I'm Glad I'm Not Me: Bob Dylan on Film

"Bob Dylan's longtime interest in film is an under-explored aspect of his creative life. From his earliest attempts at crafting a star persona for himself, with James Dean as his role model, to his most recent non-musical work - an exhibition of paintings based on individual frames from films both classic and forgotten - Dylan has always drawn inspiration from cinema. When I Paint My Masterpiece chronicles Dylan's lifelong engagement with film - as documentary subject, as performer, and as filmmaker himself. Ethan Warren dissects these works, ranging from commercial feature films to experimental films to MTV-era music videos - casting them as expressions of Dylan's lifelong project of creating an endlessly shapeshifting identity. This book is the first comprehensive account of Bob Dylan's longstanding interest in cinema. It charts his various film projects - both in front and behind the camera - across his six-decade career. In the process, Warren unpacks a micro-history of 20th and 21st century film itself, as Dylan orbits one filmmaking phase after another, from direct cinema in the 60s and European art house-inflected "cubist" cinema in the 70s to the rise of MTV in the 80s and into the more recent era of streaming documentaries"-- Provided by publisher.