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: Biography / Drama / Music
MPAA Rating: R

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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• Coming soon!

• Coming soon!

• Jude Quinn: “How does it feel?”

• Jude Quinn: “How can I answer that if you got the nerve to ask me?”

• Reporter: Jude! One word for your fans?
Jude Quinn: Astronaut.

• Jude Quinn: “Look at all these medicines! Hey man what are those?”
Man At Party: “Mandy’s, make you sleep.”
Jude Quinn: “Sleep? aint sleepin’… Sleep’s for dreamers. I haven’t slept in thirty days, man. Takes a lot of medicine to keep up this pace.”

• Jude Quinn: “God, I’m glad I’m not me.”

• Jude Quinn: “Doesn’t really matter, you know, what kind of nasty names people invent for the music. But, uh, folk music is just a word, you know, that I can’t use anymore. What I’m talking about is traditional music, right, which is to say it’s mathematical music, it’s based on hexagons. But all these songs about, you know, roses growing out of people’s brains and lovers who are really geese and swans are turning into angels – I mean, you know, they’re not going to die. They’re not folk music songs. They’re political songs. They’re already dead. You’d think that these traditional music people would – would gather that mystery, you know, is a traditional fact, you know, seeing as they’re all so full of mystery.”
Keenan Jones: “And contradictions.”
Jude Quinn: “Yeah, contradictions.”
Keenan Jones: “And chaos.”
Jude Quinn: “Yes, it’s chaos, clocks, and watermelons – you know, it’s – it’s everything. These people actually think I have some kind of, uh… fantastic imagination. It gets very, uh, lonesome. But traditional music is just, uh… it’s too unreal to die. It doesn’t need to be protected. You know, I mean, in that music is the only true valid death you can feel today, you know, off a record player. But like everything else in great demand, people try to own it. Has to do with, like, uh, the purity thing. I think its meaninglessness is holy. Everybody knows I’m not a folk singer.”

• Jude Quinn: [looking up at a giant Jesus on the cross] “Do your early stuff!”

• Jude Quinn: “A poem is like a naked person…”

• Jude Quinn: “You know, saying ’cause of peace’, it’s like saying, ‘hunk of butter’, you know, I don’t want you to listen to anybody who wants you to believe is dedicated to the hunk and not the butter.”
Reporter: “I’m not sure I follow.”
• Jude Quinn: “You know, I didn’t come out of some cereal box. There’s no one out there who’s gonna be converted by a song.”

• Jude Quinn: People actually think I have some kind of a fantastic imagination. It gets very lonesome.”

• Jude Quinn: “Either be groovy or leave, man!”

• Filmed in Canada and USA (view all.)

• Nominated for Oscar. Another 14 wins & 11 nominations (view all.)

• Also known as ‘I’m Not There: Suppositions on a Film Concerning Dylan’.

• Cate starred in the movies The Shipping News (2001) and An Ideal Husband (1999) with Julianne Moore as well.

• Cate wore a sock down her trousers to play Bob Dylan, she said it helped her to walk like a man.

• Cate and director Todd Haynes met at the 2005 Oscars when Cate won her first Oscar and he asked if she was interested in playing Bob Dylan.

• Cate said the strangest about playing part was to lip sink a mans voice during a Bob Dylan song.

• Director 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.

• In the “Jude” storyline, when Jude Quinn is revealed to have originally been Aaron Jacob Edlestein in high school, the picture shows Christian Bale although the “Dylan” in this storyline is played by Cate.

• After considering a proposal to shoot the film in Romania – due to it’s inexpensiveness. Todd Haynes decided to shoot the film entirely in Montreal.

• 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).

• Of the 6 leads or “Dylans” in the film, only young Marcus Carl Franklin who plays Woody can be heard on the soundtrack. However, singer/actors Charlotte Gainsbourg, Jim James and Richie Havens also both act in the movie and sings on the soundtrack.

• Right after Jude leaves The Beatles and they are chased by fans, you can see the last person in the mob slow down immediately when they’re behind the trellis.