A complete stranger takes place in New York in 1961, when a young Bob Dylan begins to enter the music scene. The film transports viewers back in time through detailed sets, hair and makeup, and, of course, costumes. Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan.
Costume designer Arianne Phillips, who worked several times with director James Mangold, creates the costumes for A complete stranger also. Interestingly, she also worked on the musical biopic Walk the linewhich means she once again styled an actor who plays Johnny Cash. A complete stranger hits theaters on December 25th.
SscreenRant interviewed costume designer Arianne Phillips about her work on A complete stranger. She revealed the challenges of capturing period-specific looks, as well as the research that goes into it. Phillips also detailed her collaborative process with other departments such as hair and makeup, director James Mangold, and the cast. Finally, she discussed how the costumes evolved alongside Timothée Chalamet's Bob Dylan throughout the film.
Totally unknown delays were a blessing in disguise
“It also gave me a lot of time to really understand who 19-year-old Bob Dylan was showing up in New York City.”
ScreenRant: When recreating these looks, how often do you strive for complete precision rather than taking liberties?
Arianne Phillips: We are recreating real events and real people, obviously almost all of our principles are well-known figures, except maybe Elle Fanning's character Sylvie, who Bob Dylan fans know who she was based on, Susie Rotello, Bob's girlfriend Dylan who is on the cover of the album Freewheeling. By recreating real people and real events, not just what happened in Newport, there is much documentation of Bob's performances, whether at Carnegie Hall or Town Hall or Folk City or Gertie's, where he famously played in his early years.
There was a definite challenge in telling the story of the public persona and capturing some of these events as well as the private behind-the-scenes story. Unfortunately, we didn't have access to any private photos, so the starting point for me as a designer is to forensically analyze the script and put in my placeholders to know where we would recreate what was documented that he used at certain events. And then just become fluent in that research. My favorite part of my job as a costume designer is the research period where you really discover a world and characters, whether real or fictional.
This project was unique because I was invited to join in 2019. We had a lot of delays, COVID and scheduling, and eventually the strikes would even be a delay. So everything said and done was frustrating. And sometimes I worried that we wouldn't be able to tell the film, just get everyone back on the page again. But it also gave me a lot of time to really understand who 19-year-old Bob Dylan was showing up in New York City. And find out about his story, maybe something we didn't really know unless you were a super fan or took the time to read about him.
I read a lot of books. I got a lot of information, not just about Bob directly, but about all the people in his life, Pete Seeger and Joan Baez and Alan Lomax and Peter, Paul and Mary, and Albert Grossman, his manager. All these characters in our film are real people. So doing this research is really helpful in becoming fluent in each person's time period and unique personalities and figuring out what their aesthetic is by looking at photos as well as reading accounts about them.
I designed Walk the Line with Jim Mangold almost 20 years ago. And I learned then, from reading about Johnny Cash's accounts, I learned his own accounts of how he dressed and watching interviews is actually very helpful. If you don't have images filling in the gaps, it's just becoming fluent in knowing who they are and their aesthetic and emphasizing what's happening in those scenes and telling the story over a four-year period where Bob changes a lot.
Usually in these films about someone's life. it is generally from birth to death. So there are a lot of changes that help the public orient themselves on this journey of a life's work or a person's life path. But in this film it's only four years. So this was a great opportunity not only for me, but also for hair and makeup, especially hair, to be able to help guide the audience through this progression of this young man finding his place in the world, finding his voice as an artist, how he presents to the world, and the way you dress also evolves along with this journey. So there is a special opportunity for fantasies.
So all the people around you. We had a lot, we had 120 speaking parts and over 5,000 extras. Timmy himself had 67 costume changes. So by being able to set a tone and a texture through the costumes, I had a lot of opportunities to show the breadth of what was happening at that time, which was vast in terms of the social justice movement, the music itself, the evolving political climate.
