Chris, I am in the unique position of having worked directly for the CEO of a major international publishing firm, and having played as a sideman for a couple of big name bands.

The CEO was the far better employer. No contest. As you say, that CEO had a stable full of employees. That was because he took responsibility for providing full-time long-term employment for those employees. My CEO may have been making millions, but he also paid his professional and supporting staff very well, providing them with medical insurance and vacations.

I learned to have a lot of respect for that guy. After my wife died, he invited me to play one-on-one basketball games with him once a week, just so that he could keep an eye on me and nurse me back to health.

He also worked very hard, and traveled endlessly to every post of the corporate empire at tremendous cost to his desire to be home with his family.

I watched him turn around a corporation that had been seen by many of his employees as a cash cow that existed solely to be milked. That CEO felt a keen responsibility to his shareholders to deliver a profit and to be a responsible leader, and he did his job very well.

The bands who used to call me... well, they were great guys and I loved playing with them... but they took absolutely no responsibility for me beyond paying me one or two hundred bucks for the night. I think that Dylan also operates in this fashion.

I've seen guys work for years for bands that made millions in this night by night fashion, only to be left toothless, destitute and homeless once the one night stands came to an end.

My late wife used to get very angry with me, because musicians with huge reputations would call me and ask me to get on my horse and do a gig, and I consistently refused. I preferred to get up in the morning and go to work for my CEO because he took some responsibility for me.

So, you'll excuse me if my point of view is precisely opposite. The supporting cast in the music business routinely gets paid just about zero. Big name artists, more often than not, exploit their hired hands with a vengeance.

So, no, I don't buy your social theory. I think that my old CEO's behavior is far more admirable than anything I've seen in the music biz. He felt deeply responsible for those engineers, etc., who worked for them, and he provided them with a good life. I've seen almost none of that in the music biz.

From a standpoint of doing good social work, that CEO beat every star musician I've ever known by a long shot. In an odd way, spending a lifetime watching the employees of the music biz exploited and left destitute has completely bled away my interest in "genius." I really don't give a fuck about genius any more.

Posted by: Shouting Thomas on June 18, 2008 9:42 PM

I love Bob Dylan, but I wouldn't bother to see him now. His voice is gone; he should have stopped smoking.

I can't stand Todd Haynes. The Velvet Goldmine still hurts me, even though I couldn't sit through it. I'd never expect anything good from Todd Haynes.

Bob Dylan was a young genius who stole from everyone but produced work that changed popular music forever. Now he's an old sellout but, eh, who isn't?

"Masters of War" is still potent and topical after all these years. Give the man his due!

Posted by: Sister Wolf on June 18, 2008 9:56 PM

Hmm, I find myself thinking that I should have given Todd Haynes more credit for audacity and unusualness, maybe. "I'm Not There" certainly isn't the usual film biography and maybe that's to its credit. Still, "unusual" can be just as dead and banal as conventional, god knows, and whether something has any real life or not seems to me 'way more important than whether it's typical or atypical.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on June 19, 2008 10:57 AM

I'm Not There, like most of Haynes' movies, is like an idea looking for a reason to exist. He's all wind-up, no fastball, and just about everything he does remains painfully on the surface. Everyone who sees I'm Not There gets it almost immediately (before they even see it, even). But the movie goes nowhere. Haynes can't get underneath the clever conception or use it to generate any genuine emotion or feeling. It's unclear how Haynes even feels about Dylan, other than that he thinks he's a confusing guy.

I'd say the movie isn't even about Bob Dylan; it's more about Haynes' own (presumed) cleverness and his ability to tastefully drop names. Many film nerds treated the pretty obvious references to Masculin Feminin, 8 1/2, A Face in the Crowd, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Greil Marcus, and countless others as proof of the movie's depth. But I'll be damned if I can figure out how it means anything other than that Haynes has seen and read the material he's referencing. Well, I guess it also means that Dylan was part of the general '60s thing, and that he was a cultural lightning rod...but is that really insight?

What is it about film nerds and references anyway? They can be fun, maybe even meaningful, but it doesn't take a genius to name-drop another work, and too many of them can make a director look like a showboat.

Film nerds did the same with Scorsese's Dylan doc, in which he referenced several experimental '60s filmmakers. How these filmmakers related to Dylan in anything but the most basic way I'm not sure, but some commentators went on and on about it, as though Scorese was telling us something we didn't already know. Is it just an insidery club thing? Do people feel validated when they see their own expertise mirrored back at them? I guess so.

Anyway, the only Haynes film I've enjoyed is that Karen Carpenter one with the Barbie dolls. In that one Haynes was able to use the cutsie set-up to drill down into some harrowing feelings, and I ended up being genuinely moved by it. But I've found all his other stuff to be painfully flat.

Posted by: Ron on June 19, 2008 11:23 AM

Best part of the movie was the 60 seconds of David Cross playing Allen Ginsberg. Perfect casting. Otherwise, I pretty much agree with everyone here on this flick. I have enjoyed some of Haynes' other movies, particularly his first, the Karen Carpenter Story starring his Barbie collection.

Posted by: JV on June 19, 2008 12:16 PM

I think people like Shouting Thomas need to distinguish between Dylan the symbol of the sixties and the actual Dylan. I always liked how he unceremoniously dumped the left wing politics right after the civil rights movement, which is, as Steve Sailer, has said the last time liberals got anything right.

As for the whining and contempt, well, who says genius has to be likable. Listening to Willie Nelson is like hanging out with a warm hearted old friend, and I love him for it, but he's not really in Dylan's league as a songwriter. A few songs by Townes Van Zandt might come up to snuff, but even he wasn't the fount of creativity that Dylan was.

Posted by: Thursday on June 19, 2008 4:31 PM

Nope, Thursday, he wasn't, but it's nice to hear a shout out to poor old Townes Van Zandt.

Posted by: Sister Wolf on June 19, 2008 10:48 PM

Motley Crue has a financial blog? Or it was on The Motley Fool blog? I'm so confused. Doesn't matter because that dylan dude sold his soul to the devil a long time ago. Now he is part of the establishment.

Now Leonard Cohen is the man. Holed up on his Greek island drinking Chateau Latour and singing songs of love. Marty Scorsese should explore his musical genius in his next Imax production.

Lastly, my favorite Todd Hayes film is "Far From Heaven". Boy would I liked to have a 1950's wife and lived like they did in that movie. Without the gay part of course. A wife that would do all the household chores and having dinner on the table when I came home tired from work. Before womens liberation screwed things up. Things were good then (except for African Americans). A wife wouldn't leave sucessful her husband just because he dressed schubbly. Not in the 50's she wouldn't.

Posted by: Michael, Atlanta GA on June 20, 2008 11:47 PM

Dylan's stuff from 64 to 67 -- "Another Side" through "John Wesley Harding" -- has never been surpassed in rock, in certain ways never equalled. "Blood on the Tracks" from 1975 was also surpassingly great. No one else has ever so completely blended the simplicity, directness, and force of pop with the depth and complexity of poetry.

His stuff since then has been good -- occasional songs up to the Willie Nelson level -- but never equalled his great period.

Dylan is worshipped now because his greatness has been recognized. That's understandably made made a lot of people irritated with his cult. (At the extreme, you get cantankerous old conservative types like Shouting Thomas unloading their frustration with everything and everybody on Dylan, for no apparent reason besides the fact that he's successful). Plus Dylan always was a bit of an acquired taste because of his singing style.

Posted by: mq on June 21, 2008 2:53 AM






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