Bonus Track #4 with scholar and author Andrew Muir is out now! I am grateful to Andrew for taking time to talk with me, to share his brilliant insights on Dylan’s wordplay and performance, and invite me into his intellectual playground. infinitygoesupontrial.substack.com/p/bonus-trac...

R.I.P. Bobby Hart, noted subversive.

I watched Richard Prince's 7-hour 'Deposition.' In some small way, it refreshed my faith in art. news.artnet.com/art-world/ri...

Last Saturday I presented my paper "Several Stories Happening at Once: Intertext in ‘Love and Theft’" at The World of Bob Dylan 2025 conference. Such a receptive crowd! Brian Roberts and Eric Lott were also on the panel. An expanded version of my slides is on my IG: www.instagram.com/p/DMkYHLVOkQ...

22 years ago today, „Masked & Anonymous“ was released. Directed by Larry Charles and co-written with Bob Dylan, it’s a wonderful movie featuring an outstanding cast, intriguing dialogues and powerful musical performances — an artistic work that has stood the test of time. #bobdylan

Denise Sullivan writes, “It's understandable if you missed the 80 year commemoration of the Trinity test, given the week that was.” I didn’t miss it, because I live in New Mexico. The haunting National Museum of Nuclear Science & History is just down the road, catty-corner from my local Costco.

Hey @michaelgray1.bsky.social, I saw that you posted, “I'm told that in ‘Shane’ the song Dixie is part of the sound track, with a scene where the camera pans slowly left to right across a small group of people; in M&A Dylan sings Dixie with a small audience & the camera pans across them likewise.”

Thinking of Chantal Akerman (June 6, 1950 – October 5, 2015). Bob Dylan has a couple of paintings based on shots from her 1977 film News from Home. #ChantalAkerman #BobDylan

Thanks to Steve Badolato for letting me know that he figured out that this Bob Dylan painting is based on a shot from Sweet Smell of Success. This brings the tally of films that have been identified as source material used in Bob Dylan’s paintings and drawings to 70. That’s a lot of movies!

There’s a Richard Prince/Bob Dylan centerfold in the Summer 2025 issue of Gagosian Quarterly. The accompanying text is an OK starting point for considering this stuff. (Bluesky insists on a censored version of the issue’s Picasso cover). gagosian.com/quarterly/is... #RichardPrince #BobDylan

“Books that mention Bob Dylan” is a subset of source material used in Chronicles: Volume One that intrigues me (there are a bunch of them). He turns up as “Dylan, our messiah” and “Dylan our Elvis” in American Rhapsody (a book quoted not only in the passage about Ricky Nelson, but throughout).

I see that Bob Dylan closed his show last night with “Garden Party.” Ricky Nelson’s “Be-Bop Baby” was one of the first records I ever owned. When Dylan writes about Nelson in Chronicles: Volume One he incorporates bits from Jack London’s “The Seed of McCoy” and Joe Eszterhas’ American Rhapsody.

Bob Dylan has a whole bunch of paintings and drawings based on shots from Paris, Texas. This is one of them. #BobDylan #HarryDeanStanton #ParisTexas #WinWenders

This Bob Dylan painting is based on a shot from the 1956 film A Kiss Before Dying. That’s Robert Wagner. Another painting based on this film had previously been identified. #BobDylan

Deposition Row #BobDylan #RichardPrince

Another Easter egg: Dylan does a callback to that New Lost City Ramblers/Larry Brown pairing through the use of a “pretty nice stuff” bit from Brown’s Fay: A Novel in Chronicles: Volume One. He uses another bit from the novel in conjunction with the line as a way of showing that it was intentional.

Bob Dylan’s Easter eggs contain Easter eggs. Note how he pairs a line about hiding booze from Larry Brown’s short story “Kubuku Rides (This Is It)” with a line from the New Lost City Ramblers’ “Kentucky Bootlegger” (someone who hides booze). Ain’t like Easter eggs? Exactly like Easter eggs.

The Titanic was an ocean liner that sank on its maiden voyage after striking an iceberg on April 14, 1912. youtu.be/pdG0CWkZzSk?...

Saddened to learn of the passing of Tracy Schwarz of New Lost City Ramblers. We exchanged some emails back in 2011 and I appreciated his good humor. Tracy sings lead on “Union Man” off of the Modern Times LP. Bob Dylan echoes a line in “Cry a While.”

Marlon Brando (April 3, 1924 – July 1, 2004) Brando’s character in The Fugitive Kind is the template for Bobby Cupid in Masked and Anonymous. Lines from the play the film is based on turn up in a couple of the songs on Tempest.

Here’s a song about this movie I seen one time staring Gregory Peck that mentions Gregory Peck staring in the movie more times in one minute than Bob Dylan does in the eleven minutes of “Brownsville Girl.” Maximum Peck!

Bob Dylan used an oracle to incorporate an April Fool’s Day reference on p. 162 of Chronicles. Bits from the same oracle can be found on 14 different pages of the Masked and Anonymous screenplay. In 2024 a reader let me know that they pinpointed the source. Can you find it? It’s there - no foolin’!

