Timothée Chalamet, Monica Barbaro, and Director James Mangold break down their electrifying recreation of 'It Ain’t Me Babe' in 'A Complete Unknown' in this episode of Variety's Making a Scene.
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00:00Yeah, but we do it all together.
00:02No! God, in unison. Should we harmonize it?
00:05Does it? Yes.
00:06And this is Variety's...
00:07Ready? Ready?
00:08And this is Variety's...
00:10You just went silent, Ed Norton.
00:12What's with you?
00:18Hi, this is James Mangold, writer-director of A Complete Unknown.
00:22Hi, I'm Timothy Shalama, and I play Bob Dylan.
00:24Hi, I'm Monica Barbaro, and I play Joan Baez.
00:26And this is Variety's Making a Scene.
00:29That was great.
00:30Yeah, but we were snickering.
00:31No, no, no, it ain't me, babe.
00:35It ain't me you're looking for, babe.
00:42Not that we were going for an academic recreation,
00:45but the original video of Bob and Joan doing this song in Newport,
00:48it is super informative.
00:49You know, they're really having a laugh.
00:50It seems like they have a secret or something.
00:52That was very informative, you know?
00:54I didn't want Monica to be like the girl singing with Bob.
00:58And I felt like there was a level.
00:59But it took us...
01:00We had to figure out how you could get close.
01:02I also wanted them close, and we kind of...
01:04I remember, was this the scene where we're trying to figure out
01:06how you could kind of...
01:07All kinds of back and forth, or like...
01:09But Joan, in other concerts I had seen,
01:11had this way of kind of bringing the neck up vertical,
01:13like she was playing, wasn't it?
01:15Yeah, yeah.
01:16Like a harp or something.
01:17It was a conscious decision to not just turn Monica
01:21into kind of the pips that she'd be kind of driving in.
01:26And that was about partly what the scene was about,
01:28that she had chosen the song.
01:30She was starting to play the song.
01:32He was either going to get on the train or not.
01:34And there's a kind of connectivity, dramatically,
01:36to a previous concert where he wouldn't play the song she chose.
01:40And this one, she's kind of diving in with me or without me.
01:44So there's also a kind of intra-scene dialogue going on
01:48between them about shit that's already gone down in the past.
01:51Pick something appropriate.
01:53Appropriate?
01:55Fuck off and sing.
01:57The song we play in that moment in the story of the film
02:00is like very on the nose,
02:02but I appreciate that that's intentional.
02:05And that she's like, yeah, I picked something appropriate,
02:07just fuck off and sing.
02:09And what I love, too, is you watch a lot of footage
02:11of Joan being very intentional
02:13and put together about her answers.
02:15And yet when you learn about her,
02:17she is a person who would say something like,
02:19fuck off and sing,
02:21but she wasn't doing that sort of publicly so much.
02:24You have the lens sort of behind the scenes
02:26of her flipping him off and saying fuck off.
02:28And the audience doesn't necessarily get that
02:31until decades later when she talks about the way she was.
02:34But we just kind of peek at that little bit of bite.
02:38Just fuck off and sing.
02:40What I love, the rapport between Timmy and Monica,
02:43and more specifically Bob and Joan,
02:46is she's formidable.
02:48Everyone at this point in the story
02:50is kind of dancing on eggshells around Bob,
02:53not Joan's posture.
02:55And so it adds a kind of degree of difficulty for Bob
02:58that's fun to watch.
03:00Because he's dealing with someone
03:02who's not going to take a certain level of shit,
03:04and may even be giving it back a little bit.
03:06In terms of the music,
03:08I mean, it was important to all of us
03:10to not have a bunch of sort of carbon copies
03:12of these musicians,
03:14or any sort of sign of mimicry in the film.
03:17And yet they have to be recognizable versions
03:20of these musicians.
03:22It's such a music-oriented scene.
03:24I mean, the main thing for me with Joan
03:27was working on having a certain level of vibrato,
03:30and a certain quality of tone,
03:32and to learn to play guitar
03:34in sort of a similar way to the way she did.
03:36Her finger-picking style.
03:38Yeah, her finger-picking, which that song,
03:40It Ain't Me Babe, is not as much of that.
03:42And actually at a certain point I got better at finger-picking,
03:45and the strumming was actually really hard for me.
03:47Just having those sort of touch points of the person
03:50so that there is that recognizability there.
03:52But then once you get into it,
03:54you hope you're in it so deeply
03:56that you can just sort of have a version of the person.
03:59You say you're looking for someone
04:03Never weak, but always strong
04:07I just love that song,
04:09and I feel like Jim gave us the runway
04:11to play them out as the characters we were in the movie.
04:14I really do believe this is a Jim interview
04:16because I was in Bob World,
04:18which is a much better description.
04:20Monica was in Joan World.
04:22But kudos to Jim, who really had his eye
04:24the whole movie on the fact that
04:26to watch actors do karaoke
04:28really isn't interesting.
04:30And it's really about,
04:32that's why I feel like Elle Fanning should be here right now.
04:34She's the anchor point of the scene.
04:36She's the anchor point of the scene, you know.
04:38And Jim always had his eye on story coming first.
04:40And it really is a great scene to break down in that regard.
