LAist Interview: Joe Henry, Part 2: The Music From "I'm Not There"

In "I'm Not There", director Todd Haynes dramatizes the life of Bob Dylan. Haynes chose six actors to portray Dylan's magical, intangible quality. When I asked Loudon Wainwright III about Dylan, he described seeing him at the Newport Folk Festival in the early 60's as a "ground moving, earth shaking experience". To this day, musicians and fans share a deep connection to Dylan and his music.

One can only imagine that creating the soundtrack for this film would be the key to its success. Portraying the authentic essence of Dylan would be a challenge. I spoke with Joe Henry about producing tracks for the film, collaborating with Todd Haynes, and the surreal night that he worked with Dylan.

LAist: You produced several tracks for "I'm Not There". The film depicts the life of Bob Dylan played by several people in many film styles. How did you end up working on this film and what part did you work on?

Joe Henry: Initially Todd and the Music Supervisor, Randall Poster, had the idea of bringing in several different record producers to work on music surrounding the different characters. The goal was to personify Bob's entire persona throughout the film. I was working on behalf of the character of Woody who is played by an eleven year old African-American actor, Marcus Carl Franklin. I was producing him in the studio, but also Richie Havens who makes an appearance in one of his scenes. It just kind of spiraled from there, where I started taking on more work. I produced John Doe doing music on behalf of the character who is sort of a TV evangelist type. Then I worked with Bob Forrest. As I got deeper into the film, they said, 'Do you want to take this on? We need something for this scene. Can you take this on.' It got less defined but never less exciting.

How many tracks did you produce?

Seven or eight. Something like that.

What was the goal when trying to make the music fit into the film?

Todd in my experience is an incredibly generous and open hearted director and very instinctive. He was having a lot of the music recorded before the scenes were filmed, which is not usual. I think his idea was to give some basic direction about tonality, let the music happen and then let that influence the direction that the scene might take. So when I would communicate with him before a session was about the happen, he had very beautiful things to say about how he thought it was going to work. He didn't suggest anything that was limiting in any sort of a way, just enough direction and some freedom. I was producing John Doe doing Bob's gospel song "Pressing On". Todd wanted to make sure that we maintained kind of an electric excitement to the track. I knew exactly what he meant by that, to be reverent to the tonality of the song, to the piece of writing and to the composition, but to record it a bit more electric and raw than Bob's version.

Have you ever met Bob Dylan?

I have. I was in his company. It was a very surreal evening. He was asked to be a guest star on the sitcom "Dharma and Greg". I was in his band for the evening. It was not how I ever imagined meeting him. I wouldn't have imagined that if it ever happened, that it would be on the set of a TV sitcom. It was appropriately strange. Strange but not strange at all.