A Complete Unknownis set in New York in the year 1961, when a young Bob Dylan starts to make his way onto the music scene. The film transports viewers back in time through detailed sets, hair and makeup, and of course, costuming.Timothée Chalamet stars and singsas Bob Dylan.
Costume designer Arianne Phillips, who has worked with director James Mangold multiple times, creates the costumes forA Complete Unknownas well. Interestingly enough, she also worked on themusical biopicWalk the Line, meaning she once again styled for an actor portraying Johnny Cash.A Complete Unknowncomes to theaters on December 25.
A Complete Unknown Review: Timothée Chalamet Captivates As Bob Dylan In A Fascinating Biopic
I walked away from the film feeling distant from Bob Dylan. That seems to be by design but it’s no less frustrating from a storytelling point of view.
ScreenRantinterviewed costume designer Arianne Phillips about her work onA Complete Unknown. She revealed the challenges of capturing specific looks from the time period, as well as the research that goes into it. Phillips also detailed her collaborative process with other departments, such as hair and makeup, director James Mangold, and the cast. Finally, she discussed how the clothing evolvedalong with Timothée Chalamet’s Bob Dylanthroughout the film.
The A Complete Unknown Delays Were A Blessing In Disguise
“It also afforded me a lot of time to really understand who 19-year-old Bob Dylan was showing up in New York City.”
ScreenRant: When recreating these looks, how often are you looking for total accuracy versus taking liberties?
Arianne Phillips: We are recreating real events and real people, obviously pretty much all our principles are known figures, except for maybe Sylvie, Elle Fanning’s character, who Bob Dylan fans know who she was based on, Susie Rotello, Bob Dylan’s girlfriend who is on the cover of the freewheeling album. When recreating real people and real events, not only what happened at Newport, there is a lot of documentation of Bob performing, whether it was Carnegie hall or town hall or folk city or Gertie’s, where he famously played in the early years.
There was a definite challenge in that we tell the public persona story, and captured some of those events, as well as the private behind the scenes story. We unfortunately didn’t have access to any private photos, so really the place to start for for me, as the designer, is to forensically break down the script and put my placeholders in knowing where we were going to recreate what was documented that he wore at certain events. And then just becoming fluent in that research. My favorite part of my job as a costume designer is the research period where you really get to discover a world and characters, whether they’re real or fictional.
This project was very unique in that I was asked to join in 2019. We had many delays, COVID and scheduling, and eventually the strikes would even be a delay. So all that said and done, though, it was frustrating. And at times I was worried that we weren’t going to be able to tell the movie, just get everyone together on page again. But it also afforded me a lot of time to really understand who 19 year old Bob Dylan was showing up in New York City. And finding out about his story, that maybe something we didn’t really know unless you were like a super fan or took the time to read about him.
I read a lot of books. I got a lot of information, not only about Bob directly, but about all the people in his life, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and Alan Lomax and Peter, Paul and Mary, and Albert Grossman, his manager. All these characters in our film are real people. So doing that research is really helpful to becoming fluent in the time period and the unique personalities of each individual person and finding out what their aesthetic is from looking at photos, as well as reading accounts of them.
I designed Walk the Line with Jim Mangold almost 20 years ago. And I learned then, by reading about accounts of Johnny Cash, I learned his own accounts of how he dressed and watching interviews really is super helpful. If you don’t have images filling in the blanks, it’s really just becoming fluent in getting to know who they are and their aesthetic and underscoring what’s happening in these scenes and telling the story over a four year period where Bob changes a lot.
Typically, in these movies about someone’s life. it’s usually from birth to death. So there are a lot of changes that help the audience guide through this journey of a life’s work or a person’s trajectory of their life. But in this movie, it’s only four years. So that was a great opportunity for not only myself but also for hair and makeup, especially hair, to be able to help guide the audience through this progression of this young man finding his place in the world, finding his voice as an artist, how he presents himself to the world, and how he’s dressed also evolves along with that journey. So, there’s a special opportunity for costumes.
Then all the people around him. We had a lot, we had 120 speaking parts and 5,000 plus extras. Timmy himself had 67 costume changes. So being able to set a tone and a texture through costumes, I had a lot of opportunities to show the breadth of what was happening at that time, which was vast in terms of the social justice movement, music itself, the evolving political climate.
