Eat the Document

A PREFACE: IF this (admittedly refried) print which I had the pleasure of viewing had even one (1) complete song from the live set of Dylan and the Hawks, it would have earned an extra star. Also, I will refrain from including the 'limousine scene' with Dylan and Lennon from my review, as it was never Pennebaker's intent, so far as I can determine, to include it.

OK, so if the point of this movie was that 'Ol Bob went through some crazed times during the British tour of 1966, I don't think anyone, including Bob Himself, could have spared that impression from being salvaged from any amount of footage. A previous reviewer noted that the performed songs bear little resemblance to their studio prototypes here...

Yes, the old folky tunes ('Baby Let Me Follow You Down' is a great example) are indeed verging on swirly psychedelic territory at this point, and I must confess that I like these versions better... this movie is a perfect companion piece to THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL 4 - THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL (live Dylan , and is best enjoyed as such...

As for Bob's bad behavior and film editing, well, guess you'd have to be a musician to appreciate the context or something if you can't figure that out... this is 1966 we're seeing here for crissakes... and Bob is looking, acting, and possibly sounding not far off here from Syd Vicious of the Sex Pistols ten years later (see 'FILTH AND THE FURY')... Give granddad some credit, will'ya! If much of this has been left irreperably on the cutting-room floor, too bad, so sad, but this is enough to tell the story...

This Document got chewed. Amazing it survived at all.

As the saying goes, "If you remember the Sixties, you weren't really there." And that is the thesis, unbeknownst to Dylan, who ostensibly edited, creating a true, inebriated sense of film reality in this gem of a curio. The audience I saw this film with was captivated by the grainy 16mm and British denizens and landscapes, the disjointed editing, Dylan songs cut off. It's a fabulous mess, but so were the 1960s, wouldn't you say? And I think that's the very reason this film deserves credit for breaking new ground with Avant-garde Cinema Verité approach, not giving a damn about 'continuity' or editing cohesion. As the Sixties seem further and further away, it's a good reminder that they can't and won't happen again, not in the same way. The Counter Culture explosion is gone. It has been marketed to H&M, American Apparel and Urban Outfitters. In earnest, a musician offers to trade his coat for a young blonde woman, with swagger and a 16mm crew behind him. All of these Lads look fabulous in their tweeds and legitimate Carnaby Street fashion -- the Hawks AKA the Band no exception -- their churlish boyish love of drugs, cigarettes, joints, and desire for chicks with Sassoon haircuts -- you can imagine all that could not be filmed, and of course, therein is the magic of the Sixties sub-culture explosion. Sing it, Bob.

Absolutely for fans only, this is a documentary of a Dylan tour made by a camera held in a very shaky hand. Eat the Document would make a good, but probably unwatchable, triple feature with Neil Young's Journey Through the Past and The Stones' Cocksucker Blues, a sixties triptych painted on broken windowpanes after a night of very bad drugs. Dylan's attempt at deconstructing or subverting or whatever he was trying to do to his own myth here says a lot about the era and leaves the artist as enigmatic as he ever has been, with the usual alternation between sublime poetry and clunking misfires. Still, there are some fine moments -- the droning duet with Johnny Cash, as two generations of bad boys create an otherworldly disharmony, the glimpses of the Band at the peak of their magic, the faces of the young Brits waiting in line for the shows, desperate to be at a scene they were determined not to dig. The tape I saw was followed by a harrowing ten minute outtake of Dylan and John Lennon riding in the back of a limo, the camera focused unflinching (and often unfocused) on them as they mumble their way through a thick purple haze -- sure proof that no one is as clever as he thinks he is on drugs.

This was originally shot by celebrated cine-verite' film-maker D.A. Pennebaker as a follow-up to his earlier classic Bob Dylan documentary about his UK tour of 1965, DON'T LOOK BACK (1967); for the record, Pennebaker later also made other notable rockumentaries, namely the all-star MONTEREY POP (1968) and David Bowie's ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS (1973). This new film was meant to be a visual record of Dylan's European tour of 1966 where he was unveiling in public his highly controversial, rockier new image; during his live performances, he was being supported by The Hawks (the same musicians who later found fame as The Band). In the middle of shooting, Dylan suffered his notorious motorcycle accident and, once he recovered, decided to take over the footage and, with the help of an associate Howard Alk, re-edit it himself; the end result was summarily rejected as "incomprehensible" by the ABC TV channel, which had commissioned it as part of their "Stage '66" show, and was never officially released.

