Bringing It All Back Home

What a dazzling prospect: The most accomplished U.S. filmmaker of the last thirty years turns his microphones and cameras for nearly four hours on a legendary musician whose very name has been a condition of life in this country for the last forty. To Martin Scorsese, who's given us such...

By Bill Gallo

September 22, 2005

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What a dazzling prospect: The most accomplished U.S. filmmaker of the last thirty years turns his microphones and cameras for nearly four hours on a legendary musician whose very name has been a condition of life in this country for the last forty. To Martin Scorsese, who's given us such masterpieces as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan is a dream fulfilled and a labor of love -- the documentary he has always yearned to make. For Dylan, the famously reclusive bard whose social and political anthems have given shape to the lives of three generations of Americans, it appears to be a rare, carefully chosen opportunity to reveal himself to an artist who is his equal. According to its advance billing, the film encompasses not only performances of classics including "Like a Rolling Stone," "Don't Think Twice," "Just Like a Woman" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'" but "never-before-seen footage from childhood, from the road, from backstage, as well as unreleased interviews conducted over the past fifteen years with other seminal figures from those times."

At its heart, No Direction Home also features the first lengthy interviews the singer-songwriter has given in twenty years, and it reflects the unlimited access Scorsese had to Dylan's private archives, both musical and personal. The brief taste of Dylan that 60 Minutes gave viewers two years ago was enticing, but hardly exhaustive. Scorsese's film promises to fill in a lot of blanks.

Scheduled to air in two parts early next week on KRMA-TV/Channel 6, No Direction Home will also screen in a one-time sneak preview on Friday, September 23, at the Starz FilmCenter, 900 Auraria Parkway. That 7:30 p.m. showing is free, but required tickets for seating in the tiny 166-seat theater are sure to go quickly; call 303-820-FILM.

The KRMA broadcasts of the three-hour-and-forty-minute film are scheduled for 9 p.m. Monday, September 26 (Part One), and 9 p.m. Tuesday, September 27 (Part Two). Back-to-back reruns of both are scheduled to air on October 1 beginning at 9 p.m.

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