Timothée Chalamet Compares Frank Ocean to Dylan: 'Revere These People'

The word “mystery” gets tossed around quite a bit among pop culture scholars like myself, but few artists, if any, have impenetrably maintained such an aura for as long as Bob Dylan. But Frank Ocean, whose most recent studio album remains 2016’s impeccable Blonde, could be well on his way.

That argument is among the highlights of A Complete Unknown star and producer Timothée Chalamet’s Thursday night appearance on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, the latest entry in the James Mangold-directed film’s largely nontraditional press run. Asked to detail what he likes most about Dylan after having spent years studying his extensive catalog and becoming a full-fledged Dylan enthusiast in the process, Chalamet, who is undeniably excellent in the film and is certain to be a key Oscar contender in the months ahead, gave his take on Dylan’s unique position in the pop culture lexicon.

“What I like about Dylan now, what I’m most impressed by, as I was saying before, is his sort of elusive nature,” the Dune franchise actor and college football aficionado told Colbert. “Bob Dylan is one of these names like Paul McCartney or Mick Jagger or Elvis Presley. They’re in the pop culture sphere but you can kind of match a face with those names. And Bob Dylan, at least for me, he’s remained a mystery, somehow, decades later.”

Chalamet continued, “So this movie doesn’t demystify him. But when people in pop culture are able to break through and then retain a quality of themselves—like Frank Ocean today does the same thing, I think—then it’s like, you gotta revere these people in my opinion. Because they figured it out. You know, if you’re sensitive enough to be great and then you’re smart enough to protect it. Now he’s got me as his foot warrior and I’m going out and I’m spreading the gospel of Bob.”

I had a chance to catch an advance screening of A Complete Unknown at the historic Belcourt Theatre in Nashville earlier this month, followed by an afterparty during which Chalamet was mobbed by fans in a fashion not unlike Dylan himself during his initial rise. Chalamet introduced the screening with a brief message of gratitude for not only the man himself, but also for the city of Nashville.

“It means a lot being at the Belcourt Theatre,” he told the audience. “It means a lot being here in Nashville. This movie and the man I play, Bob Dylan, it doesn’t run its path through Nashville but obviously Blonde on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, and Nashville Skyline were recorded in this city. This city is incredibly important to the man that is Bob Dylan, to the figure that is Bob Dylan.”

To reiterate my past comments on the film, which has already earned praise from Dylan, Chalamet manages to do the impossible with his performance, navigating the usual beats of the musician biopic format while injecting something fresh, something new that’s often missing from films of this type. It calls to mind the transformative performance of Joaquin Phoenix in another Mangold film, the Johnny Cash and June Carter-focused Walk the Line.

A Complete Unknown opens on Christmas Day. Below, get an early look at a scene depicting a moment of inspiration culled from a chance conversation between Cash and Dylan.