Undoubtedly one of the oddest tours of all time — at least until the 1980s, that is — much of the Rolling Thunder Revue was seen in the 1978 Bob Dylan flick Renaldo and Clara. As watchable as that four-hour movie is to only the biggest of fans — and yes, I’m one of them — much of what was billed as a freewheelin’ variety show has been distilled to about two and a half hours here, thanks to director Martin Scorsese.
In Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, Marty recounts the Rolling Thunder tour with a music fan’s eye, while Dylan recounts the matter with the acerbic tongue of a wealthy dowager. We find Dylan back in the mid-’70s, driving the magical mystery tour bus on a musical journey across America and, I guess, Canada, leading his troupe of semi-professionals and hitting on a very young Sharon Stone in between all the musical interludes.
Clad in his shocking-white pancake makeup, the death mask of Dylan took to the smaller stages of many areas usually without such big concerts, oftentimes with singing stagehands and spiritual schlockers such as Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg and Joni Mitchell, mostly there to keep this train of tra-la-las a-rollin’.
Sure, it might seem like the kind of tragic thing that wouldn’t make it to the next town, but somehow Dylan and crew kept it going, which is especially triumphant considering he was spending far more than he made with each stop. Even though it wasn’t earning anything, the tour gained plenty of ground and earned Dylan plenty of fans. Still, in the end, this is a Scorsese flick and he manages to make a great documentary out of another man’s canister-rotting film. Besides, how else was anyone going to see it? —Louis Fowler