More on Todd Haynes “biopic” of Dylan, to be titled “I’m Not There,” from the Toronto Star today (shooting will allegedly begin on Monday in Montreal):

The plan is to have various actors play Dylan at various stages of his life, from his early days up to his 50s. (He recently turned 65.) A complete cast list was finally announced this week, just in time for the start of lensing, and they include well-knowns and unknowns. The six Dylan players are Heath Ledger (replacing Colin Farrell, who dropped out), Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Ben Wishaw (who played Keith Richards in Stoned) and Marcus Carl Franklin (TV’s Law & Order).

Blanchett is female and Franklin is black. This really will be an unusual movie.

The supporting cast includes Heath Ledger’s partner Michelle Williams (who will play the love interest to Blanchett’s Dylan), Julianne Moore, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Canada’s own Bruce Greenwood.

“Bob Dylan was somebody who has rejected all of the various personas that he has embodied over the years,” director Haynes (Far From Heaven) told the press at Cannes in May.

“He continues to move forward by discarding himself, so my idea is to put together a film of multiple characters and tell their stories simultaneously. It’s going to be weird, not a traditional narrative by any means.”

It’s no wonder Dylan likes the idea. It’s not like anything the director puts in such a nutso-sounding film is going to stick to Dylan in any way.

….

And another big story in the press today that invokes Bob is one about the Welsh singer Cerys Matthews. From This Is London, Dylan saved me from heroin hell:

“I couldn’t walk, couldn’t breathe,” she says quietly, scarcely audible above the clamour of the north London gastropub where we meet. “I was allergic to heroin. My body would react against it. It fills your lungs up. You suffocate yourself. So what do you do? You make a conscious decision to live. It would have been the end if I hadn’t made that decision.”

The strength to make that choice, she reveals, came from an entirely unexpected quarter. “I had a telephone call from Bob Dylan and from Yusuf Islam [the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens] in a two-week period and it gave me the confidence to follow what my heart was telling me, which was just to get out. I don’t know why they rang, it happened out of the blue.

“I’d like to keep the conversations private but it was a strange time because I’d almost given up hope on everything and started to lose the plot a bit, and that’s a pretty sorry place to be. [Then] these spiritual guides called and it helped me gather strength to change things and move and start again. I just did it by leaving the country and living in the middle of nowhere for a year.”

Alright.

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