The Martin Scorsese documentary Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story premiered yesterday (Wednesday) on Netflix.
The director says, "I wanted to make a movie with that music and those words and that time -- really that time which is very special," says Scorsese. "I wanted to capture the timelessness of his work and...that spirit they pulled together to go on that wild tour [in 1975 and '76] and the resonance for our culture today. It’s genuine. It’s authentic. It means something. It’s still fresh, it’s still new, which means it could stand the test of time.”
Dylan was joined on that tour by Joan Baez,Joni Mitchell,Roger McGuinn, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and others.
While it's basically a documentary, there are some fictional elements.Rolling Stonehas put together a "Guide to What’s Fake in Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story." Two of the items:
Sharon Stone did not join the Rolling Thunder Revue:
"About halfway through the film...Sharon Stone (playing herself) talks about a being a 19-year-old student when the Rolling Thunder Revue came to her town and then hitting the road with the tour for a brief time after Dylan took a liking to her. None of this is true and the photos of them together are phony. (She also would have been 17 at the time.)"
Dylan didn’t see a KISS concert in Queens:
"In the movie, Dylan says he got the idea to wear white face makeup on the Rolling Thunder Revue after Scarlet Rivera took him to a KISS concert in Queens. But KISS haven’t played a show in Queens since February 1973 when they were first starting out and long before Dylan met Rivera. These were tiny club shows by a totally unknown band. No way Dylan was at one of them and he also didn’t get the makeup idea from them..."