US budget airlines are struggling. Will pursuing premium passengers solve their problems? DALLAS (AP) — Delta and United Airlines have become the most profitable U.S. airlines by targeting premium customers while also winning a significant share of budget travelers. That is squeezing smaller low-fare carriers like Spirit Airlines, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday. Some travel industry experts think Spirit’s troubles indicate less-wealthy passengers will have fewer choices and higher prices. Other discount airlines are on better financial footing but also are lagging far behind the full-service airlines when it comes to recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Most industry experts think Frontier and other so-called ultra-low-cost carriers will fill the vacuum if Spirit shrinks, and that there's still plenty of competition to prevent prices from spiking. Bitcoin ticks closer to $100,000 in extended surge following US elections NEW YORK (AP) — Bitcoin is jumping again, setting another new high above $99,000 overnight. The cryptocurrency has been shattering records almost daily since the U.S. presidential election, and has rocketed more than 40% higher in just two weeks. It's now at the doorstep of $100,000. Cryptocurrencies and related investments like crypto exchange-traded funds have rallied because the incoming Trump administration is expected to be more “crypto-friendly.” Still, as with everything in the volatile cryptoverse, the future is hard to predict. And while some are bullish, other experts continue to warn of investment risks. Australia rejects Elon Musk's claim that it plans to control access to the internet MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian Cabinet minister has rejected X Corp. owner Elon Musk’s allegation that the government intends to control all Australians' access to the internet through legislation that would ban young children from social media. Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on Friday that Musk’s criticism was “unsurprising” after the government introduced legislation to Parliament that would fine platforms including X up to $133 million for allowing children under 16 to hold social media accounts. The spat continues months of open hostility between the Australian government and the tech billionaire over regulators’ efforts to reduce public harm from social media. Parliament could pass the legislation as soon as next week. Oil company Phillips 66 faces federal charges related to alleged Clean Water Act violations LOS ANGELES (AP) — Oil company Phillips 66 has been federally indicted in connection with alleged violations of the Clean Water Act in California. The Texas-based company is accused of discharging hundreds of thousands of gallons of industrial wastewater containing excessive amounts of oil and grease. The U.S. Department of Justice announced the indictment on Thursday. Phillips is charged with two counts of negligently violating the Clean Water Act and four counts of knowingly violating the Clean Water Act. An arraignment date has not been set. A spokesperson for the company said it was cooperating with prosecutors. US regulators seek to break up Google, forcing Chrome sale as part of monopoly punishment U.S. regulators want a federal judge to break up Google to prevent the company from continuing to squash competition through its dominant search engine after a court found it had maintained an abusive monopoly over the past decade. The proposed breakup floated in a 23-page document filed late Wednesday by the U.S. Justice Department calls for Google to sell its industry-leading Chrome web browser and impose restrictions designed to prevent Android from favoring its search engine. Regulators also want to ban Google from forging multibillion-dollar deals to lock in its dominant search engine as the default option on Apple’s iPhone and other devices. What you need to know about the proposed measures designed to curb Google's search monopoly U.S. regulators are proposing aggressive measures to restore competition to the online search market after a federal judge ruled that Google maintained an illegal monopoly. The sweeping set of recommendations filed late Wednesday could radically alter Google’s business. Regulators want Google to sell off its industry-leading Chrome web browser. They outlined a range of behavioral measures such as prohibiting Google from using search results to favor its own services such as YouTube, and forcing it to license search index data to its rivals. They're not going as far as to demand Google spin off Android, but are leaving that door open if the remedies don't work. Stock market today: Wall Street edges higher as it heads for a winning week NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks edged higher on Wall Street, keeping the market on track for its fifth gain in a row. The S&P 500 was up 0.1% in midday trading Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 226 points and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.2%. Gap