Starring Bob Dylan as “Jack Fate” and a whole host of other characters with so many cameos that I eventually lost count, though to note a few: Bruce Dern, Giovanni Ribisi, Luke Wilson, Val Kilmer (as an animal rights activist and farmer), Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange, John Goodman, Christian Slater, Mickey Rourke, Penelope Cruz, and on and on…

Here is the set-up: Jack Fate, played by Bob Dylan, is in jail, though why exactly is unclear. Let’s just say it has something to do with the corrupt sort of guerilla government in the country in which the film takes place, but we can guess that it is Dylan’s version of  America. Perhaps reflective of  America now – and during the time the film was made as well – boy is America , a mess. It is run by corrupt officials, rebels, a sort of Sandinista government and to really top it off, the leader the entire mess, as we will find out in due course, is Jack Fate’s own less-than-beloved father, El Presidente, and though we never meet him directly, we see his image carried throughout the film, either directly in front of us as a frame or hovering in the background as a framed poster on the wall. He is a lurking presence and a not-so-gentle reminder of Big Brother who sees all and could give a shit. 

People are diseased, dying, vomiting in the streets (I have it on good authority that Dylan once asked “how come Hollywood never made a film of people vomiting on the streets, because that would be the Truth with that ever-present capital T” and let’s not forget “Vomit Express” with Ginsberg.  I suppose it’s all Dylaneze and if you aren’t totally clear on what that is, then you probably shouldn’t bother with the rest of this article (or maybe you don’t want to anyway – fair enough), but really because only a die-hard would care at all about this film because Jack Fate is a strange sort of film and not one that you rent for a Saturday night’s entertainment. At least, I wouldn’t. I watched it out of interest and feel it has a lot to offer, but Dylan as Jack Fate reminds me, of course, of Dylan as Renaldo. Dylan is never Dylan. It’s like that famous interview in Don’t Look Back when the reporter asks Dylan if he is ever himself, does he mean what he says, to which, of course, Dylan responds, “You gotta lot a nerve to ask me a question like that – Do you ask the Beatles that...” Dylan’s retort,, is of course, rhetorical.

So Dylan finally gets his way, and though he doesn’t put his name on the writing credits, (he uses a pseudonym,) yet the fact remains, did Dylan co-wrote this film and yes, he finally gets his scene of someone being sick or close to it on the streets of squalor. Hey, greeeeaaatt, as he would say.

The streets of this America (this America?) are lined with filth, the buildings dilapidated and no, not in that elegant of the Matrix with the dilapidated mansions and sort of Armani chic clothes falling apart at the seams, but no, this is dilapidated in a truly gross and yes, you can imagine cockroaches everywhere way, because as we all know from school, only the cockroaches will survive the nuclear holocaust – end of the world – Armageddon 

This seedy quality inherent in the film that is the backdrop is there to support Dylan/Jack Fate and all of the other character’s disillusionment and to illustrate that the things they tell us of their, that is to say our, world has or is going to shit.  As fellow train-rider with Jack Giovanni  Ribisi says “the rebels have infiltrated everything.”  There is corruption, disease, and decay. There is some sort of fascist dictatorship, we are to see, and who better to play that role than Daddy himself, as I said earlier. Hey, isn’t that who daddy is to all little kids at some or other stage, especially boys? Isn’t there that whole Oedipal thing about killing Daddy and so on that we cannot discount. Is it heavy handedness in this film or is it just there for us to note. Perhaps for some of us, maybe even for Dylan, Daddy really was a sort of fascist and so remains one. Whatever the case, for Dylan, Dad, here anyway, is the head honcho that has guided the whole country and its people up ole shit river.

And now, the plot inside the plot or the setting; (however you like) The two rather seedy promoters (John Goodman and Jessica Lange) need a star for their benefit show. Apparently, they’re stuck and the last person they think of, or so we’re lead to believe  by Jack Fate (Dylan, of course, though in real life Dylan, like anybody, can be and is remarkably insecure for someone of his stature - Christ, I can hear him now, “What is she talkin’ about maaaan, my ‘sttaaaturreee…..?’) 

