Dylan Revisited: Eat the Document (1972)

Revisiting the lost Bob Dylan documentary set during the infamous electric tour of 1966 that, aside from some festival screenings in the early 1970s, has never had an official release.

This is a series by DylanRevisited based on former Twitter threads, now available here in an easier to read and longer lasting format.

Eat the Document opens with a shot of Bob Dylan snorting something off a tabletop then asking, "Have you ever heard of me?” An ego indulging itself is an apt introduction.

The film reunites Dylan with Dont Look Back director D.A. Pennebaker, who had been given free rein to capture the singer’s 1965 UK tour for that first film. But for the following year’s return to Europe, Dylan wanted more control over the filmmaking process.

Though Pennebaker shot most of the footage, it was often under Dylan’s direction. Rather than quietly capturing real events, Dylan wanted to stage certain scenes, like (I suspect) an inane moment of a plate being passed around a restaurant table.

Pennebaker put together a rough edit of the footage but Dylan decided that it was too similar to Dont Look Back. The singer worked on his own cut during his post-motorcycle crash stint out o…