Bob Dylan & Johnny Carson (DVD)

It’s not like Bob Dylan has ever left the scene, and certainly since dominating his field in the 60s he’s continued to record music and tour. But this month sees Dylan reinvented in a multitude of guises, including a couple that aren’t even him.
Firstly, although his character name isn’t Dylan, Hayden Christensen plays the lanky Village poet Billy Quinn in Factory Girl. Covering the rise and fall of Warhol created Superstar Edie Sedgwick, Factory Girl evokes hip early 60s coolness with both its content and form. I felt let down in the one scene that should’ve had a bigger payoff. A scene where Dylan, er, Quinn comes to the Factory in order for Warhol to film him. The iconic duo stand-off, share a reefer, make snide remarks about each other in a pivotal scene to the film that should have produced more in the way of cinematic fireworks. Likewise the character played by Adam Sandler in Mike Binder’s Reign Over Me (March 23) is a virtual clone of the way Dylan looked on the cover of Blonde on Blonde.
Filmmaker D.A. Pennebacker recorded Dylan’s 1965 tour of the UK. It was solo acoustic Dylan and the last time he performed non-electric. The subsequent film, Don’t Look Back is considered a landmark music documentary not just for its concert footage but also for its fly on the wall observation of a rock star at the dawn of the age of rock idolatry.
Don’t Look Back, the 65 Tour Deluxe Edition DVD packages Pennebacker’s film along with an additional feature length companion, 65 Revisited. Basically there were so many outtakes and unused concert scenes that assembling the footage into a separate film works smoothly. Pennebacker and tour manager Bob Neuwirth provide commentary on both Don’t Look Back and 65 Revisited.
The added wealth here comes from Dylan concert footage; it’s pure, it’s simple and undiluted. In DLB we see fleeting glimpses of whole songs but in 65 Revisited the power of the poet is never so apparent as when Dylan is busting a move with his complete rendition of “It’s Allright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding,” live in Leicester. In addition to the Albert Hall concert footage there are also long takes of Dylan performing in Liverpool, Birmingham, and Newcastle among others. The 2-DVD set includes three different versions of the Subterranean Homesick Blues flip-card sequence, a stand-alone piece opening DLB that’s rightly cited as the grandfather of music videos.
Black and white television never really left, it just got colored in as the years progressed. Thankfully a stash of 1950 kinescopes (films made of shows shot directly from a television screen) were found by Johnny Carson’s second wife Joanne. The Johnny Carson Show was broadcast in prime time in 1955 and the absurd humor present in this variety show format is a link between comics like Ernie Kovacs (whose first show ran in 1952-53) and the more effervescent Carson of the 1960s Tonight Show. Incidentally Joanne’s liner notes mention that NBC trashed most of the first ten years of footage from the Tonight Show, which shows how typically corporations treat their own institutional memory.
The Johnny Carson Show, a 2-DVD set from Shout! Factory, combines 10 episodes from Carson’s network debut show, and includes extras like an ep from the ABC quiz show he hosted, Who Do You Trust? Would you believe one contestant gets locked in the sound proof booth?
Carson excels in imitation and on his first show does a take off of Edward Murrow, whom some viewers may only be familiar with from the recent film Good Night, and Good Luck. Carson also mimics a mental wizard with a character that what will evolve into Karnac. Another ep sports robotic living in the 1980s (then 30 years in the future) and a skit where Carson’s matador wife makes him put on horns and spar reeks of sexual innuendo. It was a cocktail hour, bamboo bar decade and this set captures that delicate state of mind.