soared after reporting quarterly results that easily beat analysts' estimates. EchoStar, parent company of the Dish satellite television provider, fell after DirecTV called off its purchase of the company. European markets were mostly higher and Asian markets ended mixed. Treasury yields held relatively steady in the bond market. Crude oil prices gained ground. Apple and Google face UK investigation into mobile browser dominance LONDON (AP) — A British watchdog says Apple and Google aren't giving consumers a genuine choice of mobile web browsers. The watchdog's report Friday recommends they face an investigation under new U.K. digital rules taking effect next year. The Competition and Markets Authority took aim at Apple, saying the iPhone maker’s tactics hold back innovation by stopping rivals from giving users new features like faster webpage loading. The CMA’s report also found that Apple and Google manipulate the choices given to mobile phone users to make their own browsers “the clearest or easiest option.” Apple said it disagreed with the findings. German auto supplier Bosch to cut 5,500 jobs in further sign of carmakers' woes FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Germany's technology and services company Bosch is cutting its automotive division workforce by as many as 5,500 jobs in the next several years, in another sign of the headwinds hitting the German and global auto industries. The company cited stagnating global auto sales, too much factory capacity in the auto industry compared to sales prospects and a slower than expected transition to electric-powered, software-controlled vehicles. Some 3,500 of the job reductions would come before the end of 2027 and would hit the part of the company that develops driver assistance and automated driving technologies. About half those job reductions would be at locations in Germany. At least 15 people are sick in Minnesota from ground beef tied to E. coli recall U.S. health officials say at least 15 people in Minnesota have been sickened by E. coli poisoning tied to a national recall of more than 160,000 pounds of potentially tainted ground beef. Detroit-based Wolverine Packing Co. recalled the meat this week after Minnesota state agriculture officials reported multiple illnesses and found that a sample of the product tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, which can cause life-threatening infections. Symptoms of E. coli poisoning include fever, vomiting, diarrhea and signs of dehydration.
Storms encase Iowa and eastern Nebraska in ice, causes confirmed tornado in CaliforniaJim Montgomery made an immediate impact with the St. Louis Blues after replacing Drew Bannister as head coach, earning a 5-2 road victory over the New York Rangers in his debut. "It felt like something," Blues captain Brayden Schenn said. "It felt like we were having fun out there. That's the main part. It felt like we weren't sitting back and we played with energy tonight, and we played with the puck. Just wasn't a couple chances we were able to generate. Power play had a couple good looks. It was just fun to be out there." The Blues will try to keep the good times rolling Wednesday night in Newark, N.J. against the New Jersey Devils. St. Louis lost 3-1 at the New York Islanders Saturday night to fall to 9-12-1. Come Sunday morning, Blues general manager Doug Armstrong hired Montgomery to take over for Bannister. Montgomery, who was fired as head coach of the Boston Bruins last week, previously worked as an assistant coach for the Blues and forged a relationship with about half of the team's current players. "He brings a ton of energy to the rink," Schenn said. "He likes to have fun. At the same time, he's detailed and he's serious and he's respected. It's our job to bring the energy with him." When the coaching change was made, the Blues ranked 26th in the NHL standings by points percentage, 25th on the power play and 24th in penalty killing. They are scoring 2.48 goals per game, which is the league's fifth-worst average. "This is a talented roster," Montgomery said. "We've got a lot of guys with really good offensive hockey sense. If we're committed to checking like we were, the offense is going to come." The Blues will catch the Devils in the middle of a prolonged hot streak. New Jersey has won three straight games and eight of 10. After starting the season 5-4-2, the Devils have gone 10-3-0. They are coming off a 5-2 victory over the Nashville Predators on Monday night at home. "Every game, we have a plan," Devils captains Nico Hischier said. "If you execute it, gives ourselves a chance to win a hockey game. The plan switches, depends who you're playing." Hischier led the charge in Nashville by scoring his first NHL hat trick. "Just happy for him," Devils center Erik Haula said. "He's just such an important player for us, obviously. Eight years and first hat trick. You'd think he has five or six of them." Prior to that outburst, Hischier had gone 10 games without scoring a goal. "He starts the season on absolute fire, and then he goes cold for a while there," Devils coach Sheldon Keefe said. "His demeanor didn't change, his game didn't change, most importantly he didn't cheat the game. He continued to meet the tough matchups every night head on, continued to lead the way for us in the faceoff circle and penalty kill." New Jersey will be without forward Timo Meier on Wednesday after he was given a one-game suspension for cross-checking Nashville's Zachary L'Heureux and drawing blood. --Field Level Media
