“A Complete Unknown” — Dylan’s Biopic

How to Mobilize Change

What creates real and lasting cultural change? Is it the lone hero or the quiet mobilization of many?

During a recent trip to Phoenix, AZ, I finally finished the Bob Dylan biopic I had started on another flight. A Complete Unknown, starring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan and Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez—Dylan’s on-again, off-again lover—is based on Elijah Wald's book Dylan Goes Electric! The film is a reminder of the cultural value of music and its ability to move the needle, especially when it comes to our ideas about war, politics, and human rights.

Toward the end of the film, there’s an exchange with Pete Seeger (played by Edward Norton) about how change happens—one spoonful at a time. Dylan, however, wants the freedom to turn the tide on his own terms.

Disclaimer: This article is a mix of various ideas and themes and is not meant to be a movie review per se (there are many better movie critics than me).

When I was working with the American Friends Service Committee (the Quakers), I met singer and songwriter David LaMotte and had the good fortune to work alongside him for almost five years on a selection and nomination process. In a recent 2024 TED Talk, LaMotte reminds us that there are no examples of one person swooping in and singlehandedly changing the world.

“I’ve been working on this for over 20 years,” he says, “and I have yet to find one single example of this actually happening in the whole history of the world. Not one—where some extraordinary person came and did something dramatic in a moment of crisis and effectively addressed a large-scale problem by themselves. It has simply never happened.”

Instead, he offers a counter-narrative:

“It’s a lot less popular, but it has the added benefit of being true. That’s called the movement narrative. It says if you want to address a large-scale problem effectively, what you need is a lot of people moving in the same direction and doing a little bit each. And I contend that that is always how change has happened.”

LaMotte illustrates this with the example of Rosa Parks. We often treat her as a lone hero in the civil rights movement, but when we highlight solitary heroes, we erase the backstory—the many others involved in making change. This kind of storytelling can make us passive, waiting for someone else to lead, instead of organizing ourselves to do something different.

To be clear, Dylan was a force of nature—unmatched as a musician and songwriter. But he, too, was influenced by many people.

In the film, we see how Dylan’s path was shaped by many others like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie, as well as Joan Baez and even Johnny Cash. Baez and Seeger were more vocal in their peace activism than Dylan who used his lyricism to voice his position. There’s even a scene where Al Kooper is shown accidentally adding the now-famous organ line to “Like a Rolling Stone.” Tom Wilson, a music producer who was pivotal on three of Dylan’s most iconic albums, was also seen to sculpt Dylan’s tone and voice. Dylan’s music was a collaboration, built on the contributions of countless others. And by the time he brought the electric guitar to the Newport Folk Festival, plenty of folk musicians were already using electric instruments.

Tom Wilson produced Dylan’s music as well as many others, such as Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Simon & Garfunkel, the Velvet Underground.

Pete Seeger once said (and it’s referenced in the film):

“The world is like a seesaw out of balance: on one side is a box of big rocks, tilting it its way. On the other side is a box, and a bunch of us with teaspoons, adding a little sand at a time. One day, all of our teaspoons will add up, and the whole thing will tip, and people will say, ‘How did it happen so fast?’”

Although in the film Seeger compares Dylan to a shovel—able to move more earth at once—this is how folk music shaped minds and shifted attitudes toward peace and human rights. The organizers of the Newport Folk Festival and others were strategic in how they built a movement. Dylan’s songs like “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” helped tip the scales toward change.

Still, Dylan alienated some in the folk music community with his use of electric instruments. The film depicts him being booed on stage and being called “Judas” for betraying folk music—although this particular moment actually took place a year later at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in England. So while Dylan’s influence was substantial, too much credit may obscure the collaborative context that shaped him.

He understood that he was an artist—not a prophet, as some wanted to make him. Dylan remains an enigmatic figure: a Christian, a Jew, an agnostic, a believer, a capitalist, a non-conformist, a poet, a bard—or something else altogether.

Which brings us back to the question: should we wait for a hero to swoop in and make everything better? Probably not. When we abandon this trope, we can become the kind of people who make a real difference.

Maybe the complete unknowns are all the people who make a movement possible, and Dylan—like other cultural figures—is simply the voice that helps give the movement shape. What A Complete Unknown shows is how Dylan became a mirror, reflecting the world and the people around him—without whom, none of his songs could have surfaced.

Recently, another artist, who might be emerging figure—Jesse Wells—came up on my feed. A modern, folksy talent well worth listening to:
🎧 Jesse Wells on YouTube

But he challenges us not to make him a central figure or icon, but to think differently and therefore act different. It is not so much to be famous, but to be faithful to what the world needs from us now.

Question:

What teaspoon are you adding to the movement?
In what ways have you been waiting for a hero to swoop down to rescue us, instead of becoming part of the shift?

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And if you haven’t yet picked up Jesus and Buddha Talk: About Suffering, Desire, and Happiness, you can get a signed copy here. Or order the pre-sale edition here.

It’s about how we can listen closely—and in doing so, listen more deeply to our own humanity.