Boyd Holbrook’s Johnny Cash is a scene-stealing supporting character in A Complete Unknown, but the movie completely changes his real history with Bob Dylan. A Complete Unknown marks the second time that James Mangold has directed an actor in the role of Cash, and this take on the iconic musician is totally different. In Mangold’s Cash biopic Walk the Line, Joaquin Phoenix gave a very brooding and intense performance as Cash. But in A Complete Unknown, Holbrook has a much more comedic take on Cash, playing his roguish atтιтude and drunken antics for hysterical laughs.
As with any movie that translates true events to the screen, A Complete Unknown makes a few key changes to Dylan’s life. Biopics aren’t supposed to be an accurate historical record; they’re supposed to be a cinematic chronicle capturing an iconic figure’s essence — and, above all, they’re movies, with three-act structures and economic visual storytelling that real life doesn’t always accommodate. For the most part, A Complete Unknown is a spot-on cinematic portrait of Dylan; it captures his indescribable aura perfectly. But, while Cash’s role in the film serves an important dramatic purpose, it’s almost entirely fabricated.
A Complete Unknown Changes When Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan Met
It’s Unclear Exactly When They Did Meet
In A Complete Unknown, Dylan and Cash develop a friendship as pen pals before they meet in person at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival. But, while it is true that they were pen pals in the early 1960s, it may not be true that they met at the Newport festival. According to Dylan’s eulogy for Cash, which was printed in Rolling Stone magazine, the two met in either 1962 or 1963. John Carter Cash corroborated this, saying that his dad met Dylan in a New York H๏τel room in the early ‘60s.
While the ’64 Newport festival may not have marked Dylan and Cash’s first meeting, it was still a very significant moment in their friendship. It was here that Cash gave Dylan his guitar.
However, while the ’64 Newport festival may not have marked Dylan and Cash’s first meeting, it was still a very significant moment in their friendship. It was here that Cash gave Dylan his guitar, which is an important event that really did happen in real life. The long-standing myth is that Dylan met Cash at the Newport festival in 1964, and as the old saying goes, when the legend becomes fact, print the legend (or put the legend on-screen in the biopic).
Johnny Cash Wasn’t At Bob Dylan’s 1965 Newport Folk Festival Performance Either
This Is Another Fabrication In A Complete Unknown
The climactic sequence in A Complete Unknown depicts the controversial moment when Dylan went on stage at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and played a set with an electric guitar. The stuffy, old-fashioned organizers had implored him to play an acoustic set and the crowd booed and hissed at the performance. On the day of the performance, when Dylan is contemplating whether he should bow down to pressure from the festival’s organizers and give a more traditional folk performance, he has a life-changing conversation with an inebriated Cash.
Cash inspires Dylan to stick to his guns and play the show he wants to play, not the show the organizers want him to play. It’s one of the best scenes in the movie, with some of Holbrook’s funniest moments as Cash (especially when he tries to balance a Coke bottle on his car), but it was a total fabrication. Cash wasn’t at Dylan’s 1965 Newport performance. But since it was the climax of the movie, all the story threads had to converge there, so Mangold planted Cash on the scene.
Why A Complete Unknown Altered Johnny Cash & Bob Dylan’s Relationship So Much
Mangold Was So Moved By Cash & Dylan’s Letters That He Gave Cash A Bigger Role In The Film
The book that A Complete Unknown is based on, Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric!, makes no mention of his friendship with Cash. It was only when Mangold was doing his own research for the film that he learned that Dylan and his previous biopic subject had been pen pals in the ‘60s. Mangold was so moved by the letters that he decided to include them in the film. The letters that appear in the movie are taken word-for-word from Dylan and Cash’s correspondence. Holbrook read these letters and found them to be a great insight into “what made them tick.”
Boyd Holbrook previously worked with James Mangold on Logan and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
As he dug into Dylan and Cash’s relationship as pen pals, Mangold was seemingly inspired to give Cash a bigger role in the film, so he included him in some of the movie’s most important scenes (even if he wasn’t actually there in real life). Mangold might have changed some of the specifics, but the core of Dylan and Cash’s friendship is ripped straight from reality. A Complete Unknown might not get all the facts right, but it gets its relationships spot-on.