There’s just the one hitch; Jack Fate is in prison. Somehow, they get him instantly released (yes, it doesn’t make sense and the government is so corrupt that it seems unlikely they would just release ole Jack, but hey… suspend your disbelief as you would for any, a –hem, good fiction.) Surely Jack Fate is there in jail for reasons that are totally unfair and corrupt, and because he is, as Goodman says of Fate when booking him for the “benefit concert” – “the real leader of The Revolution,” with open arms to the homeless, drunks, the underworld and the American underworld.

In other words, Give me your poor…& etc.

This film is, or rather is supposed to provide, a venue or a way for Dylan to say all those things he has always wanted to say. To point out the inaccuracies and absurdities or big government and big business, the corruption of men, the evil forces; the “they” of the film, that are referred to again and again (though they could encompass a whole number of people or industries, so let’s just assume it means all. It is “Them.” it is “They” “They” are the perpetrators whatever the crime, and They always will be. It was Them officer, I saw it. More, it allows Dylan to be the cowboy he’s wanted to be since childhood. He’s not wrong about his “them”, however, for the government, many of the big corporations – think Bertlesman for example, the now owner of almost the entire publishing scene who used to print Nazi propaganda – yes, really. Dylan was right about corruption in government and business: yes, it’s always been there and is it worse now? I can’t say. It seems that throughout the ages man has found some excuse or other to go to war (boys playing with toy soliders, only this time, real blood is shed, real people die, whole ancient civilizations and historic places are wiped out with a single bomb from a fighter jet or stealth jet.

But Dylan always was prescient and he’s been around long-enough by then, and certainly by now, that what he filmed and wrote and made was not only true of that time then, but is true now – perhaps even more true.

Bruce Dern, another co-star, says in conversation with Jeff Bridges (a journalist) that this is all “a nefarious play to weed out the rebels.” It is anti-government, anti-establishment, pro The People with a capital P.

Jeff Bridges is a writer, who is mocked by Jack Fate’s sidekick, Luke Wilson, who serves as protectant and friend, keeping away others, and sort of a mini-me of Jack Fate – an acolyte who assists at the altar of his god, or his friend, as the case may be. He says to Bridges, there to interview Fate; “So, you’re a writer … Ya ever read For Whom the Bell Tolls.”  “Hemingway… he was a writer.”

We get the point, and although a big heavy-hand falls (thump), perhaps it merits saying. Isn’t it true that too many of us call ourselves writers these days, perhaps even yours truly. Perhaps there are just too many people going around and because they write once in a while take the liberty of saying they are a writer. A true writer sits down every day… see below.

As a person who writes literally every day and does this for a living, writing means more than jotting down a few notes and writing out whatever occurs. It is a daily job and a task like any other. It is something you go at with a vengeance, as with any job. You do not give up, get writer’s block or quit or not write because you “don’t feel like it.” You write. It is a calling as much as the ministry is a calling. Writing then, is hard work. It is work. It is calling. It is an estate. There is a reason for this. It is to be respected as such.

The point here is that Dylan, through Luke Wilson, is able to insult this journalist (you can almost hear the contempt and the dripping sarcasm in the word here, as if by saying it one would be tainted by something unclean). That the journalist makes a mockery of “real” writing. It illustrates Dylan’s dislike, even disdain of interviews (a long held feeling) and proven again recently with Ed Bradley, who recently died. The only good interview of Dylan that I recall ever is No Direction Home and that is only because he is being interviewed by someone with whom he is extremely comfortable..

But Bridges echoes Jack Fates’s views as well: The world is overcrowded, there is a long line at the cluster, and it’s hard to get to the top.  His girlfriend, Penelope Cruz, who worships in front of a small altar every day praying for what?  For hope…? Some sign? To save the world? She may be our sacrificial virgin -our Madonna pure and good.

The only good and pure thing in the whole film perhaps, and yet involved with Bridges she offers some redemptive element.
As to Dylan, he’s always liked to have a little fun with journalists, turning the subject around and interviewing them or giving nothing at all and withholding – art imitating life. That is classic Dylan.