This is before the Summer of Love in '68. It didn't happen overnight. It's a youth movement that actually predates the beatnik, jazz era and in downtown Manhattan and in different places across the country, in the late fifties. Being able to show this movement in youth culture that would end at the end of the sixties with the Summer of Love.
Arianne Phillips was excited to revisit Johnny Cash's looks
“It's not every day you arrive [revisit] a beloved character I drew almost 20 years ago for Walk the Line.”
ScreenRant: You worked on Walk the lineso what was it like revisiting Johnny Cash in a new way for A complete stranger?
Arianne Phillips: I don't know if I'll have that kind of opportunity again. It's very unique. Of course they make sequels and prequels and all that kind of stuff nowadays with big genre films, but it's not every day you get a character-driven film where you revisit a beloved character that I designed almost 20 years ago for Walk. the Line with another interpretation by a different actor.
I learned on Walk the Line about this unique friendship that Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan had, which at the time, I remember being surprised by it. I love the connection between Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan because Johnny Cash liked Bob Dylan. And I think Bob Dylan was obviously very influenced by Johnny Cash's singular voice and his desire to not be limited by one thing. He constantly had to fight the record company and the powers that be to do his own thing, like perform at San Quentin, which no one wanted him to do.
He also really identified with the worker, which is very much that Woody Guthrie Americana, you see in Bruce Springsteen, this music for the people. I think Bob Dylan definitely admired those qualities in Johnny Cash, just in terms of being an iconoclast and not shying away from anyone's idea of what kind of artist he should be and the encouragement that he gave Bob to find his own way and not be deterred by what people are saying he should be.
I love that connection, that kind of passing of the torch in a way, or the affinity between the two characters. I identify with this a lot, I think who wouldn’t, right? Just the idea of staying in your lane, doing what you want, doing what's authentic to you. Don't let people put you in a box.
ScreenRant: It seems Walk the line it was a bit like preparation for A complete stranger for you.
Arianne Phillips: Yes, it was. It really was. And there's a love story at the center of it. There are some love stories in A Complete Unknown. It's a wonderful world to live in. I can say that I knew less about Johnny Cash's music than Bob Dylan's music. I was raised around the music of Bob Dylan. We always had Dylan. My parents are from the same generation as Bob. We always had Bob's music around the house, so there is, for me, an emotional layer to this film. There is a lot of music in this film.
Jim Mangold makes films that stand the test of time. My first film with him was Girl, Interrupted. It's a great film and holds up almost 30 years later. The same goes for Walk the Line, it gets better with age. I feel like we have all the ingredients for that in this movie, which is great. It is a narrative and cinematic testimony of a young man who finds his voice, his creativity and his place in the world. I'm hopeful that this film will inspire a whole new generation of Bob Dylan fans.
Arianne Phillips says James Mangold is one of the most generous filmmakers she has ever worked with
“I would basically follow him off a cliff no matter what.”
ScreenRant: Now that you've worked with James Mangold several times, do you think there's a shorthand there?
Arianne Phillips: It's so crazy. In the film industry, you come across all kinds of people that you might not meet under normal circumstances. You end up gravitating towards like-minded people and having the opportunity to work with them more than once. Even though it's been 10 years since Jim and I have made a film together, this is our sixth film, and we had a film in the middle that didn't work out, but Jim is one of the most generous and wonderful filmmakers. with whom I have had the privilege of working.
I would basically follow him off a cliff no matter what. When he asked me to work on this film, I thought, yes. Jim and I are the same age. We have a lot of the same influences and one of the great things about working with Jim is that he really encourages collaboration outside of my field as a costume designer. There's a real free flow of information, whether it's about the cast or the collaboration with our director of photography.
There is a real shorthand and encouragement from Jim to collaborate across departments. We always talk about collaboration and usually we don't always have time to be together because it's zero to 60 years of preparing a film when you get the green light now, but with this film, because we had a lot of time, even if it was I wasn't sure when it was going to happen. , this fostered a lot of early conversations and a sense of inclusion with Jim that is unique to me in my career in terms of his generosity.