PM looks to ‘brighter future’ at Christmas and ‘wishes for peace in Middle East’Democrats strike deal to get more Biden judges confirmed before Congress adjourns
MECHANICSBURG, Pa. , Nov. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Select Medical Holdings Corporation ("Select Medical," "we," "us," or "our") (NYSE: SEM ) today announced that we have completed our previously announced distribution (the "Distribution") of 104,093,503 shares of common stock of Concentra Group Holdings Parent, Inc. ("Concentra") (NYSE: CON ) owned by Select Medical Corporation ("SMC"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Select Medical, representing approximately 81.7% of the outstanding shares of Concentra's common stock. After the completion of the Distribution, Select Medical no longer owns any shares of Concentra's common stock. The Distribution was made today to Select Medical's stockholders as of the close of business on the record date (the "Record Date") for the Distribution, November 18, 2024 . The Distribution took place in the form of a pro rata common stock distribution to each of Select Medical's stockholder on the Record Date. Based on the shares of Select Medical's common stock outstanding as of the Record Date, Select Medical's stockholders received 0.806971 shares of Concentra's common stock for every share of Select Medical's common stock held as of the Record Date. No fractional shares of Concentra's common stock were distributed. Instead, Select Medical's stockholders will receive cash in lieu of any fraction of a share of Concentra's common stock that they otherwise would have received. On November 19, 2024 , Select Medical made available an information statement to its stockholders on the Record Date, which included details on the Distribution. The information statement is posted under the Investor Relations tab on Select Medical's website at www.selectmedical.com/investor-relations/ . J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs acted as financial advisors to Select Medical in connection with the Distribution. Dechert LLP acted as legal advisor to Select Medical in connection with the Distribution. About Select Medical Select Medical is one of the largest operators of critical illness recovery hospitals, rehabilitation hospitals, outpatient rehabilitation clinics, and occupational health centers in the United States based on number of facilities. Select Medical's reportable segments include the critical illness recovery hospital segment, the rehabilitation hospital segment, the outpatient rehabilitation segment, and the Concentra segment. As of September 30, 2024 , Select Medical operated 106 critical illness recovery hospitals in 29 states, 34 rehabilitation hospitals in 13 states, 1,925 outpatient rehabilitation clinics in 39 states and the District of Columbia , and 549 occupational health centers in 41 states. At September 30, 2024 , Select Medical had operations in 46 states and the District of Columbia. Information about Select Medical is available at www.selectmedical.com . This press release may contain forward-looking statements based on current management expectations. Numerous factors, including those related to market conditions and those detailed from time-to-time in Select Medical's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, may cause results to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements. Many of the factors that will determine Select Medical's future results are beyond the ability of Select Medical to control or predict. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and, therefore, actual results may differ materially. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which reflect management's views only as of the date hereof. Select Medical undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Investor inquiries: Joel T. Veit Senior Vice President and Treasurer 717-972-1100 [email protected] SOURCE Select Medical Holdings Corporation
Cancer Daily Horoscope Today, Nov 26, 2024 predicts a great love life