In the final account, Jack Fate and Bridges will come to blows, with Jack Fate holding a bottle of Jack Daniels to his neck; Fate could easily take his life, yet chooses not to. He has proven his point (I’m still not sure exactly what the point is, other than that he can or could kill him but there is a point here somewhere.) We know Dylan (Fate) doesn’t like journalists but to kill them with a broken bottle of Jack Daniels? Perhaps they are seen as carriers of a shrink-wrapped media enterprise and not part of a more free press that runs without big corporate sponsorship, thus giving up its principles and selling its soul to the devil.

Well, thank God for Luke Wilson, who turns up and bashes Bridges to death with nothing less than a  guitar (a real instrument of revolution in this case), rendering him helpless and dying, the redemptive and sainted Penelope Cruz at his side, offering him his absolution from all sin.  As he lays dying, he talks of white doves, cathedrals, blah blah blah blah… You get the picture. It’s all very saccharine at this point. Yes, heaven may be some great white light.. or not.. if it exists at all. Did Dylan pull out every cliché in the book for this one intentionally to make a point, or was that really how he felt at the time? I’m lost. 


But more…

John Goodman figures they have booked The Legend Jack Fate, though it’s an interesting way to put it, since Dylan himself has so often denied or shirked off the role of Prophet or Legend and the like, preferring instead to say publicly or defer and say he keeps a low profile. That said, there can be no denying that no matter what he may have said or say, Dylan has courted the myth of who he is as much as he has denied and hated it at times (and I believe he has genuinely hated it).

Giovanni Ribisi is a Jack’s train-mate and fellow traveler as he makes his way from jail to the show where he’ll perform. Ribisi, looking the part he does so well (what does he look like in real life, I wonder), which is strung out looking, clammy,those beautiful hazel eyes bulging out of his head in that googly way he does. He fills Jack in – what the world is like. “Violence is the only thing they know…” Ribisi tells him nervously. “It’s the only tool in their box…”  But are these rebels? The government? Are rebels and the government one and the same, like a sort of corrupt republic, which we can safely assume this is.  Yes, the government is the one with “the only tools in their box” as violence, yet the rebels seem to fare not better; perhaps you have to meet fire with fire, though Gandhi would certainly disagree. It all depends on which rock you stand in the political and leftist ocean – what kind of radical do you want to to be and does that make you more or less radical than me, or me than you ? It’s a stupid game of finger-pointing and in-fighting, which will always be our downfall if we don’t get our shit together and unite. The same can be said of any group – although I will say that when revolutionaries, true revolutionaries are called to action there can be no stopping them. I think Guevara proved that.

What we find out, and this is most interesting of all, is that El Presidente, the leader of this whole mess of a country of homelessness and junkies and hookers and corruption and a government that senselessly shoots people (as Ribisi will be for confronting the masked rebels using his “tool” which we don’t see, so I’m assuming he means or meant his brain – the ultimate tool and weapon that threatens any governmennent if you dare think about it. Anyway, something abstract and intangible.  Needless to say, this is no match for the automatic weapons of the hooded men outside the bus at the checkpoint. Ribisi is gunned down, plastered with bullet holes and all for using his brain – for thinking. These are thought police.

Jack arrives at his destination and meets joker John Goodman who he refers to as “Sweetheart” since Goodman takes a rather condescending attitude toward him from the beginning anyway, calling Jack a “skinny thing:” and “no more than bones” with the “jail pale” and so on.  Obviously, though a promoter, Goodman is just doing his job and has booked the legend but is no fan. Not really. 

Dylan calls Luke Wilson – a bartender who is full of such lines, as he says to one thirsty customer who wants a drink and says My glass is empty. Wilson answers, “The glass is always half empty.”

