BLOOD ON THE TRACKS - The Motion Picture

Blood on the Tracks is easily one of the greatest albums in the history of recorded sound. Bob Dylan doesn't really get all the adoration for it, though:

A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It's hard for me to relate to that. I mean, it, you know, people enjoying that type of pain, you know?

It's a painful record, all about heartbreak and the end of love, recorded in the wake of Dylan's separation from his wife (although Dylan later claimed the whole album is inspired by Chekov. Anton, not Pavel). It's not so much a song cycle as a bleak, moving mood. It's great.

And now it'll be a movie. This press release came from RT Features:

RT Features, an internationally recognized feature film production company based in Brazil, has acquired the rights to adapt Bob Dylan’s seminal 1975 album Blood on the Tracks into an English language movie. The deal was announced today by RT Features’ Rodrigo Teixeira and Fernando Loureiro, who will produce the film.

Teixeira and Loureiro will now look for a director with the unique vision to fulfill on screen what Dylan accomplished in the studio with such well-known songs “Tangled Up in Blue,” “Simple Twist of Fate,” and “Shelter from the Storm.”

"As long time admirers of one of the greatest albums in the history of music, we feel privileged to be making this film,” said Teixeira. “Our goal is to work with a filmmaker who can create a classic drama with characters and an environment that capture the feelings that the album inspires in all fans."

Dylan’s 15th studio album, Blood on the Tracks was released by Columbia Records in January 1975. Certified Double Platinum in the US and Gold in the UK, the album topped the Billboard 200 chart for two weeks following its release and Rolling Stone ranked the album within the Top 20 of all-time.

This sounds like a cart before the horse thing, but who knows - any movie scored to the songs from Blood on the Tracks will be at least enjoyable to sit through. And as long as they don't turn this into Across the Universe, using the songs as backdrops and not literal bits of exposition, it could turn out fine. The title's a great one for a movie at any rate.