Bob

   One of the joys of my job as an ENL teacher is the freedom to teach what I want.  I always make time for a couple lessons focused on Bob Dylan so the kids might "catch a spark".  I'll never forget Dora's response after listening to a duet with him and Joan Baez from 1965 when she exclaimed, "They're singing in English?"

  When I heard about the movie A Complete Unknown a few months before it came out, I found myself down the rabbit hole a few times in anticipation of the era the movie is about.  I still wasn't prepared for how much I enjoyed seeing it and had to see it twice over the Christmas break.  It's going to take awhile to emerge from this rabbit hole.  Then the director's cut will come out and it will start all over.

  Hard to say what my favorite scene was, kind of like naming my favorite Dylan song.  But this one stood out for a bunch of reasons: Dylan was starting to feel jaded and pressured to be who everyone wanted him to be.  They showed he was still able to sit down with Pete Seeger and enjoy singing a song together, even if it was in front of a bunch of record company execs and other rich people.  Timothee Chalamet and Ed Norton did great jobs singing and playing live to the camera (as does Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez) and in this scene they are playing Pete's guitar and banjo. 

  For anybody unfamiliar with Dylan and go to see/hear Timothee Chalamet, you're going to love the albums:

 

  There are a few books to read too.