We’re already aware of his legendary status as a musician, and we’re even well aware of the fact that he’s a Nobel Prize winner, but it turns out that Bob Dylan once had far greater pans for himself – that of a TV comedy star.
As pop-culture hub Comic Book Resources recently discovered, the great Bob Dylan once attempted to write his own TV comedy series with famed Seinfeld director Larry Charles.
As Larry Charles noted in an interview, Bob Dylan has been touring almost non-stop since 1988, so the folk hero tends to have a bit of time to himself, during which time he watches plenty of TV and movies to pass the time. During one of these television binges, Dylan became rather fond of comedies by the great Jerry Lewis, and soon found himself wanting to make his own slapstick comedy TV series for HBO.
Charles explains that the pair ended up meeting at a boxing gym that Dylan owned, where the songwriter dumped out a box full of scraps of paper, on which he had written countless half-formed comedic ideas that he hoped Charles could help flesh out into a more focused idea.
Together, the duo ended up writing a lengthy script full of surrealism that they planned to pitch to HBO. As Larry Charles reportedly told Dylan, “If you come to HBO with us, we’ll definitely sell the project, because they won’t have the balls to say no to your face.”
“We stride down the hall at HBO,” Charles explains, “And Chris Albrecht, the president of HBO says ‘Bob, great to meet you, look, I have the original tickets from Woodstock’. And Bob goes, ‘I didn’t play Woodstock’.” This exchange left Dylan so offended (While he didn’t play the original Woodstock in 1969, he played Woodstock ’94) that he then spent the rest of the interview with his back turned, leaving Charles and his manager to finish the meeting by themselves.
Astonishingly, despite all this, they managed to sell the project to the network, only for it to fall flat when Bob Dylan dismissed the whole idea during the elevator ride after the meeting. “It’s too slapstick-y,” he explained.
However, while it sounds like we may have missed out on something rather amazing, it’s worth noting that Bob Dylan and Larry Charles did actually end up working on a film together, 2003’s Masked And Anonymous (though Dylan used the name ‘Sergei Petrov’ in the writing process). The dramatic film ended up being released to poor reviews, and even managed to score a rare ‘half-star’ review from noted film critic Roger Ebert.
Despite this though, we’re still curious as to what sort of TV comedy series may have been created with musical legend Bob Dylan in the starring role, co-writing with Seinfeld director Larry Charles. It sounds like a match made in heaven, but sadly remains a dream that will forever be unrealised.
Listen to the full version of Larry Charles’ Bob Dylan story:
