Daily Ramblings:
That Tour Program ...05/02/2005 03:12:22 pm
Back in March, our friend Russ gave us a description of Dylan's current tour program. Since it was numbered and labeled "Limited Edition," it seemed possible that there might be a different version sold at some gigs. Well, yours truly picked one up at one of the New York City shows, and it turned out to have the same numbering and presumably the same content. It's an open question as to whether there might be differently numbered versions in circulation - or whether this is the only one that was available during this tour.
In any case, it's a chance to be amused again at what the program contains. If you didn't read that original post, the news is that the only text in the program is a 1992 interview with Dylan from the Times Sentinel (or proably just a part of that interview). The questions and answers deal exclusively with a film that Dylan acted in from 1987, called "Hearts Of Fire." It was a bomb, both commercially and critically, and there doesn't seem to be anyone on earth who is willing to defend it - and that includes Dylan himself most especially. The interview is hilarious, and the fact that it is the sole content (other than photos) of Dylan's 2005 tour program is quite a joke in itself. Here is an extract that didn't make the post in March, along with some snapshots of the thing itself. (Forgive the blurriness, but my means are limited, and besides, they're just samples - I don't want to get into any copyright violations. Be sure and buy the real thing when The Bob Dylan Show comes to your town!)
Front Cover:
Bob on motorcycle:
Odd photograph of Dylan with unnamed people (Russ speculated that it seemed to have been taken in a hospital corridor in Mexico somewhere - I have the same impression - but it's anyone's guess):
Photo with interview text:
An excerpt from the interview text (they're talking, of-course, about the awful "Hearts Of Fire" movie):
Q: Did you try to change it at all - like any of the dialog?
A: Oh yeah, we had tried that earlier, months before filming began. Me and Elliot Roberts, who was representing me at the time, had gotten Marquand (the director) and Joe Eszterhaus, the screenwriter, to come see us out on the road. ... We wanted to change some of my lines and Elliot and I had tried on our own ... but we realized if we changed some of my lines the lines of other characters would have to be changed. All we were trying to do was make the movie more understandable. It was fun trying to do it, but it was too complicated for either of us to actually pull off. We were just making a comedy out of it. We were hoping that Eszterhaus could see our point and maybe rip the script apart ... add a murder scene, some sex scenes - even a car chase. Anything to make the script come alive.
Q: What was the response?
A: Oh, I don't know. I can't really remember. But I think it was a couple of blank looks. Marquand was a Welshman, very proper. When he spoke, he sounded like Richard Burton. He was an elegant guy. Eszterhaus couldn't have been more different. They called him the mad Hungarian. He had written "Basic Instinct," "Flashdance," and some other stuff, hit movies. Eszterhaus didn't look like anything you'd think a screenwriter would look like. He looked like a Hell's Angel. Like he just roared through the hallway of the hotel on a Harley. It was hard to imagine these guys even being in the same room together. I don't know what they thought of our little suggestions. But they didn't change anything.
Q: What would you have wanted them to change? Do you remember?
A: Oh, not really. Elliot and I had kicked it around a little bit and thought that maybe some character adjustments might be in order. Like the character that Rupert played.
Q: James Colt?
A: Yeah. James Colt. That was his name? God, you know this movie better than me. Yeah, Elliot and I thought that this character was based on a David Bowie type - a seventies Bowie type, so we thought why not make him overtly gay? You know, like put his cards on the table. It would have made his character much deeper. And others would have related to him in a different way.
Q: What about the character Fiona played?
A: Yeah, who did she play?
Q: Molly?
A: Yeah, that's right, Molly. We dreamed up a few things for that character, too. We thought maybe if we gave her a back story like she'd been sexually molested as a child by a family member, it would have added a little bit more to her character, made her innocence not seem so innocent when she played scenes with either Rupert or me.
Q: You mean Billy Parker.
A: Yeah, Billy Parker. We dealt with him in a more primitive way. Like maybe his back story could have been something like when he was a big star, whenever that was, he married his 13 year old cousin and had fallen from grace, out of favor with both the record industry and the record buying public.
Q: You're joking, right?
A: No, I'm not joking. That would have given him a genuine reason to be so pissed off and jaded or whatever they expected him to be.
Q: Your ideas fell flat ...
A: Yeah I don't think they heard. They just looked right through us. Basically I don't think they had any notion to change anything. They liked their movie that way it was. They just came out to see us out of courtesy, really.
... and so it goes. All the crucial facts that Dylan's 2005 concert attendees are dying to know, and well worth the twenty bucks being charged.
Imagine what these'll fetch on the Antiques' Roadshow fifty years from now.
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