Students packed a theater at SCAD Show in Midtown Atlanta on Saturday night to watch the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown as hundreds more waited outside for a glimpse of its star, Timothée Chalamet.
The Oscar-nominated actor, 28, has visited several U.S. cities this month to promote the Dec. 25 release of his flick about the rock icon, and raced across Atlanta traffic to participate in the SCAD event after appearing on ESPN’s College Game Day during the SEC championship at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the Georgia Bulldogs defeated the Texas Longhorns 22 to 19 in overtime.
Chalamet is best known for lead roles in hits such as the Dune series, Wonka and Call Me by Your Name and has not filmed any recent projects in Georgia (A Complete Unknown was shot almost entirely in New Jersey and the actor’s hometown of New York City). But the Dylan project resonated with this Atlanta audience thanks to its nexus of multigenerational music and man-of-the-moment appeal.
Jaianne Gilkey, a recent SCAD grad who attended the screening, told GPB that her grandmother first introduced her to Dylan’s Nobel prize-winning tunes.
“She really liked Bob Dylan, and I really like the style of his music,” Gilkey said.
Yet it was Chalamet’s role that piqued Gilkey’s interest in attending the event.
“I’m excited to see how he takes on the character and how he portrays Bob Dylan’s story,” she said, “because I also love Timothée Chalamet as an actor, so I’m really looking forward to seeing what he does, and with the movie in general.”
While it’s not unusual for actors to sing and play in film roles, Chalamet said in recent interviews that he welcomed years of voice and guitar practice to tackle dozens of Dylan’s songs in the film.
“You know, that’s super exciting,” attendee Lorenzo Gonzalez said of anticipating Chalamet’s performances onscreen. “Because I feel like that’s always really cool to see, whenever an actor takes on some kind of musical role. Yeah, and seeing how they kind of develop their skills like that, too.”
The movie is an engrossing cross-section of Dylan lore and music facts
A Complete Unknown traces Dylan’s career from his 1961 arrival in New York City and a fateful meeting with his songwriting hero Woody Guthrie (“This Land is Your Land”) and folk predecessor Pete Seeger (“If I Had a Hammer”) to his performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, where the singer infamously disrupted the tradition by playing electric instruments.
Written, directed and produced by Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line creator James Mangold, A Complete Unknown clocks in at 141 minutes, serving as a comprehensive love letter to Dylan’s early-1960s output, imagining the behind-the-scenes creation of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s A‐Gonna Fall” and “Like a Rolling Stone,” compositions which were influenced by the politics and social movements of the day.
Front and center are the singer’s connections with Seeger (in an endearing, scene-stealing characterization by Edward Norton), Joan Baez (in a powerhouse breakout performance from Monica Barbaro) and Cash (by Boyd Holbrook). Not portrayed is Dylan’s performance with Baez at the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. made his “I Have a Dream” speech and Georgia’s future congressman John Lewis spoke on behalf of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Moviegoers should know A Complete Unknown is not a concert film, but it oozes music throughout, and Chalamet’s voice never disappoints: His magnetic, flawed Bob Dylan is an accessible and memorable character for Gen Z because so few of the young movie star’s peers have been exposed to the life and career of the now 83-year-old man behind the music.
On Monday, A Complete Unknown was nominated for Best Picture at the 2025 Golden Globe Awards to be presented in Beverly Hills on Jan. 5. Chalamet was nominated in the Best Actor category and Norton for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Georgia connections
Actress Elle Fanning, a native of Conyers, Ga., continues her streak of acclaimed roles with an emotional and nuanced take on Dylan’s girlfriend of the era, a character based on the woman photographed with the songwriter for the cover of his 1963 studio album,The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Fanning won Best Actress in a supporting role from National Board of Review for her work in the film.
Atlanta-based blues singer and guitarist William “Big Bill” Morganfield, a son of Muddy Waters, makes a cameo appearance in a scene as a musician who encounters Dylan after replacing him on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest TV program.
Although the film does not touch on Bob Dylan’s Georgia connections, the musician has ties to the state, including his associations with former Georgia governor and U.S. President Jimmy Carter, whose son Chip invited the musician to breakfast at the governor’s mansion following Dylan’s 1974 gig with The Band at Atlanta’s then-new Omni coliseum.
According to Dylan’s website, the legendary musicians has played at least 56 shows in Georgia across 30 non-consecutive years since his first stop here in 1965 at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. In addition to venues across the Atlanta metro, he has played in Augusta, Columbus, Dalton, Gainesville, Macon and Savannah. Dylan’s most recent stops included concerts in Alpharetta and Athens earlier this year.
All eyes on Timothée
The SCAD audience waited patiently after the Saturday night screening for Chalamet to join the school’s associate dean of film and acting, Karl Rouse, onstage for a quick Q&A. The two sat in oversized chairs set up beside a motorcycle prop meant to approximate the red Triumph Tiger Dylan owned by Dylan, a replica of which appears in A Complete Unknown.
Chalamet told Rouse he enjoyed his stint at the SEC game downtown and joked that he “only drank Coca-Cola so I would be lucid for this [Q&A] event,” shouting out Atlanta’s most iconic brand.
Rouse then questioned Chalamet about his creative process and why Bob Dylan’s music mattered to him.
The actor admitted he drew inspiration from the 1967 Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back, saying that in order to update the genius of Dylan for today’s audiences he needed the real deal.
“It’s really raw, sort of in this great moment of his career,” he said, comparing the footage to Lil Wayne’s 2009 film, The Carter. “That’s a brilliant documentary that captures Lil Wayne in a similar moment [to early-1960s Dylan], where he hasn’t turned his back yet on pressure and expectation.”
Chalamet said preparing for his role in A Complete Unknown was like “osmosis,” as he absorbed the singer’s vast catalog of albums and visual history rather than imitating Bob Dylan’s mannerisms and speech.
Reflecting on advice dispensed to his class at Laguardia High School for the Performing Arts a decade ago, Chalamet said he remembered what actress Edie Falco said when asked what her process is for getting into character.
“She said, ‘I don’t know, I just do it,’” Chalamet laughed. “And I was like, ‘Ahhh, that makes sense.’”
A Complete Unknown opens in theaters nationwide on Christmas Day.