This predates the summer of love in 68. It didn’t just happen overnight. This is about a youth movement that actually predated this from the beatnik, jazz era and in downtown Manhattan and different places all over the country, in the late fifties. Being able to show this youth culture movement that would end up at the end of the sixties with the summer of love.
Arianne Phillips Was Excited To Revisit Looks For Johnny Cash
“It’s not every day you get to [revisit] a beloved character that I designed almost 20 years ago for Walk the Line.”
ScreenRant: You worked onWalk the Line, so what was it like to revisit Johnny Cash in a new way forA Complete Unknown?
Arianne Phillips: I don’t know if I’ll ever have that kind of opportunity again. It’s very unique. Of course they make sequels and prequels and all this kind of thing nowadays with big genre movies, but it’s not every day you get to have a character-driven film where you get to revisit a beloved character that I designed almost 20 years ago for Walk the Line with another interpretation from a different actor.
I learned on Walk the Line about this unique friendship that Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan had, which at the time, I remember being surprised by it. I love the connection between Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan because Johnny Cash liked Bob Dylan. And I think Bob Dylan obviously was very influenced by Johnny Cash’s singular voice and his desire not to be limited by one thing. He constantly had to fight against the record company and the powers that be to do his own thing, like performing at San Quentin, which nobody wanted him to do.
He really also identified with the working man, which is very much that Woody Guthrie Americana, you see it in Bruce Springsteen, this music for the people. I think Bob Dylan definitely admired these qualities in Johnny Cash, just in terms of being an iconoclast and not cowtailing to anyone else’s idea of what kind of artist he should be and the encouragement that he gave Bob to find his own path and don’t be deterred by what people are saying he should be.
I love that connection, that kind of torch passing in a way, or like-mindedness between the two characters. I identify with that a lot, I think who wouldn’t, right? Just the idea of stay in your lane, do your thing, do what’s authentic to you. Don’t let people put you in a box.
ScreenRant: It sounds likeWalk the Linewas a little bit like preparation forA Complete Unknownfor you.
Arianne Phillips: Yeah, it was. It really was. And there’s a love story at the center of that one. There’s a couple of love stories in A Complete Unknown. It’s a great world to live in. I can say I knew less about Johnny Cash’s music than I did about Bob Dylan’s music. I was raised around Bob Dylan’s music. We always had Dylan on. My parents are the same generation as Bob. We always had Bob’s music around the house, so there is, for me, an emotional layer of this film. There’s so much music in this film.
Jim Mangold makes films that stand the test of time. My first movie with him was Girl Interrupted. It’s a great movie, and it holds up almost 30 years later. Same with Walk the Line, it kind of gets better with age. I feel like we have all the makings of that with this movie, which is great. It’s a narrative, cinematic testament to a young man finding his voice and his creativity and his place in the world. I’m hopeful that this movie will inspire a whole new generation of Bob Dylan fans.
Arianne Phillips Says James Mangold Is One Of The Most Generous Filmmakers She Has Ever Worked With
“I would basically follow him off a cliff no matter what.”
ScreenRant: Now that you have worked with James Mangold several times, do you feel there is a shorthand there?
Arianne Phillips: It’s so crazy. In the film industry, you’re thrown together with all kinds of people that maybe you wouldn’t meet if in normal circumstances. You end up gravitating towards like-minded people and getting the opportunity to work with them more than once. While it had been 10 years since Jim and I did a movie together, this is our sixth film, and we did have a film in between that didn’t end up coming to fruition, but Jim is one of the most generous and wonderful filmmakers that I have ever had the privilege to work with.
I would basically follow him off a cliff no matter what. When he asked me to work on this movie, I was like, yeah. Jim and I are the same age. We have a lot of the same influences and one of the fantastic things about working with Jim is that he really encourages collaboration outside of my own lane as a costume designer. There is a real free flow of information, whether it’s about casting or collaborating with our cinematographer.
