Tangled Up in Dylans

The year is 1966, and someone who looks a lot like Bob Dylan is holding court at Club Silver, a swinging nightspot with a stark, all-white dcor. His hair is an overgrown bush of brown curls; hes wearing Ray-Bans and a polka-dot shirt. And when he speaks, the nasal cadences are unmistakable, even if the voice sounds a little higher than it should: It takes a lot of medicine to keep up this pace,he says, gesturing with a cigarette.

Underneath the shades and wig is Australian actress Cate Blanchett, who spends an hour each morning in a makeup chair to undergo the most extreme transformation of her career. Shes playing the just-gone-electric, Highway 61 Revisited-era Dylan in Im Not There, an unconventional biopic by Far From Heaven director Todd Haynes, whose previous music movie was the 1998 glam tribute Velvet Goldmine. Haynes named the movie, due next year, after the Basement Tapes rarity Im Not There (which will see its first official release on the soundtrack). Its so perfect for this person who keeps moving forward and discarding who he was, Haynes says. The minute he seems in grasp, hes not there anymore.

Exclusive Audio: Todd Haynes on Im Not There

Blanchett is just one of six Dylans in the film, which splits him into separate characters, each representing a different part of his life or legend. Christian Bale plays the young folkie Dylan, who is later seen again as a fiery born-again Christian; Richard Gere embodies a mythical Dylan in the Old West; and Heath Ledger is a movie-star Bob. Two newcomers round out the Dylans: Twelve-year-old Marcus Carl Franklin plays a fantasy version of him as an (African-American) child and British stage actor Ben Whishaw plays him as a teen.

In the scene-in-progress on the Club Silver set inside a grimy factory turned studio in a Montreal suburb Blanchetts Jude (each Dylan has a different name) encounters Michelle Williams, playing a character based on Sixties It girl Edie Sedgwick, with whom Dylan reputedly had a brief affair. After watching her kiss another man, Jude mocks the couple: True love, he drawls. In the age of Charles Atlas and the bomb! (Dylan fanatics will find some of the dialogue familiar: The medicine line is straight from a 1966 interview with biographer Robert Shelton.)

For Haynes, dividing Dylan into multiple characters was the only way to tell his story. Im very interested in artists like David Bowie who play with notions of identity, Haynes says. I hadnt thought of Dylan exactly in that way until I started to really read about the events of his life more closely. And Dylans changes which maybe look more subtle than someone like Bowies were much more powerful and had huge cultural repercussions.

Im Not There Photos: Heath Ledger and Richard Gere as Bob Dylan

The innovative approach helped persuade Dylan and his management to authorize the film. I dont think Bob Dylan would have allowed anyone to do a regular biopic, says producer Christine Vachon. Having a woman portray the dandified Dylan of the mid-Sixties, Haynes says, is meant to capture the strange androgyny of that persona. Blanchetts performance made an immediate impression, according to veteran character actor Bruce Greenwood, who plays Judes nemesis, Mr. Jones a square journalist straight out of Ballad of a Thin Man. The body language just had me stunned with how evocative it was of Dylan at that time, he says. And the crew was standing around with their hands on their mouths.

Haynes will use a distinct visual style for each section of the film (the Jude segment is black-and-white), but he says the movie wont feel like a collection of short films. Each story reaches a point at which the person cant go on without becoming something else, he says. It solves the problems of the prior story to change into a new thing and discard it.

Along the way, a number of familiar characters pop up: Charlotte Gainsbourg plays a Sara Dylan-like wife; David Cross will play a character based on Allen Ginsberg; and Julianne Moore is a Joan Baez-inspired character.

The movies soundtrack is still taking shape, but it will mix Dylans own recordings with new covers. My Morning Jackets Jim James has already recorded Going to Acapulco for the movie, and ex-Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus sang Ballad of a Thin Man and Maggies Farm backed by a band that includes current Dylan bassist Tony Garnier. Malkmus performances, recorded in sessions produced by Sonic Youths Lee Ranaldo, will score the segment based on Dylans 1965 Newport Folk Festival set.

Ultimately, Im Not There will be a meditation on the 1960s, a decade Haynes feels still hasnt been captured correctly on film. It was such an incredibly complex and fascinating period, he says. I want it to be the best film about the Sixties anyone has ever seen.

This story is from the October 19, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone.