I’m Not There (2007)

Cate Blanchett as: Jude Quinn

Directed by: Todd Haynes
Selected Cast: Ben Whishaw, Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger & Julianne Moore
Written by: Todd Haynes & Oren Moverman
Release Year: 2007
Genre: Biopic / Drama / Music
MPAA Rating: R

IMDb | Photos | Videos | ~~Official Site~~

Six incarnations of Bob Dylan: an actor, a folk singer, an electrified troubadour, Rimbaud, Billy the Kid, and Woody Guthrie. Put Dylan’s music behind their adventures, soliloquies, interviews, marriage, and infidelity. Recreate 1960s documentaries in black and white. Put each at a crossroads, the artist becoming someone else. Jack, the son of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, finds Jesus; handsome Robbie falls in love then abandons Claire. Woody, a lad escaped from foster care, hobos the U.S. singing; Billy awakes in a valley threatened by a six-lane highway; Rimbaud talks. Jude, booed at Newport when he goes electric, fences with reporters, pundits, and fans. He won’t be classified.

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Quotes from Cate Blanchett

“I’m Not There [about Bob Dylan’s life] explores different pockets of a man who refused to be categorised. I have always loved his music, but I’m terrified about this because I am besotted. I watch the press conference he gave in San Francisco in 1965, or whenever it was, and just think, ‘I love you.’ The worst thing an actor can do is fall in love with someone they’re about to portray, but I’m not playing him – my character is called Jude. It’s a riff on who Bob Dylan could possibly be. When I saw the script I thought, ‘This is so out there I can’t run away from this.’” (The Guardian, December 2006)

Quotes from Others

Todd Haynes on choosing one of the characters be played by a female actor:
— “It was written and conceived as an actress to play the part of Jude from the beginning, before I knew it would be Cate. It was really just that moment in Dylan’s life. What was insane about the way Dylan looked in 1966 was that emaciated body, gigantic hair, the flying hands and the sort of weird marionette figure who was obviously exploring drugs and living on the edge. After the motorcycle crash, there was no flying hands, no big hair, no tiny, skinny body. That Dylan was gone forever.
That’s such a famous image of Dylan. I wanted to try to reinfuse it with the cultural shock value of seeing that for the first time in 1965, ’66. So I thought an actress could be interesting, because there was an androgyny there. It wasn’t a Bowie androgyny, it was more a Patti Smith androgyny he was channeling.”
— “I love Dylan’s attitude toward queerness in ’66. He talks a lot about it in the No Direction Home book, by Robert Shelton. People think of Dylan as an überheterosexual icon, and in many ways he is. But in the New York of the Sixties, the Warhol scene was very queer, and the Dylan scene, you might say, was much less so. I think Dylan found that to be a sort of marker of cool. In fact, women he’d go out with who expected something after a night of sex, that was seen as old-fashioned and conventional. Whereas the queerness of Allen Ginsberg and people he was surrounded by, that was a cool thing. So Dylan used to say he hustled in New York when he first came in 1961, that’s how he made his first money. He never repeated it, it was only said in 1966. And then there’s this great long quote where he said, “I don’t get this thing, men and women” – the speech in the film that he’s saying over the stairwell came directly out of it – “Love and sex really mess you up, and I don’t know why.” And the full speech goes on to say, “It’s not about man and woman, it’s not about the fact that women are the thing that men want, it’s not about that. There can be man and man, and woman and woman, and man and woman.” He’s really trying to be above the classic categories at that point.”
On Cate Blanchett:
– “You think she’ll be very serious because of her reputation precedes her. You hear how incredibly prepared she is and professional. And I’m thinking, OK, this is going to be a serious, hardworking actress, which is fine. But you end up getting this incredible, lovely, articulate, funny, playful, warm person, along with those things. She’s this amazing package. She was a consummate performer. She upped the ante on an already demanding role.”
– “I knew it was a huge risk and, in some ways, a stunt. You’re watching a hybrid, but I think most people will adjust to that, accepting this construction. Cate [Blanchett] has a presence that dominates. She has that superstate power. Dylan was very powerful. Cate was in a position to duplicate it.”

Trivia & Facts

Filmed in Canada and USA.
The film premiered In Competition at the 64th Venice Film Festival on 3 September 2007.
Cate Blanchett won her first Volpi Cup for Best Actress, her second was for the film TÁR (2022) directed by Todd Field.
Heath Ledger received Cate Blanchett’s Volpi Cup on her behalf since she was filming Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) at the time. On 19 October 2018, the award was presented to Cate Blanchett by Valerio De Paolis and Antonio Monda during Rome International Film Festival.
Todd Haynes tied the Special Jury Prize from Venice Film Festival with Abdellatif Kechiche for The Secret of the Grain (2007), more accolades here.
Cate Blanchett and Julianne Moore are both in An Ideal Husband (1999) and The Shipping News (2001).
At the suggestion of her friend and make-up artist Morag Ross, Cate Blanchett wore a sock down her trousers to play Jude Quinn/Bob Dylan, she said it helped her to walk like a man.
Cate Blanchett and Todd Haynes met at the 2005 Oscars when Cate won her first Oscar and he asked if she was interested in playing Bob Dylan. They would reunite seven years later to work in the highly acclaimed film, Carol (2015).
Cate Blanchett said the strangest about playing part was to lip sink a man’s voice during a Bob Dylan song.
Todd Haynes never met Bob Dylan but he needed to get approval to use his music, since (unlike in his Velvet Goldmine (1998) where David Bowie did not give his permission for his music) he felt the film would not work without it. At the encouragement of Dylan’s manager, Haynes wrote a one-page summary of his concept and the characters, which Dylan approved. It took another 6 years to get the film made due to funding difficulties.
Adrien Brody and Colin Farrell were in talks to play two of the incarnations of Bob Dylan in the film early in pre-production. Colin Farrell dropped out because he had to go to rehab and Adrien Brody dropped out because of unknown reasons.
Different sections of the film were inspired by different cinematic sources. The “Jude” section was inspired by 8½ (1963), the “Billy” section was inspired by the so-called “hippie westerns” of the late 60s and early 70s (such as Sam Peckinpah’s films) and the “Robbie” section was inspired by the films of Jean-Luc Godard, especially Masculin Féminin (1966).
Musician and actor Kris Kristofferson, who narrates the film, is a friend of Bob Dylan. They were both in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (1973).
Cate Blanchett received nominations for Best Actress in Supporting Role from the Academy Awards, Screen Actors Guild Awards, and won at the Golden Globes.
Ed Lachman won the Bronze Frog at Camerimage Film Festival.
Cate Blanchett is the 11th actor to be nominated at both Best Actress (Elizabeth: The Golden Age, 2007) and Best Supporting Actress (I’m Not There, 2007) in the same year at the Oscars.
As of 2022, Cate Blanchett holds the record for most Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Bandits (2001), The Aviator (2004), Notes on a Scandal (2006), I’m Not There (2007), and Nightmare Alley (2020).