Bob's Fate | Bob Dylan & Masked & Anonymous - Page 6

Bruce Dern, another co-star whose role I can’t quite grasp, says in conversatin with Jeff Bridges (a journalist) that this is all “a nefarious play to weed out the rebels.” It is anti-government, anti-establishment, pro The People with a capital P. Dern seems to work with Jeff Bridges or knows him anyway.

Bridges is a write a journalist - , who is mocked by Jack Fate’s sidekick, Luke Wilson, who serves as protectant and friend, keeping away others, and sort of a mini-me of Jack Fate – an acolyte who assists at the altar of his god, or his friend, as the case may be. He says to Bridges, there to interview Fate; So, you’re a writer … Ya ever read For Whom the Bell Tolls . . . “Hemingway… he was a writer.”

We all know of Dylan’s legendary distaste and perhaps even contempt of journalists in real life. We’ve seen it for ourselves on such tour footage as “Eat the Document” and “Don’t Look Back” and seen how a cocky, elusive, and slippery Dylan continuously plays a game of cat and mouse (with him obviously playing the role of Cat) with various members of the press. As Dylan so aptly has noted in his career (from an early age) the press seem to expect him to have all the answers, to be able to dissect himself, explain himself, get into the inner depths that we ourselves would be hard-pressed to explain. If we cannot do this ourselves, why in the end do we expect more of Dylan than we demand or can give of ourselves? I have to agree, it does seem fucked up.

What Dylan wants us to see, through his buddy Luke Wilson as his sidekick is that there are those who “call themselves writers” and those who are “real writers” and that the two are quite different.

In the end of the film, Jack Fate and Bridges, our journalist, will come to blows, with Jack Fate holding a bottle of Jack Daniels to the journalist’s neck; Fate could easily take his life, yet chooses not to. His point has been proven. It is then that we see the journalist has a gun, which he turns on Fate. Fate has done the “right” thing and walked away, though he could easily have taken him, but it was Fate’s fate, one could say, to be shot by the journalist, to be injured in some way, as surely Dylan has felt at times, by those he has been good to, including various members of the press to whom he graciously granted interviews.

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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