Masked and Anonymous

''Masked and Anonymous'' is a 2003 drama film directed by Larry Charles. The film was written by Larry Charles and Bob Dylan, the latter under the pseudonym "Sergei Petrov". It stars Dylan alongside a star-heavy cast, including John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz, Val Kilmer, Mickey Rourke, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, Angela Bassett, Bruce Dern, Cheech Marin, Ed Harris, Chris Penn, Steven Bauer, Giovanni Ribisi, Michael Paul Chan, Christian Slater, and Fred Ward.

Plot

An iconic rock legend, Jack Fate (Bob Dylan), is bailed out of prison to perform a one-man benefit concert for a decaying future North American society. The film touches on many subjects from the futility of politics, the confusion of loosely strung government conspiracies, and the chaos created by both anarchy and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''-styled totalitarianism. It further reflects on life, dreams, and God's place in a seemingly increasingly chaotic world.

Fate makes it clear that he "was always a singer and maybe no more than that". He produces no solutions to any of the problems the film presents. Rather, he makes it clear that he "stopped trying to figure everything out a long time ago".

Pre-production

In the late 1990s, Dylan was allegedly inspired by the films of Jerry Lewis, and decided he wanted to write and star in a slapstick television show for the HBO network.''Business Insider'' article:
HBO Producer Reveals The Crazy Story Of When Bob Dylan Tried To Make A TV Show
" Larry Charles, who had written and produced for '' Seinfeld'' and ''Mad About You'', was brought in to meet with the musician regarding the project at Dylan's boxing gym in Santa Monica.

Charles said that during their initial meeting, a chain-smoking Dylan brought "out this very ornate beautiful box, like a sorcerer would, and he opens the box and dumps all these pieces of scrap paper on the table...every piece of scrap paper was a hotel stationery, little scraps from Norway and from Belgium and Brazil and places like that, and each little piece of paper had a line, like some kind of little line scribbled or a name scribbled, 'Uncle Sweetheart,' or a weird poetic line or an idea or whatever, and he was like 'I don't know what to do with all this'. And for some reason I was able to go 'oh y'know you can take this...this is a line, this is the character, and the character could say this line". Dylan's scraps of paper served as the inspiration for much of the project's story and script.

A meeting was arranged with HBO executives and the television project was given the green light. However, upon leaving the meeting, Dylan told Charles, "I don't want to do it anymore, it's too slapsticky". Charles decided to stay on as co-writer and director, with the concept of the project eventually evolving from a slapstick television show into the dramatic film ''Masked and Anonymous''. Speaking about his intentions while creating the film, Charles later said, "I wanted to make a Bob Dylan movie that was like a Bob Dylan song. One with a lot of layers, that had a lot of poetry, that had a lot of surrealism and was ambiguous and hard to figure out, like a puzzle".

Production

The film was shot in twenty days and was funded by the BBC
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