CNN contributor Scott Jennings debated ESPN’s Cari Champion Monday on CNN’s “NewsNight” over X, formerly Twitter, being the most politically balanced network. Partial transcript as follows: AUDIE CORNISH: Now, Scott, I want to bring you in here because this kind of linked to [Victor] Orban, we don’t pull it from nowhere, there was a former member of the Hungarian Parliament who was writing in Politico, who kind of talked about this effort by that government and how specific it was in terms of purchasing media specifically for propaganda. Do you hear why they’re making that connection? SCOTT JENNINGS: I mean, is the concern that certain media outlets would become propaganda arms of political ideologies? Don’t we already have that in this country at a large scale? Also I hear what you’re saying about X, I saw a survey this week, it’s now the most ideologically balanced user platform.” CARI CHAMPION: Scott, Scott, stop, it’s too early. I just sat down. I’ve only been here for two minutes, you cannot say that. Who’s the source? JENNINGS: We’ve reported on this network. CHAMPION: It’s not accurate and you know it. JENNINGS: OK. I’ll let you make your statement, but my point is — CORNISH: Let me frame it a different way. The site changed radically, right? So whether you think the voices are somehow more balanced now, that’s fine. But no doubt Musk’s influence is profound and that you open it up and now you’re there with his opinion and he is now part of this administration. Follow Pam Key on X @pamkeyNENCourt rejects request to sideline San Jose State volleyball player on grounds she's transgender
Christopher Nolan’s Next Is “The Odyssey”
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Stock market today: Wall Street rises at the start of a holiday-shortened weekOvertime Baku talks fail to deliver on new climate finance target
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The toritetsu subset of Japanese train otaku which specializes in photography has long been notorious for a string of anti-social behavior unbecoming of their seemingly relaxing hobby. Reports of violence, vandalism, and general poor manners are widespread as these shutterbugs vie for the best shot of the rarest trains around. Railways have also made efforts to channel this passion for trains into something more positive, but problems still persist. Now, Sagami Railway in Kanagawa Prefecture has teamed up with software maker Adobe to find ways to get that perfect shot without punching other photographers, cursing out staff, or cutting down trees. On November 24, at Hoshikawa Station in Yokohama City, a workshop was held to teach toritetsu how to use Adobe Express’s generative AI to remove unwanted people or objects from photos. As a case study, who could forget that time dozens of toritetsu waited in the middle of the night to get the first photos of a new rolling stock on the Enoden line in Kanagawa, only to have a large man on a bicycle riding between them and it with his arm outstretched? Due to the contentious nature of the incident, video of it is often quickly removed from social media and YouTube, so I just got Adobe Photoshop to generate a similar image. ▼ Shortage of logic aside, it’s fairly close to the real incident. After that, I popped it into the Adobe Express app on my phone. Rubbed blue stuff on the guy with my finger and made him go away. ▼ Problem solved. ▼ Actually, those wires are ugly so let’s ditch those too. ▼ And you know what? I’m not all that crazy about trains anyway. How about a sailboat? Bear in mind, I just did super-fast, one-shot edits and it’s possible to get better results with more time and effort, especially if I had gone to that workshop. This may not satisfy the purists among toritetsu, of whom most are, but there was some positive feedback at the workshop, with one attendee liking how it cleanly removed overhead wires and hands with a natural-looking result. Even if it means just a few less people trespassing and destroying property then it’s a job well done. Readers of the news, however, seem to feel the problem is much too large to be cured with some AI editing tools. “Now, we need a way for AI to erase the toritetsu.” “Or just ban photography on station platforms.” “These guys are pretty anti-processing, I think.” “I think the toritetsu’s issues run much deeper than this.” “I don’t get why they’re against editing. The photo itself is already inherently altered from what’s seen by the human eye.” As the last comment pointed out, the news also sparked some debate over how much processing crosses that line of no longer being photography and becoming CGI. If AI editing was considered acceptable among these people, then why not just stay home and generate images of trains all day? Besides that, the ability to remove obstructions from images on Photoshop has been around for a long time and toritetsu never even seemed to embrace that. It required a lot more skill and effort back then, but probably not as much as breaking into a train yard and dismantling signs while evading security. I’m willing to give Adobe credit for putting the idea out there, even if it is in a bit of a self-promotional way. Unfortunately, this probably won’t be the end of the mayhem caused by people who like to take pictures of trains. Source: Asahi Shimbun, Itai News Images: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Express Read more stories from SoraNews24. -- JR East attempts to unite train-photographing otaku with new social media group -- Japanese mayor suddenly