There is a real shorthand and an encouragement from Jim to collaborate across departments. We always talk about collaboration and usually we don’t always have the time to spend together because it’s like zero to 60 prepping a film when you get a green light now, but with this film, because we had so much time, even though it was uncertain when it was going to happen, it did foster a lot of early conversations and a sense of inclusiveness with Jim that is unique for me in my career in terms of his generosity.
I just love working with him and I’m hoping that I’ll do his next one, whatever that is. And I don’t have to wait a long time until our schedules match up.
Arianne Phillips Always Collaborates With The Cast To Make Them Comfortable In The Clothing They Wear
“You have to figure out the sweet spot between Joan Baez and Monica Barbaro or Timmy and Bob Dylan.”
ScreenRant: How much did you collaborate with the cast on this?
Arianne Phillips: Usually with actors we have the benefit of amassing research and sketches or prototypes to communicate the ideas early on that we have been working on with the director. In this case with Jim, Timmy and Monica, in particular, were quite immersed in the music side of things, learning the instruments. They both had to learn the guitar. Timmy had to learn harmonica and piano as well. Monica was doing a lot of vocal lessons and Timmy as well.
So when they came to me, it was like the other piece of the puzzle, the visual language of the character. So that was really exciting. And because they both had so many fittings, we spent a lot of time together. Initially, when I go about a period piece like this, I usually try the real thing, the real period costumes and clothes on that I’ve hunted and gathered from various places, whether it’s vintage dealers or costume houses. I usually try those on just to find out what works and doesn’t work, because our modern bodies are different than the bodies in the sixties, and each actor has a different physical proportion that you have to figure out the sweet spot between like Joan Baez and Monica Barbaro or Timmy Timmy and Bob, where can merge the two physicalities to help create this illusion, if you will, or allow the audience to be immersed in these characters.
Especially in this time here, the clothes are so great. There’s so many things that people wore that are relevant today. We live in a time where almost anything goes, and we’ve seen sixties fashion, and surely Bob, at least his 1965 look, is something that we have seen. It’s really kind of like an art, it’s become a rock and roll archetype, his silhouette.
They’re really great clothes to wear. It’s not like you’re wearing togas or corsets from the 18th century, they’re relatable. I always think of costumes as a beam me up suit that helps the actor be transported physically to the character, whether it’s the shoes they wear, the feel of the fabric. So while I did build most of the principal costumes, I also use vintage pieces to help textile that visceral physical feeling of what it’s like.
In Timmy’s case, in the beginning, when he shows up New York, he’s fashioned himself after Woody Guthrie. He dressed in that very Woody-esque Americana proletariat Pendleton shirt, dungaree pants, the little, almost like a fisherman’s cap or a train conductor’s cap. We used a real Pendleton shirt, but we made the jacket, we made the hat. Being able to mix it so it has a sense of authenticity. It’s hard to recreate not only the feel of the fabrics, because they’ve really changed. They have so much technology in fabrics now in terms of microfibers, but that organic quality pre-polyester, if you will, and the way that that fabric hangs on the body is very different.
So being able to have a balance of that, and of course, we were recreating a lot of known events. So figuring out in the script what was publicly documented, what people would recognize, whether it was a concert at Newport or at Monterey Folk Festival, or the cover of the Freewheelin' album, being able to recreate those moments as close to the research as possible was also really exciting.
“This is an experience that you really should have theatrically if you can.”
ScreenRant: Congratulations on all the awards buzz.
Arianne Phillips: The great thing about awards is that it’ll help get people to the theater. We want people to see this at the theater, given there’s so much music, you really need it with a great sound system and a great picture. I just think that the way that the film is lit by our cinematographer, it has so much texture.
We saw it last night on the big screen and there’s nothing like it. This is an experience that you really should have theatrically when you can. So that’s my hope for the award buzz, that it will motivate and excite people to see it on the big screen.
More About A Complete Unknown (2024)
New York, 1961. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. He forges intimate relationships with music icons of Greenwich Village on his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking and controversial performance that reverberates worldwide. Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan in James Mangold’s A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, the electric true story behind the rise of one of the most iconic singer-songwriters in history.
A Complete Unknown
Cast
A Complete Unknown is a biographical movie that follows a young Bob Dylan as he integrates with New York and catches the eye of the folk singers in the area, eventually propelling him into stardom.
