Bob Dylan’s art and image are at once rivetingly iconic and eternally elusive. Yet one aspect of his career remains underexplored: his appearances and depictions on screen. Since the mid-1960s, Dylan has been the subject of documentaries, an actor in feature films, and the auteur of his own film projects, as well as the inspiration for both traditional and unconventional biopics.
I’m Glad I’m Not Me explores Dylan on film, from D. A. Pennebaker’s direct cinema classic Dont Look Back to Martin Scorsese’s epic documentaries No Direction Home and Rolling Thunder Revue, and from his confounding feature Masked and Anonymous to the fractured mythology of Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There. Ethan Warren places these and other films, including a variety of overlooked, derided, and unmade projects, into conversation. He also considers Dylan’s music videos, from the MTV era to the streaming age, and paintings, which adapt stills from both classic and forgotten films. Tracing the evolution of Dylan’s on-screen persona, Warren casts the performer’s cinematic appearances as extensions of his lifelong project of creating an endlessly shapeshifting identity. Through this lens, I’m Glad I’m Not Me offers a new view of the life and work of one of the most influential yet least knowable celebrities in American history.