speaks fluent English with AI video that surprises even him -- Tokyo Police apprehend the “Lego Kid” and accomplicesSome directors are good with music. James Mangold is one of them. Back in 2006, “Walk the Line” scored five Oscar nods and won Best Actress for Reese Witherspoon as June Carter Cash. (Joaquin as Johnny Cash lost to Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Capote”). A hard-drinking Johnny Cash (Boyd Holbrook) makes a memorable appearance in “ A Complete Unknown ” (in theaters December 25 from Searchlight), Mangold’s latest music movie, this time focused on the four-year origin myth of Bob Dylan, from his arrival in New York at age 19 in 1961 to his going electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. Mangold is returning to his bent for more personal filmmaking (Best Picture Oscar nominee “Ford v Ferrari” ) after tackling 2023 franchise entry “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” for Steven Spielberg. The writer/director spoke to me on Zoom during his global press tour for “A Complete Unknown,” which has earned upbeat reviews, especially for Timothée Chalamet . On the awards circuit, Chalamet could follow his Best Actor Oscar nomination for “Call Me By Your Name” with a second, while Mangold and Jay Cocks are in the running for Adapted Screenplay; Mangold was nominated for Adapted Screenplay for “Logan” but has never made it into the Best Director circle. So far “A Complete Unknown” is landing with awards groups, nabbing the same three Golden Globe and Critics Choice Award nominations for Chalamet, supporting actor Edward Norton, and Best Motion Picture Drama/Picture; Elle Fanning won Best Supporting Actress from the National Board of Review, and the film made it to both the NBR and AFI Top Ten. This Zoom interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity. Anne Thompson: Did you hear Zane Lowe’s unfettered interview with Timothée? James Mangold: It was remarkable. I love him. He’s a remarkable young man. Our journey on this movie has been five-and-a-half years. We met for the first time in 2019 at the Toronto Film Festival. I had just gotten my hands on the Elijah Wald book and Jay Cocks’ script. And there was a project in turnaround from HBO, and I had heard Timmy was interested in it. That was a home run idea. I had only a week ago just heard about the material, found out Timmy was in Toronto while I was there. So on the day that “Ford v Ferrari” premiered, I met with him there and told him how I saw the movie working in the most abstract sense. Do you remember that pitch? The simplest version was using “Amadeus” as a template. The way to structure this was to use the supporting cast to see the effect that genius has on them and to try to understand Bob through each of their eyes, instead of trying to crack him in the classic Freudian sense that he would have some big scene in the third act where he confesses some secret that everyone’s been waiting for, which from all my research, I’m not sure there is one. [Timmy] was excited, and he was thrilled. The fact that I made “Walk the Line” gave him confidence. He’s also a quick decision-maker and an instinctual actor. We decided to do this together, and I went to work revising the script. How big a Dylan fan were you at that point? The project didn’t come from me being a Dylan fan. I’ve listened to Dylan all my life, and like many people have gone in and out... listening to him non-stop, and then I have to take a rest, and then a year later, another wave of Dylan comes into my life. I wasn’t walking around going: “I’ve got to make a Bob Dylan movie.” The idea of making a movie about any true-life person, alive or dead, is to know what part of their life you’re making a movie about [before] you start to assemble a birth-to-retirement or death storyline that is so sprawling that it rarely has thematic unity to it at all. The book Cocks had adapted was focused on the road to the electric breakout? Jay wrote many scenes that still survive in the movie now. But Jay went into 1965 quickly. And I wanted to watch this ascent, and there wasn’t any folk period in the early 1960s. He did introduce Woody [Guthrie, played by Scoot McNairy], but then you jumped forward. The idea of keeping Woody alive through the movie for visits mid-picture and at the end of the movie was another thing I felt was important, to keep him, literally and figuratively, alive through the movie as a primal touchstone for Bob. Was Pete Seeger [Edward Norton] supposed to be what Dylan became? He was going to take over the folk mantle and be the popularizer of folk music, and he handed it to Dylan? Do you see it that way? Not exactly. I deeply admire Pete Seeger. I learned to play banjo in high school, inspired mainly by Pete and Steve Martin, but it’s not controversial to say that Pete only wrote a handful of songs and was much more of a missionary and an evangelist for folk music. Then he was an iconic artist whose unique brand of folk music defined and lifted all folk music. His optimism and