Netflix has determined to submit Martin Scorsese’s “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story” for documentary awards together with the Oscars, a spokesperson for the streaming service informed TheWrap on Monday.
And that call, which got here after Netflix and Scorsese spent a while determining how greatest to place the movie, will possible pose a minimum of a small conundrum for the Academy’s Documentary Branch and for different awards our bodies dedicated to nonfiction movie.
“Rolling Thunder Revue,” in spite of everything, makes use of the documentary type to inform the story of Dylan’s 1975 live performance tour in a manner that’s partly factual and partly fictional. “It seems like a stretch for the doc branch, despite enormous respect for Scorsese,” steered one individual near the department.
But a department official disagreed. “I would imagine we’d accept the submission and leave it up to the voting members to decide,” the individual mentioned, cognizant of the Academy’s latest historical past with genre-bending movies.
Also Read: ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Film Review: Martin Scorsese Chronicles Bob Dylan’s Legendary Bicentennial Tour
In latest years, the Academy has accepted docs that make use of fictional parts, together with “Kate Plays Christine” and “Stories We Tell.” It has additionally thought of others that acquired scrutiny and drew suspicion, amongst them “Exit Through the Gift Shop” (which was nominated) and “Catfish.”
“Rolling Thunder Revue” is a combination of footage documenting Dylan’s 1975 tour of the identical identify and scenes initially filmed for Dylan’s personal “Renaldo and Clara,” a freewheeling, four-hour fictional movie during which Dylan performs “Renaldo,” his spouse Sara performs “Clara,” Ronnie Hawkins performs “Bob Dylan,” and none of it makes a lot sense.
Scorsese’s movie additionally consists of interviews with Dylan and with a lot of individuals who have been a part of the tour, together with Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, David Mansfield, Steven Soles and others.
Also Read: Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Doc Reveals ‘Catastrophe’ of 1975 Tour (Video)
But whereas the movie seems like a documentary and most of its two-hour-and-22-minute working time is dedicated to spectacular live performance footage and a fact-based chronicle of the tour, that’s not the case with 4 of the interviews that obtain essentially the most display time.
Two of the interview topics, Paramount Pictures chief Jim Gianopulos and actress Sharon Stone, are merely mendacity: He says he promoted the tour, which he didn’t, and she or he makes up a narrative about becoming a member of it as a 19-year-old, which she didn’t. Two different interview topics are enjoying fictional characters: Performance artist Martin van Haselberg pretends to be filmmaker “Stefan van Dorp,” and actor Michael Murphy reprises his position as congressman “Jack Tanner,” which he first performed in a 1988 HBO miniseries.
Dylan himself performs together with these fictions in his personal interviews, which provide extra put-on than revelation. And Scorsese additionally provides photoshopped pictures and faux information clippings to additional the fiction.
He additionally doesn’t establish the “Renaldo and Clara” footage as being a part of that undertaking, as a result of “Rolling Thunder Revue” pretends “R&C” by no means existed. For occasion, one dialog between Dylan and Baez appears to be a revealing take a look at their relationship – however it was shot as a dialog between Renaldo and a Mexican hooker, so Dylan and Scorsese possible simply need us to suppose it’s revealing.
Also Read: ‘Rolling Thunder Revue’ Fact Check: How Martin Scorsese’s Bob Dylan ‘Documentary’ Bends the Truth
The movie is an enchanting mind tease, as a lot a chunk of gleeful mythmaking as a real chronicle of the tour. That’s totally consistent with Dylan’s lengthy historical past of fabricating his personal backstory and remaining perpetually elusive, however does that make it a documentary?
With Netflix submitting it as such, that query shall be within the fingers of members of the Academy’s Documentary Branch…
