Dont Look Back
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For other uses, see Don't Look Back (disambiguation).
| Dont Look Back | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | D.A. Pennebaker |
| Produced by | John Court Albert Grossman |
| Written by | D.A. Pennebaker |
| Starring | Bob Dylan Albert Grossman Bob Neuwirth Joan Baez Alan Price Tito Burns Donovan Derroll Adams |
| Music by | Bob Dylan |
| Editing by | D.A. Pennebaker |
| Distributed by | Docurama |
| Release date(s) | May 17, 1967 |
| Running time | 96 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Dont Look Back [sic] is a 1967 documentary film by D.A. Pennebaker that principally covers Bob Dylan's 1965 concert tour of the United Kingdom.
The film features Joan Baez, Donovan and Alan Price (who had just left The Animals), Dylan's manager Albert Grossman and his road manager Bob Neuwirth; Marianne Faithfull and John Mayall may also be glimpsed in the background. The film shows a young Dylan: confident if not arrogant, confrontational and contrary, but also charismatic and charming. Standout scenes include:
- Dylan's extended taunting of Time magazine journalist Horace Judson
- Dylan and Baez singing Hank Williams songs in a hotel room
- Dylan's pre-concert philosophical jousting with a "science student" (Terry Ellis, who later co-founded Chrysalis Records)
- Grossman negotiating with producer Tito Burns
- Dylan singing "Only a Pawn in their Game" on July 6, 1963 at a Voters' Registration Rally in Greenwood, Mississippi (shot by artist and experimental filmmaker Ed Emshwiller),[1] and
- A selection of songs from Dylan's Albert Hall performance.
Dylan's romance with Baez had pretty much run its course by the time of the tour, and the film candidly captures what essentially amounts to their breakup.
The opening scene of the film also served as a kind of music video for Dylan's song "Subterranean Homesick Blues," in which the singer displays and discards a series of placards bearing selected words and phrases from the lyrics (including intentional misspellings and puns). Allen Ginsberg makes a cameo during this episode.
The film was first shown publicly May 17, 1967, at the Presidio Theater in San Francisco, and opened that September at the 34th Street East Theater in New York. The United States' National Film Preservation Foundation has declared the film "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.
A transcript of the film, with photographs, was published in 1968 by Ballantine Books.
Dont Look Back has been available on DVD for several years and was re-released in an expanded, remastered, two-disc package on February 27, 2007.[2]
[edit] Re-Release
The film was digitally-remastered and re-released on DVD in early 2007. The two-disc edition contained the remastered film, five additional audio tracks, commentary by filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and Tour Road Manager Bob Neuwirth, an alternate version on the video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues", the original companion book edited by D.A. Pennebaker to coincide with the film's release in 1968, a flip-book for a section of the "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video, and a brand new documentary by D.A. Pennebaker called Bob Dylan 65 Revisited. The DVD packaging was also given brand new artwork.
[edit] Influences on popular culture
- The band Belle & Sebastian reference the movie in their 1996 album If You're Feeling Sinister during the song "Like Dylan in the Movies" (refrain: "And if they follow you/don't look back/like Dylan in the movies").
- Jill Sobule references the movie in her 2000 album Pink Pearl during the song "Heroes" (lyric: "Dylan was so mean to Donovan in that movie").
- INXS pay tribute to the opening sequence in their video for "Mediate" from their 1987 album, Kick.
- Weird Al Yankovic made a parody song and video in the same style as "Subterranean Homesick Blues" simply entitled "Bob," in which all the lyrics are palindromes.