generosity and sense of lifting all other boats, as he did with Bob and Joan and many others, and his sense of causes, which he would attach himself to all the way to the end of his life with Toshi, his wife, saving the Hudson River, were who Pete was. Look at it this way: Woody Guthrie, singer-songwriter, auteur, prickly, difficult man, salt of the earth; Pete Seeger, more of an evangelist operator, expert communicator, who was lifting Woody’s work and all the others. And then into their world arrives this star that Pete Seeger recognizes, who has some of what Pete doesn’t have, youth and edge, and a songbook that is staggering, and Seeger recognizes the value of an artist like this and immediately embraces him and is rewarded with Dylan becoming the center, holding up the circus tent of folk music. Did Dylan eventually betray Seeger? Did Bob ever agree to anything? Did he take a pledge? I don’t think he’s betrayed. Must all marriages, even ones that are unofficiated, last forever? And these are the questions the movie asks. In our movie, in the first scene alone with Pete in a car, Bob is clear that he’s not necessarily drinking the same kind of purity; he doesn’t view things in the same clearly divided way. You know that he doesn’t see things as us vs. them. He admires Little Richard and Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, and these are all influences which he thinks are marvelous, and they play on the pop charts, and they have drums and keyboards and rhythm sections. Bob becomes what Pete suggests and excels at it as a solo artist. You spoke with Dylan. Dylan himself was clear to me that he never envisioned himself being a solitary artist on stage. That was not his kind of dream. So that’s why he came to pay homage to Woody, who also, by the way, played with many string bands and bands in his career. But that didn’t mean that all he wanted was to be the Bob Dylan that he became. Dylan’s break toward electric music or band music was something that he always wanted to do and it was actually a matter of how long he was going to hold himself back to maintain this kind of tribalism that had divided these two camps from each other. Also Johnny Cash played at Newport Folk Festival many times, and had no problem as they brought a complete band on the stage. So obviously their concern about Dylan was that he was a symbol of their music. Johnny was a country music star coming as a special guest, a novelty, but Bob was folk, and if Bob turned to something other than folk, the tent might collapse. It struck Timothée that who Dylan was and what he represents is the exact opposite of what everything is today. The movie shows us not that he was pure but that he was true to his art. I agree with Timothée’s observation. [Bob] wanted to paint, but he didn’t want to be the voice in your headphones at MoMA, when you look at the paintings, he didn’t want to have to explain his work. And I think we’ve only gotten worse in that we can’t look at mystery. Art is mystery. The power of art is that it could be read different ways by different people. That it is not journalism. And it is not a Wikipedia entry, and it is not a set of facts or bullet points or simple references, and that to point out what you’re doing is to cheapen your work, and that those of us like Timothée and myself who live in this modern era, we know that’s unavoidable. You have to do it. But Dylan avoided it. But I don’t think it was out of intellectual fortitude or artistic ethics. Dylan was uncomfortable with interviews and with explication of oneself and one’s intentions. It’s easy for one to take what could be the result of a social anxiety and make it an artistic dogmatic position. And I tried to write the script with Jay that tried to depict [Dylan] as someone who loved making, but he didn’t necessarily enjoy or find comfort or even could be unwound by this mass adoration. His goal was never gigantic adoration. His goal was always to send these missives out in the world and let people process them. Timothée had to find that balance where he’s hooded, enigmatic, and mysterious but is also trying to draw you in while he’s keeping you out. It’s hard to pull off. Yes, but I don’t think Timmy tried to keep us out. I don’t think that’s a way you can direct an actor. One of the most beautiful touches early in the film that Timothée did in one take that I circled immediately, was Elle Fanning and him are out on a date, and they’re walking by a subway station, and she writes her number on his hand, and then she kisses his cheek, and Timmy has this moment where he flinches as she kisses his cheek, almost like it scares him a little. It was a penetrating moment: What if this character is actually living with an element of fear and anxiety about social interaction and love and connection, that it’s scary for them? I had this theory that the best angle would be to play him so that the outside world and the sensory world is intrusive to him, and it’s a struggle for him to stay present, and that instead of assuming