The promise of Bob Dylan soul and salvation has saved 2024 in terms of movie voltage…poppa-poppa-poppa-ooh-mow-mow-poppa-oooh-mow-muh-mow.

Up until now 2024, hobbled by the strikes, had been regarded as something of a weak sister. No longer! A Complete Unknown to the rescue!

I feel really great about this morning’s news that James Mangold‘s Bob Dylan biopic (which will obviously cover the span of 1961 folkie scruff to the 1966 motorcycle accident and not just the electric transformational shift at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and which should have been titled Ghost of Electricity) will open in December.

This is an obvious shot in the arm in terms of Oscar schematics…Best Picture (duhh), Timothee Chalamet for Best Actor (he delivers an exceptionally spot-on Dylan singing voice), Best Director (Mangold) and so on. Millions of boomer-aged Dylan fans have just dropped to their knees.

I’m much more of an ornery X-factor cosmic pushbacker than a “boomer” (disgusting, despicable term) but my eyes are leaking as we speak…

This has been a seriously amazing three or four days — Droolin’ Joe finally drops out, Kamala Harris immediately ignites and A Complete Unknown is locked in for a December release….all within the span of 72 hours, give or take.

Besides pushing for the title change (Ghost of Electricity over A Complete Unknown), I’ve been urging a late ’24 release for many months, and certainly since last March.

All I can say is that after whispering the words “my weariness amazes me” over and over and over since I was knee-high to a grasshopper, this is a joyous moment. Right now, I mean. It may or may not be joyous when the film begins to screen, but here’s hoping.

Hey, Mangold…how about cutting together a 20-minute product reel and screening it at Telluride? Rocky mountain orgasm!

It is a measure of my magnanimous and forgiving nature (seriously) that I’m wishing and hoping that A Complete Unknown fulfills its potential in every way imaginable, despite Mangold having royally fucked me 17 years ago when he forwarded that 15-paragraph letter I’d emailed him (late summer of ’07) to Lionsgate marketing wiz Tim Palen, who in turn sent it along to the late Nikki Finke, who used it to embarass and trash me several months later.

It was a truly filthy episode all around, but I’ve since let it go. Well, mostly.