The film is full of lines like this. Are they platitudes? They’re just general statements that are thrown out there, and though they may sometimes or even often be true, the volume has been bumped up. Jack Black tells us A chemist invents a new drug and doesn’t care about the side effects so the pharmaceutical industry is not immune. and Expect the worst and you’ll get it, but is that last a warning to us – to not think the very same way that Jack Fate is thinking here, or is it a wry comment – a Jack’s Truth: Expect the worst and it will come anyway or rather, Expect anything and you’ll get the worst no matter what.  Yup. I had to sound like I am following Diogenes’ bright light here, but I can’t help but agree – life teaches you so and you don’t become embittered by it necessarily, you become disappointed and without hope. A good friend of mine once told me after I told him I had no hope, he said, “When there is no hope, you just Do.”

So – expect anyting and you’ll get the worst: the latter seems more like what he is saying, but here again, it’s all interpretation and will depend on who is doing the looking here.  You’d have to watch for yourself to determine the meaning of each individual line, but clearly, the overall message is that, Fate’s father, El Presidente, is one corrupt sonofabitch who cares nothing for the people, to say nothing for his lack of emotion and or love  for his own son.

Even Jack’s seedy hotel room has reminders of his father; after all, he is the leader of what we assume is supposed to be, ironically, the “free world” and his picture hangs over his bed, like a Stalinist propaganda poster. It rather reminded me of my own recent visit to a government building where, after I had gone through the usual security measures necessary at government buildings and so, having been through the metal detector and seen men remove their belts and shoes, I felt all warm and snuggly safe. I looked up and saw framed photographic prints of our own President and Dick Cheney and though it had not occurred then (call me stupid), it occurred to me as I was watching this film that perhaps the photographs that seem to occupy most classrooms and even university lecture halls and the like of our current leaders are perhaps not so different from the Russian propaganda art of Constructivism around the time of the revolution (1917) and the early 1920s.  There is government progaganda everywhere.

Jack Fate tells us, I may as well make a list here, since that perhaps tell us what we need to know in some ways – these are spoken through Jack or through other characters in the film, but really, every character, like in a dream, is Jack Fate. You are every person in your dream, as Freud said and I think even Jung agreed.

  Remember learning that ages ago? That to interpret a dream, you must first understand that you are every character in that dream, not just the one you resemble or think you are – you are more than the narrator, you are literally each and every character. Strange, but true – so they say. Once you understand this, you can then begin to understand the dream and there is a lot of talk about dreams and dream imagery in this film, so it makes sense that Jack Fate is, essentially, everyman, and everyman is also you, the viewer. That said then, we are told this:

Expect the worst and you’ll get it.
Al of us are trying to kill time … time ends up killing us. (which he thinks as a young girl offers an absolutely gorgeous rendition of “The Times They are a Changin’” in perfect pitch even though she cannot be more than eight or nine years old.)
Hospitals are shrines to the diseases society and even the hospital and pharmaceutical industry creates.
A crack in the mud at the bottom of a dry sanded lake is more beautiful than a human being.

Read through, and you could create a small, compact volume of Jack Fate’s Gripes and Comforts. More, remember that many of the other characters are really Dylan/Jack Fate speaking as well – they may be playing other roles, but they serve as conduits to say what Dylan wants, like Giovanni Ribisi’s train comments about having only “one tool” which is obviously not the right one and is the simple answer of annihilation and murder. Even the hotel keeper, (recognizable from many other films, though the name evades me right now ~ ), when asked about politics by Jack responds, “


END:

The deleted scenes are telling, so don’t skip over those, since they often offer up the parts that the director didn’t want us to see.  Such as, Jack Fate being approached by a woman in a bar, he tells her that he has “a radical hostility towards sexuality.” 

Doesn’t that sound like the older Dylan?  The songs about love and loss, the post-Sara songs, after the divorce and the bitterness that followed, no matter that he remarried and supposedly was or is in love – and I truly hope so, because he deserves that – we all do. Or perhaps, to be fair, I should say, he keeps that well-hidden.  No matter what the truth, he very clearly makes a statement here and it rings true which is that “sexuality” as he says is simply a marker a stand-in for “love.”  Only Jack (our boy Dylan) really knows the answer.