I love working with him and hope to do the next one, whatever it may be. And I don't have to wait long for our schedules to match.
Arianne Phillips always collaborates with the cast to make them comfortable in the clothes they wear
“You have to figure out the sweet spot between Joan Baez and Monica Barbaro or Timmy and Bob Dylan.”
ScreenRant: How much did you collaborate with the cast on this?
Arianne Phillips: Typically with actors, we have the benefit of accumulating research and sketches or prototypes to communicate the ideas we've been working on with the director from the beginning. In this case with Jim, Timmy and Monica in particular were quite immersed in the musical side of things, learning the instruments. Both had to learn to play the guitar. Timmy also had to learn the harmonica and piano. Monica was taking a lot of singing lessons and so was Timmy.
So when they came to me, it was like the other piece of the puzzle, the visual language of the character. So that was really exciting. And as they both took a lot of tests, we spent a lot of time together. Initially, when I look for a period piece like this, I usually try the real thing, the real period costumes and clothing that I have searched for and gathered from various places, whether vintage dealers or costume houses. I usually try them on just to find out what works and what doesn't, because our modern bodies are different from '60s bodies, and every actor has a different physical proportion that you need to figure out the sweet spot in between, like Joan Baez and Monica Barbaro or Timmy Timmy and Bob, where they can merge the two physicalities to help create that illusion if they want, or allow the audience to become immersed in these characters.
Especially at this time here, the clothes are so beautiful. There are so many things that people used that are relevant today. We live in a time where almost anything goes, and we've seen the fashion of the sixties, and certainly Bob, at least his 1965 look, is something we've seen. It's really like an art, it's become an archetype of rock and roll, its silhouette.
They are really great clothes to wear. It's not like you're wearing 18th century togas or corsets, they're relatable. I always think of costumes as an outfit that helps the actor physically transport themselves into the character, whether through the shoes they wear or the feel of the fabric. So while I built most of the main costumes, I also used vintage pieces to help create that visceral physical feeling of what it's like.
In Timmy's case, at first, when he appears in New York, he models himself after Woody Guthrie. He wore that Pendleton shirt of the American proletariat in the Woody style, overalls, almost like a fisherman's cap or a train conductor's cap. We used a real Pendleton shirt, but we made the jacket, we made the hat. Being able to mix it up so it has an authentic feel. It's difficult to recreate not only the feel of the fabrics, because they have actually changed. They have a lot of fabric technology now in terms of microfibers, but that organic quality pre-polyester, if you will, and the way that fabric hangs on the body is very different.
Being able to balance that and, of course, recreating many well-known events. So figuring out in the script what was publicly documented, what people would recognize, whether it was a show in Newport or the Monterey Folk Festival, or the Freewheelin' album cover, being able to recreate those moments as closely as possible from the research. possible was also very exciting.
Arianne Phillips hopes awards buzz for a complete unknown will drive people to see it in theaters
“This is an experience you really should have theatrically if you can.”
ScreenRant: Congratulations on all the awards buzz.
Arianne Phillips: The great thing about awards is that they help bring people to the theater. We want people to see this in the theater, as there is so much music you really need it, with a great sound system and a great picture. I just think the way the film is lit by our director of photography has a lot of texture.
We saw it last night on the big screen and there's nothing like it. This is an experience you really should have theatrically when you can. So that's my hope for the awards buzz, that it motivates and excites people to see it on the big screen.
More about a complete stranger (2024)
New York, 1961. Against the backdrop of a vibrant music scene and tumultuous cultural upheaval, an enigmatic 19-year-old from Minnesota arrives with his guitar and revolutionary talent, destined to change the course of American music. He forms intimate relationships with Greenwich Village musical icons in his meteoric rise, culminating in a groundbreaking and controversial performance that reverberates around the world. Timothée Chalamet stars and sings as Bob Dylan in James Mangold's A COMPLETE UNKNOWN, the electric true story behind the rise of one of history's most iconic singer-songwriters.
Check out our others A complete stranger interviews here: