Apparently, Scorsese was more of an assembler than a director on No Direction Home. I still enjoyed what I've seen so far. Dave Van Ronk seems like a good guy to hang out with, and Niam Clancy an excellent barroom companion. And the vitriol hurled up at Bob in England, during his electric sets, is amazing. Why did these people buy tickets if they hated Dylan so much?
WSJ.com - Dylan Takes on A Job for Heirs: Promote Legacy With a torrent of new projects focusing on his most-revered period, from 1961 to 1966, the singer is pre-empting the posthumous image-massaging that has confronted many rock estates by dealing with his own legacy now, while the 64-year-old is still very much alive....But whether Mr. Dylan is actually pulling back the curtain for fans, or is simply engaging in more of his trademark image manipulation, is unclear. Greil Marcus, whose recently published book, “Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads,” chronicles the recording of a single song in 1965, thinks Mr. Dylan has always had “a tremendous sense of strategy and guile” -- even when he was cryptic in public pronouncements.
Although “No Direction” boasts a marquee-name director in Mr. Scorsese, nearly all the interviews in the movie -- including those with Mr. Dylan himself -- were filmed by Mr. Dylan's own management company long before Mr. Scorsese became involved in the project. Indeed, Mr. Scorsese (who had previously filmed Mr. Dylan in 1978's “The Last Waltz”) was hired by Dylan's manager, Jeff Rosen, and the film's other producers, and mostly assembled the film out of footage they had already compiled. Mr. Dylan's film-production company owns a roughly one-third stake in the film's copyright.
“We felt Bob's enormous stature as an artist needed an experienced documentarian,” recalled executive producer Nigel Sinclair, who together with Mr. Rosen approached Mr. Scorsese about the job around three years ago.
The movie balances revelations like the ones concerning Mr. Dylan's manipulation of the truth with adulatory comments from people like record producer Bob Johnston, who asserts: “He's got the Holy Spirit about him.” Mr. Sinclair said Mr. Scorsese was given total creative freedom, and could have conducted further interviews with Mr. Dylan if he had wanted to. Through spokesmen, Messrs. Rosen, Dylan and Scorsese declined to comment.