everything is an attitude or an edge, what if there’s social awkwardness and a lack of filter that makes him blurt out things that are resoundingly blunt to the point that they seem impolite? But where he exists is a space of extreme honesty that doesn’t work in our world; it comes off as rudeness. I tried to find other ways to look at his behavior and encourage Timothée to examine them. For instance, we can call his making stories up about his past a lie, but we can also call it a wish, meaning that he wished he wasn’t a middle-class kid who grew up in comfort, the son of a man who owned a hardware store in Hibbing, Minnesota. He wished he came from the carnival and the rails and the dirt of the alleys like Woody Guthrie. And so those wishes becoming fantasies became legend, and I was trying to understand everything without assuming that he was this puppet master organizing this PR campaign of mystery and subterfuge, which I found slightly hard to believe. His sexual and professional bond with Joan Baez [Monica Barbaro], who was a bigger star, goes on through the movie until he turns up in her hotel room playing guitar in the middle of the night and she kicks him out! Joan was the one equal. Yes, they had different talents. Joan had a nightingale’s voice. She was a masterful guitar player. She had a perfection in her execution of her songs, but she only wrote a handful of songs. On the other side you had Bob, who was more of a wild card, who didn’t always sing, even on pitch, he was sloppy and slightly provocative and rambling in his stage presence. And so they’re completely opposite, but completely fascinating to one another, because, of course, the songs are springing from him like a fountain and how annoying that might be for Joan, that somehow this disheveled and semi-rude, rumpled genius, had no problem springing forth. With songs that she wanted to sing. They loved each other and were fascinated by one another. But it was unavoidable that there would be a slight competitive nature between them, and that each would covet something that the other had. Bob coveted her beautiful voice, her beautiful visage, her brilliant execution, and admired her stardom and her professionalism. And Joan admired the artistic volcano out of which these songs seem to spring. You’ve said the movie isn’t political, but weren’t Dylan’s songs political in their time? All movies are political, either directly or metaphorically. “Ford v Ferrari” is political. I wanted to represent all sides. But does it involve politics? Yes, not even just the obvious politics of the moment, but also the politics of what is music here for? Now, music is almost entirely about the self. We have very little music about our world, we sing entirely about our personal lives. In preparing the music, you did pre-recordings, but once you were shooting, it became apparent that after years of pandemic and strike delays with time for practice, the live performances were better? Was that scary ? It was less scary for me than it was for my sound team and in the edit room. Recordings are more challenging in these different locations, wherein to get a quality recording of the guitar playing, banjo playing, and singing, you have trucks going by, random creaks and sounds. And I had to convince them I didn’t care, that we could fix them later. But there were myriad technical issues, like, “What if Timmy plays the song at one rhythm in one take and then increases by two rhythm beats the next take?” The truth was, he did; the rhythm does vary slightly, but you don’t feel it because the song is so alive. It was much ado about nothing compared to the gains we got by allowing him to do it. It was a process that was rolling. I let us do the first song live; that worked so well we tried it again with the next. And in a sense, we always held the pre-records back there as a backup, and as we rolled forward, we got better and better. The sound team figured out where to hide mics in [Chalamet’s] hair or his hat, or secret mics inside the guitar. Everyone adapted and suddenly developed a brilliant technique to make it all happen. And you somehow got the period right. I grew up in New York in the ’60s and ’70s. I was born in ’63 but I remember those streets, the smell of them, the pickle barrels, the wonderful collection of humanity. That later period, 1969, is harder because you could look like a road production of “Hair” if you don’t watch yourself. But this period, as Bob himself said, the early ’60s were an extension of the ’50s, and the late ’60s were the beginning of the ’70s. And the ’60s, according to Bob, didn’t really exist. There was a dividing line at ’65 and everything onward was a prologue to the ’70s. The big change occurred somewhere around the Newport concert, and the arrival of the Beatles and The Stones, and the worsening of the Vietnam War, and the assassinations, and Woodstock, became demarcations of of a dramatic cultural shift. You recreated Greenwich Village in New Jersey? One of the advantages we had by landing in