How the Bob Dylan movie ‘A Complete Unknown’ perfectly re-created 1960s NYC — thanks to New Jersey
NY Post
The times they are a-changin’ — and so has the neighborhood.
For the new Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet, production designer François Audouy was tasked with meticulously re-creating the rock legend’s Greenwich Village haunts from more than 60 years ago.
But he faced a challenge. Even though some of those spots are still alive and kicking, downtown Manhattan looks nothing like it did then.
“It’s missing the patina of New York in the 1960s,” Audouy told The Post. “But the other thing, though, is that it’s almost impossible to shoot a movie like this on a street where every business is going to ask for $1 million or $100,000 or more to allow the level of control that we need.”
So, director James Mangold shot most of “A Complete Unknown” — in theaters Dec. 25 — on-location in Jersey City and Hoboken, NJ, where he and Audouy could change whatever they pleased. Real buildings with character, even across the Hudson, were preferable to an artificial studio in LA, the designer said.
“When you’re in a business like a cafe or a restaurant and you’re looking out the windows, you’re not looking into a green screen. You’re looking at pedestrians walking by and cars going by,” he added. “That’s the movie that we were trying to make — something that was real and as grounded as possible.”