04:42I know we shouldn't pat ourselves on the back
04:44or pat you on the back in front of you.
04:46It should be behind closed doors.
04:48I'm not the one you want, babe
04:52I'm not the one you need
04:56We had background artists
04:58that were fully engaged.
05:00I had a wonderful dance partner with Monica.
05:02And then we were able to play,
05:04I'm sure the version you see in the movies,
05:06I'm guessing different than
05:08the six or seven other versions we did.
05:10Yeah, there were dozens of versions.
05:12We did, I think, perform that one least
05:14because I had to run.
05:16I was throwing off my guitar
05:18and the hair
05:20and I had to get on a plane
05:22to shoot another project at the same time.
05:24And so that, of all things,
05:26was actually the thing we shot
05:28the least footage of.
05:30But the reason they're always singing live
05:32is honestly because they're breathing.
05:34They have to be.
05:36Meaning they have to be moving oxygen through.
05:38It's like you can't be going,
05:40you can't be doing that.
05:42You have to actually do it
05:44or else it just is a fraud.
05:46But honestly, that was at a point
05:48where they had both gotten in a pretty good groove.
05:50There's a lot of choices to make
05:52in how you shoot a scene
05:54and how you move your actors through that space.
05:56And there's a journey of focus
05:58that kind of starts with optimism
06:00and Bob heading out on the stage
06:02and joining Joan.
06:04What's always fascinated me,
06:06Timmy's done stage work and may know this
06:08and I think the actors know this
06:10anyway, but is this kind of weird
06:12contradiction you feel on stage
06:14in terms of
06:16you're in front of so many thousands of people
06:18sometimes and yet
06:20the intimacy you feel with
06:22the people who you're on stage with.
06:24I don't mean just the intimacy
06:26of playing a character but the sense of
06:28intimacy as actors
06:30or that you're really,
06:32it's you and them.
06:34And there may be all these eyeballs on you
06:36but there's a kind of focused
06:38connection
06:40that you have that's kind of
06:42intense. That's why the camera
06:44in the scene lives
06:46not shooting so much what the audience
06:48would see. For instance, the kind of
06:50row one kind of
06:52hero shot of your actors
06:54as it would have been if you were in the audience.
06:56But it lives in
06:58this world really
07:00using the anamorphic frame to kind of really
07:02almost make this beautiful, beautiful
07:04composition from either side
07:06of Timmy and Monica
07:08kind of together
07:10and the connection that Mike
07:12forcing them to be at this shared
07:14distance, all of which kind of
07:16brings on other aspects of kind of
07:18intimacy, romance,
07:20sexuality, all of that is going
07:22on as they're singing a song about not
07:24needing each other. And they've entered
07:26the song almost in the midst
07:28of a kind of grudge, at least from
07:30Joan's point of view offering him the finger
07:32at the moment he's coming on stage
07:34and to see that the second the
07:36song begins, these two
07:38lovers and friends and
07:40also in a sense competitors sometimes
07:42land in the scene
07:44and instantly fall in.
07:46All the bullshit of real life
07:48or life problems drops
07:50away and the song
07:52carries them to this magical place where
07:54they're like kind of this perfect couple.
07:56Their voices, their
07:58connection to each other, those shots
08:00holding the two of them
08:02with the audience in the background
08:04you can see the thousands of people
08:06behind them, but they've also
08:08vanished because you're really focused
08:10on this kind of connection between
08:12these two, which is of course
08:14what then drives the second movement
08:16of the scene, which is how
08:18destabilizing it is for someone
08:20who loves Timmy's character and is on the
08:22outside and cannot play a song
08:24and cannot in a way ever have
08:26that kind of connection with him.
08:28Someone to open each and
08:30every door
08:32when they need me.
08:34Some of the crowd is
08:36digitally created in the distance, but
08:38you still had about 200 extras
08:40and I've got Monica leaving in two
08:42hours and so we're doing what
08:44we can with multiple cameras, but you still
08:46the way I shoot, there's only so
08:48much you can do because I don't use long
08:50lenses where you can kind of aim a battery
08:52of cameras. The proxemics of the lens
08:54to the actors is really close.
08:56You try and do that also because
08:58every take is a little different and
09:00if you roll more than one camera at the same
09:02time, you always have one other shot
09:04that you know is going to match.
09:06So it gives you one option
09:08out because I love that
09:10they're finding new things, but there's
09:12sometimes when you do find one where you
09:14love the choices they made and they never
09:16made any choice like that in another take,
09:18you can be trapped.
09:20Those are the advantages of
09:22multiple cameras, but we did do it
09:24a lot of times. What makes
09:26Bob and Joan the characters in that period
09:28and hopefully what Monica and I were able to bring to it
09:30you know
09:32beyond what a
09:34hair rock concert would be where it's playing
09:36to 80,000 people or something. This is really
09:38about two characters
09:40sharing something. And I think that idea
09:42of the secret is really what I needed to drive
09:44the scene because ultimately I've
09:46got to get it to where Elle
09:48is driven away by whatever
09:50she's seeing on stage and
09:52nothing is really more
09:54destabilizing for a lover
09:56than to watch your
09:58partner having a kind
10:00of secret with another.