Blurry Bob by Richard Prince (at BDC)

Are you familiar with Moondog Mayne? He’s the subject of Bob Dylan’s Revisionist Art painting TV Guide: Hee Haw. www.instagram.com/p/DHgewVnOvB...

Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969). A passage from Douglas Brinkley’s introduction to Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954, about Western towns, appears to be Bob Dylan’s reference point for a passage in Chronicles: Volume One.

this is such a strange hobby of Dylan's, isn't it? he must have excess energy, a hyperactive imagination, & it spills over into areas of creativity adjacent to his own.

Many thanks to Derya Ataker for letting me know that he figured out that Bob Dylan’s Amusement Park Alleyway from The Beaten Path is based on a shot from Alan Parker’s 1987 film Angel Heart. In the scene Mickey Rourke is moments away from stepping out of that car. www.instagram.com/p/DG-1QCSuBI...

This arrived in today’s mail. Suitable for framing or wrapping fish.

Stories In The Press: Richard Prince's upcoming exhibition highlights Bob Dylan's artistic influence through large-scale paintings, linking visual art and music significantly.

Interesting piece on "Dylan’s use of quotation and/or appropriation" using a Terry Allen performance as a source

In light of Bob Dylan’s “ANDREW JACKSON GIVING ONE OF HIS FINAL SPEECHES” IG post I note that I pointed out, way back in 2009, that Bob Dylan & Larry Charles used elements from Andrew Jackson’s farewell address in Edmund’s address to the people of the republic in the Masked and Anonymous screenplay.

In light of the “Last Testament of Frank James” video that was posted on the Bob Dylan IG account I note that I purchased a copy of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War by T.J. Stiles in 2012 after coming across a parallel passage in Chronicles that suggested that Dylan may have been reading it.

R.I.P. Gene Hackman. Bob Dylan has a number of paintings and drawings of Hackman as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection. At about 20 minutes into this podcast I discuss Dylan’s detective game and subtext in The French Connection paintings: youtu.be/_Kzx0X7wYNU

A poster for “Bob Dylan” by Richard Prince, featuring a trio of paintings, is now available. In 2015 Prince told me, “When I first saw this cover of Dylan I thought it strange to be out of focus. So l made mine even more out of focus.” Prince later did a painting based on one of my Instagram posts.

Stories In The Press: Check out the Richard Prince: Bob Dylan exhibition at Gagosian from Feb 27 to Mar 22, 2025, featuring stunning paintings of the iconic musician! #Gagosian #BobDylan #Art

100x100 inches inkjets,Stingel could never! since first writing greg.org/archive/2012... an entire Dylan Painting Universe has opened up, charted by @scottwarmuth.bsky.social and the Dylanologist collective, it's gone from a few lines in Wrath of Khan to a full-scale Klingon convention

Thnx. The Fortune Teller’s scenes didn’t make the cut. Susan Tyrrell appears on screen for a few seconds. Dylan has a painting of her in John Huston’s Fat City. In the screenplay she mentions the Tennessee Williams character that’s the basis for Bobby Cupid. Val Xavier inhabits some Tempest songs.

William S. Burroughs (February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997). Bits from Naked Lunch turn up in the Masked and Anonymous screenplay (and in the set design, as pointed out by director Larry Charles).

HBD to Al Kooper (born February 5, 1944). In Chronicles Dylan calls him “the Ike Turner of the white world” (part of a Woody Guthrie riff that extends to Dylan’s blurb for Peter Wolf’s new book; see prev. post). Al did the soundtrack for Ashby’s The Landlord & Dylan has a painting based on the film.

Note that the text on the back cover of the Revisionist Art catalog includes: "They are full of double meanings and are carefully plotted with several stories happening at once." This extends to Dylan’s interviews & his blurbs. The Peter Wolf blurb has a hidden Woody reference, as does this example.

In his blurb for Peter Wolf’s new book Bob Dylan continues his riff on a line about Pete Seeger from a 1941 Woody Guthrie letter. Not enough characters to break it down here. Follow the link for details: instagram.com/p/DFoR8lyul5L/

R.I.P. Marianne Faithfull. The only Pirate Jenny. This is Bob Dylan’s painting of her in the film The Girl on a Motorcycle.

When Bob Dylan writes about picking up a drawing habit from Suze Rotolo in Chronicles: Volume One he incorporates a list of items from Wassily Kandinsky’s apartment that are catalogued in Alexander Liberman’s The Artist in His Studio.

This article notes that Dylan writes, “The movie traveled to the moon every time he came onto the screen” about Mickey Rourke. Those familiar with Dylan’s methods instantly recognize that line as part of his H.G. Wells game. On that same page Dylan incorporates a line from The First Men in the Moon.

No examination of the Bob Dylan cinematic universe is complete without a look at the films that have been identified as being used as source material in his paintings and drawings. The current tally is 69 different films. Subtext abounds. What would you include in your Bob Dylan film festival?