Bob's Fate | Bob Dylan & Masked & Anonymous - Page 3

The viewer, having now seen all of the corruption and sleaze, has little doubt that Jack Fate is in jail for reasons that are totally unfair and corrupt, and because he is, as Goodman says of Fate when booking him for the “benefit concert” – “the real leader of The Revolution, ” with open arms to the homeless, drunks, the underworld and the American underworld. In other words, Give me your poor… & etc. We know Jack Fate is a good guy. He may not be our Hope – maybe he cannot be our hope, maybe he sees too much, too much that isn’t good to be hope; but he can be our Fate. He knows where we are headed and makes no bones about it.

John Goodman figures they have booked The Legend Jack Fate, though it’s an interesting way to put it, since Dylan himself has so often denied or shirked off the role of Prophet or Legend and the like, preferring instead to say publicly or defer and say he keeps a low profile. That said, there can be no denying that no matter what he may have said or say, Dylan has courted the myth of who he is as much as he has denied and hated it at times (and I believe he has genuinely hated it).

Giovanni Ribisi is a Jack’s train-mate and fellow traveler as he makes his way from jail to the show where he’ll perform. Ribisi, looking the part he does so well (what does he look like in real life, I wonder), which is strung out looking, clammy, those beautiful hazel eyes bulging out of his head in that googly way he does. He fills Jack in – what the world is like. “Violence is the only thing they know…” Ribisi tells him nervously. “It’s the only tool in their box…” But are these rebels? The government? Are rebels and the government one and the same, like a sort of corrupt republic, which we can safely assume this is.

What we find out, and this is most interesting of all, is that El Presidente, the leader of this whole mess of homelessness and junkies and hookers and corruption and a government that senselessly shoots people (as Ribisi will be for confronting the masked rebels using his “tool” which we don’t see, so I’m assuming he means or meant his brain or some such thing or logic. Anyway, something abstract and intangible. Needless to say, this is no match for the automatic weapons of the hooded men outside the bus at the checkpoint. Ribisi is gunned down, plastered with bullet holes.

Article Author: Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti is a published writer in both the United States and Europe. She is widely known for her music commentary, particularly her writings about Bob Dylan about whom she runs a highly-trafficked site. …

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