New Jersey: for a lot of the street scenes, we found blocks that were still pretty much exactly as they were 60 years ago, and they just required a bit of dressing. If you tried to shoot this in New York, there’s not a single block we could even afford to shut down, given the five-star restaurants and businesses that would never agree to anything that didn’t give them each $100,000 a night to close. We shot a few days in New York, obviously, outside the Chelsea Hotel and the Supreme Court courthouse. But most of it was in New Jersey. This is not a conventional narrative. How did you keep the audience invested in the story, even though it was basically a string of musical performances? First of all, I viewed the musical performance as part of the scenes. I viewed the songs as part of the scene where the actors were acting, but on pitch. I had the same demands when they were singing as when they were acting without singing, which is that there always had to be a subtext. There always had to be dramatic tension, whether in the wings or between each other on the stage or with someone in the audience, that I never wanted it to just be wholly a recreation of a famous concert. Watching people sing is no different than when you’re doing an action sequence in an action picture: if there isn’t story development inside the action, or if there isn’t story development inside the song, then the song is a commercial break from the drama of the movie, and the movie unwinds. In the film, Chalamet performs 40 songs, some are guitar or harmonica or radio fragments, including 26 whole songs. He prepared 30 songs, but you had to pick the ones that you put in the movie for a reason. When I started writing, I was just dropping the songs where they went in. I was conscious of how the songs gained power as explications of his emotional state in the context of what was going on politically and emotionally for him at that time. So him singing “Song for Woody” couldn’t be more intentional. Each one of these songs were revealing another aspect of him, also a different energy. Many of his songs were talking directly to the audience. Had that been done much before? Folk music, at that point, existed as a world of covers. All popular music was primarily in [the early ’60s] people singing standards, even Coltrane and Davis, most of their albums were taking Rodgers and Hammerstein tunes, or “My Funny Valentine,” or taking popular melodies and bending them. What happened in the age of Dylan? The power of modern songwriting. Personal songwriting took over, and this idea that we only should sing songs that existed already, that have proven themselves with time, evaporated. And that’s what opened the door for Dylan’s descendants, because he was ready with a portfolio of insanely powerful original music. This film is an antidote to what is going on in Hollywood. It is the opposite of franchise filmmaking, and while we know Dylan and his songs, this is a modest movie that celebrates a gritty authenticity that we don’t see much anymore. I move between those worlds, and in some ways, they give me the license to drive and make these movies, and the wherewithal to put them together financially. And otherwise, these are a big risk for studios, especially if they’re going out theatrically. It’s a white elephant at this point that you have mainstream studios making original movies that don’t have a guaranteed audience, that rely upon execution in order to succeed. And I’m grateful to Searchlight and my friends at Disney for supporting me on this movie because it is a risk, and I miss these movies in the theater. And I grew up on 7’0s films, and so my style is, if anything’ more formed from the work of Mike Nichols and Alan Pakula and Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese and Sidney Lumet and William Friedkin and Bogdanovich, these are the movies I grew up on. And these were all extremely versatile filmmakers who moved from comedy to serious to fantasy to adventure, and there wasn’t this demand that we exist in a lane or a box. I feel that the work I do, moving from one to the other, is always additive, that I learned something about making a horror film that I bring to a musical biopic. I learned something making a fantasy film or a Marvel film that then becomes confidence in how to solve a problem in a dramatic scene. Making a movie like this, finding a bunch of amazing, committed, passionate young actors who are all supporting each other, lifting each other, the environment and the camaraderie on the set was a real joy and we felt purpose, because we felt that this music was about a world in which art could change things, not by directly protesting, but by getting under your skin, by reminding you that we can look within and ask ourselves some of these questions about the direction our world is heading without hitting us over the head with a history lesson or shaming us, so that we could be inspired to think about what our world could be. “A Complete Unknown” will be released in theaters December 25.