Eat The Document

1972 collection of home movies

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Bob Dylan tours England with the Hawks in 1966.

With Tarantula, Bob Dylan proved he couldn't really write a novel that would appeal to any sort of audience. And with Eat The Document, he proves his skills as a director are just about as good. This is more like a collection of home videos edited together (poorly) than an actual documentary. It's choppy and nearly incomprehensible, adding nothing at all to D.A. Pennebaker's great Don't Look Back. Dylan and his pals come across like drugged-out douche bags in this mess, and if that was Dylan's point as he put this all together--the one big idea he wanted everybody to know--then I guess he succeeded. Conversations that I didn't really care about were cut off without warning. Songs that I might have cared to hear were similarly abridged. The movie might capture the chaos of a tour like this, but more than that, it just seems to be something pieced together by somebody who doesn't really give a fuck.

Johnny Cash and John Lennon both make appearances. The former is in a nice moment where the two are seated at a piano and singing a song together. Lennon is only in a snippet and represents a completely wasted opportunity. They're in the back of a car. Lennon seems to want to show off a bit for the camera but has nobody to bounce anything off of since Dylan can do nothing but fight through some sort of sickness or, more likely, a hangover. There's no rapport at all between the two before that scene, like all the other ones, just ends without really proving it had any reason to be there at all.

This can be avoided even by Dylan fans.