Bob Dylan Personally Added 1 Line to a Fight Scene in ‘A Complete Unknown’

While Bob Dylan is not heavily involved in the production of the biopic A Complete Unknown, he has some involvement in the filmmaking process. Dylan has not met with the cast, but he has spoken with director James Mangold about the film. Dylan has given some input on what he’d like to see out of the film. According to Elle Fanning, who plays his girlfriend in the film, Dylan added one line to a fight scene.

Bob Dylan added a line to a scene in ‘A Complete Unknown’

In A Complete Unknown, Fanning plays Sylvie Russo, a version of Dylan’s real-life girlfriend Suze Rotolo. The pair dated when he first moved to New York. While the arc truthfully follows Rotolo and Dylan’s relationship, her name is different in the film. According to Fanning, who plays Russo, Dylan wanted to rename the character.

“[Rotolo was] a very private person and didn’t ask for this life,” Fanning told Rolling Stone. “She was obviously someone that was very special and sacred to Bob.”

The film depicts a fight between the couple, and Dylan personally added a line to the scene.

“It was something like, ‘Don’t even bother coming back,’” Fanning said. “We know the arguments were real, so maybe he was remembering something — or regretting something that he said to her.”

Suze Rotolo appeared on the cover of an album

Rotolo appeared on the cover of Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. One of the songs on the album, “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” is about Rotolo. She recalled walking up and down the street to get the shot.

“Bob stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans and leaned into me,” Rotolo wrote her book A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties (via Rolling Stone). “We walked the length of Jones Street facing West Fourth with Bleecker Street at our backs. In some outtakes it’s obvious that we were freezing; certainly Bob was, in that thin jacket. But image was all.”

She said that she never got paid to appear on the cover.

“As for me, I was never asked to sign a release or paid anything,” she said. “It never dawned on me to ask.”

Bob Dylan is supportive of ‘A Complete Unknown’

James Mangold, the director of A Complete Unknown, said Dylan has been very supportive of the project.

“The first time I sat down with him, Bob said, ‘What’s this movie about, Jim?’” Mangold said in a separate interview with Rolling Stone. “I said, ‘It’s about a guy who’s choking to death in Minnesota, and leaves behind all his friends and family and reinvents himself in a brand new place, makes new friends, builds a new family, becomes phenomenally successful, starts to choke to death again — and runs away.”

Mangold said that Dylan smiled before giving his approval.

“I like that,” he said.

A Complete Unknown will hit theaters on Dec. 25.