Dylan & Putin

Bob Dylan isn't a very good actor. Bob Dylan is in fact a bad actor whose bad acting is especially pronounced when surrounded by good acting, as Bob Dylan is in the otherwise bad movie "Masked and Anonymous", which stars Bob Dylan, Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Mickey Rourke, Ed Harris, Penelope Cruz and other luminaries.

Bob's on screen a lot more than he was in "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid" and slightly less than "Renaldo and Clara." To act is to fake and Dylan is incapable of faking, though he has proven to be a master at creating new identities, and his presence in 'Masked and Anonymous' is both the whole point of the movie and its pointlessness.

The plot is thick with meaninglessness, though the music is good. I watched the movie to end however, fascinated with its badness, wondering as always how such badness gets made. What was said in the 'pitch' to procure the money to make the film? Did the many stars in the movie agree to work for scale? A percentage? Whose purse-strings were opened?

And so I stayed to the end. As the credits scrolled across the screen, a parade of Russian surnames appeared in the important checkbook categories--Producer, Co-Producers etc. etc. Ah, of course! The Russians have money, though if you google the movie "Masked and Anonymous" the Wikipedia entry indicates the film was financed by the BBC.

The possible Russian connection to Dylan's bad movie led to some thinking about a possible HBO special on Vladimir Putin, in which Putin is cast as a chamber-of-commerce man, the one who stands at the door, affable but slightly menacing, to collect your dues.