion Amy, I have now added that to the list of links for this post. Look forward to watching it.
3 - Loyd
Of course Scorcese was involved in filming the Woodstock concert too. He does some excellent camera work. He also had a series on PBS called "The Blues", which took a look at the origins and development of American blues, from the Delta, through Chicago and up to current day blues musicians.