It’s not that I’m ever not a fan of Timothée Chalamet. He checks all the boxes for me personally and professionally – so talented, so pretty, so perfectly of the celebrity moment, so good for gossip. We are better for Timmy Chalamet and anybody who tells you any different does not understand this ecosystem.
Anyway, as I was saying, my baseline for Timmy is always pretty high – but right now, it’s probably the highest it’s ever been, and I haven’t even seen A Complete Unknown. The lookalike contest is what did it, the fact that he showed up, breezing through that crowd in self-amusement, making the whole exercise cooler than it ever deserved to be.
And now this, on Friday night, at the NYC premiere of the film, in which he plays Bob Dylan, turning the red carpet in December into Halloween, and actually recreating a look of Bob’s from 2013 at Sundance. Flip through the carousel.
What makes it even funnier is that he doesn’t just dress the part – or person – but he’s also, still, performing, because he doesn’t smile, he doesn’t break that expression, remaining neutral-faced, or scowl-faced, depending on how you see it, the entire time.
For me it’s thinking about how he must have had to source the wig, or the clip on bangs, and how much fun he and his team would have had putting it all together, getting all their laughs out at the hotel before he steeled himself for no grins, no knowing smirks, over the next few hours at the screening. And also the confidence in the internet that they would, in no time, figure out which Bob Dylan look he was taking out for a ride…
On his Oscar campaign.
Because that’s the other layer to this comedy. Timmy-Bob is very much in it for a nomination. He’s an industry darling taking on a musical icon. Academy voters are AWARE. The actors branch knows what a lift this would have been for him. But here he is, showing up to the premiere as a joke, which is the opposite of taking it too seriously, or maybe it’s taking it SO seriously that it’s bordering on caricature. Either way, as the youngest actor in the field, he’s not playing up to the age of the other contenders in the Best Actor race but staying firmly in his generational sensibility. And I’m not mad at it. Jacob Elordi could never.