What should have been a precious document of an extraordinary time in musical history and in the evolution of one of the 20th century's most influential artists, became a uniquely intimate (and embarrassing) portrayal of the jazzed-up images going through a brilliant mind overtaken by substance abuse! Sure, Dylan does get to perform some of his best songs of the period ("Ballad Of A Thin Man", "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues", "Like A Rolling Stone", etc.) on camera but, as dictated by the wholly jumbled structure of the movie, no complete rendition is ever heard. Likewise, the supremely arrogant figure that Dylan cut during his press conferences comes through as well – as do the feelings of the disgruntled fans horrified by the new-fangled "rubbish" that their treacherous former idol has been heaping on them. Thankfully, there are also glimpses of Dylan in his quieter moments: reading on the tour bus or composing songs with Robbie Robertson in his hotel room.

Still, at the end of the day, this is one big missed opportunity: although footage of the infamous Manchester Free Trade Hall concert (later issued in its entirety on CD) is shown – and was subsequently to reappear in Martin Scorsese's 2005 documentary, NO DIRECTION HOME – the tell-tale "Judas!" cry is not heard! Similarly, Dylan is shown separately rehearsing with Johnny Cash in the studio and 'partying' in a taxi with John Lennon but, truly, asking for context here would have been, as The Beatles would say it, "all too much". Actually, I later found some excruciating 20 minutes of footage of the latter ride on "You Tube" and, for all of Lennon's nervous clowning, the sight of a whacked-out-of-his-skull Dylan and his consequent ramblings were hard to take. I do not mind knowing that Dylan was aided by illicit substances in creating his first landmark rock albums (it goes with the territory, after all)…but I do take exception at the fact that there exists this wretched-looking and worse-sounding artefact that quite literally (and from the very first shot!) rubs our noses in that fact!!

P.S. Two fellow film-buff friends – Michael Elliott (a Dylanologist) and Joe Karlosi (a Beatlemaniac) – had totally opposite views on this one; my own rating lies somewhere in between but, knowing that even Elliott hated Dylan's 4-hour RENALDO AND CLARA (1978) has made me postpone that planned viewing of it…at least until Dylan's 75th birthday! The lengthy Scorsese documentary also had to go due to time constrictions, as well as the latest cut of Sam Peckinpah's PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID (1973)…but I still intend paying tribute to Dylan (who turns 70 on in two days' time) with three more films before the month is out!

I consider myself a fan of Bob Dylan within moderation, and I thoroughly enjoyed the previous documentary about his earlier European tour, DON'T LOOK BACK. I'd always heard (don't know if it's true or not) that Dylan himself did not want EAT THE DOCUMENT released, and after finally getting to suffer through the entire thing, it's not hard for me to understand why. Smart move there Zimmy - much smarter than anything you put across in the film itself. There is practically no point to watching this film, as it's a mind-melting mishmash of sounds and images that never come together to allow the viewer to get a grip on them. We want to hear what Dylan is saying in his arrogant press conferences, and we'd like to be able to enjoy his song lyrics. But the inane editing of this mess (supposedly by Bob Dylan himself - no wonder -) leaves you completely disillusioned and unsatisfied. It's a distorted trip into the scattered brain of a drugged out poet/rock star, and although some try to rationalize that this in itself is some sort of achievement, it's a journey I could easily have done without.

The focal point of the film, as I've tried to surmise through all the dense fog, is Bob's disastrous 1966 tour of Europe, the one where he "went electric" and offended all the folk purists. In between all the haze we get to see a few angry faces in the crowds calling Dylan a "traitor", and those are only a few of the more coherent snippets scattered amongst all the debris. Songs are continually cut off midway, and even as early as now it seems Zimmy had begun altering the arrangement of some of them, thus making them too unlike their album counterparts to really get into.

Dylan makes a fool of himself throughout this film, and it's a good picture of how fame, money and a little power can go to someone's head and be wasted on them. Nowhere is this more in evidence than during a 15 minute "outtake" that's sometimes tagged onto copies of EAT THE DOCUMENT... it features two great legends, Dylan and then-Beatle John Lennon, riding in the back of a limousine. A terrific opportunity, right? Wrong. Because Mr. Dylan seems more interested in getting smashed out of his skull on something or other while Lennon - no stranger to drugs himself though much more composed on this occasion - comes across as cool, while his co-passenger Mr. Dylan is slurring his words, making little sense, and gradually becoming so ill to the point of needing to vomit into the camera. Through all of this, John Lennon attempts a little humor to snap Dylan out of it, but it's no use; Bob is just too zoned out to focus. A real shame. Here are two great legends together for the camera, but Dylan doesn't seem to be interested in putting this historic meeting to good use. THIS is drugs, kids -- this is your brain on drugs. This nauseated "limo ride" is not actually part of the "finished" film (it only includes several seconds of it), and that's too bad, as it's certainly the most fascinating thing shot, though for all the wrong reasons. * out of ****