Saturday Night Live hasn’t typically played a big role in Academy Awards campaigns. Sure, about once a season a star will typically do a victory lap by hosting either around nominations or maybe after winning, but there doesn’t seem to be a perception that SNL offers rehearsal space for the biggest awards in town, the way that Golden Globes acceptance speeches can help turbo-charge an Oscar bid. (As with Demi Moore, for example, who feels more and more like an Oscar frontrunner following her surprise Globes win.) But with this year’s Best Actor race possibly boiling down to The Brutalist’s Adrien Brody (whose previous Best Actor for The Pianist set a record for the youngest-ever recipient) and A Complete Unknown’s Timothée Chalamet (who would break that record by a matter of months if he won this year), Chalamet did decide to take his campaign over to SNL. During his third hosting gig over the weekend – itself impressive for a 29-year-old, albeit more for comedy nerds than Oscar wags – Chalamet also appeared as the show’s musical guest, performing Bob Dylan songs.
A performer not principally known for music doing songs on SNL is not exactly unprecedented, though it more clearly recalls the show’s beloved first five seasons, when occasionally cast members Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi were “booked” as musical guests as the Blues Brothers; Steve Martin might do a full-blown musical production number like the classic “King Tut”; or even a more outside-the-show host like Gary Busey might sit in with the proper musical guest, as he did in 1979. Lily Tomlin has also done double-duty despite not being a professional singer, per se. But at first sight, Chalamet’s stint as the frontman of a Dylan cover band coinciding with his Best Actor campaign was less loosey-goose anything-goes ’70s style than akin to the more nakedly promotional Garth-Brooks-as-Chris-Gaines type of deal.
That perception might have shifted when Chalamet explained himself to more casual viewers in his monologue. He noted that he would be playing some Bob Dylan songs later in the show, and that the audience might now know them so well, but they were personal favorites. Now, aside from any attendant jokes about how an audience composed of under-50s might well find any Dylan songs somewhat obscure, this was unexpected; I, as a Dylan fan and someone familiar with Chalamet’s film, expected him to recreate “Like a Rolling Stone” (which he performs multiple times in A Complete Unknown, including during a climactic Newport Folk Festival scene) and, I don’t know, maybe “Maggie’s Farm,” another song he played in his going-electric Newport set; or maybe, if he wanted to get quasi-political, a contrasting acoustic number from Dylan’s protest-song period. Maybe he’d pull an Elvis Costello (or rather, a Beastie Boys imitating Elvis Costello on the 25th anniversary special) and start off with “Blowin’ in the Wind” only to interrupt himself and kick into “Rolling Stone.”
Chalamet did pair two songs in his first musical performance, but neither was a song anyone expected to hear. Seemingly uninterested in showing off the well-honed Dylan imitation from the film, he performed a medley of the Bringing It All Back Home track “Outlaw Blues” and the New Morning track “Three Angels,” neither of them exactly greatest-hits material. For his second performance, he did technically bring out a tune from the greatest hits record – but it was “Tomorrow Is a Long Time,” a live version of which appears on Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume II but was not actually a hit for Dylan himself. (It was oft-covered by other folk artists, and eventually a studio version appeared on his ongoing Bootleg Series of archive releases.)
Okay, he didn’t take on something from Empire Burlesque or try to affect an old-man cragginess to do, like, “Long and Wasted Years” or something, but these were still left-field choices that fell outside the purview of the movie, which ends in 1965. (New Morning came out in 1970.) It was imitative of Dylan, but not baldly, not focusing on vocal mannerisms or emphasis, but rather a facsimile of the man’s unpredictability. Take a look at Dylan’s own recent setlists and you won’t usually find “Like a Rolling Stone” there, either. (“It Ain’t Me, Babe” and “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” both heard in A Complete Unknown, have been in rotation, but alongside nearly the entirety of his most recent record and several other not-hits that were nonetheless included on Greatest Hits Volume II). It may have been inspired by something as corporate and calculated as an Oscar run, but it gave the often-obligatory SNL musical-guest slot a genuine unpredictability and novelty.
That said, how did all of this affect Chalamet’s campaign? It’s probably wishful thinking to imagine the Academy voting base includes a bunch of Dylan fans impressed by Timmy’s good taste. But as someone who personally wouldn’t choose Chalamet among these five nominees, I can’t deny that his Dylan riffing endeared him further to me, and at least made me feel less sour at the prospect of him winning for yet another musician-impersonation act. It helps that he is often truly, weirdly funny on the SNL sketches (something else that seems more targeted at my particular demographic than any hypothetical Oscar voters, apart from perhaps SNL aficionado Emma Stone). Did Chalamet make his national campaign ad on SNL specifically because his primary competition, Adrien Brody, does not seem particularly welcome there? (Probably not, but it’s funny to think about.) It does make him feel vaguely like the populist choice in this group of five where A Complete Unknown has already made more money than the other four represented movies combined. (The Brutalist will have to hold on really well for that statement to not remain true for the next month.) Brody has the comeback narrative, and the better movie. Ralph Fiennes has the “veteran who’s due” vibes. Sebastian Stan has daring on his side; Colman Domingo might have the most purely emotional performance. But Chalamet may have successfully established himself as the man of the moment. That he’s managed to make that factor non-annoying is, itself, a pretty great performance.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com, too.
