Folk and pacifism might be on brand for Bob Dylan, but the musician had quite a gravitation to throwing punches…allegedly. One anecdote that’s been spreading around the internet was when Bob Dylan wanted to punch one of America’s well-known and controversial directors.
In A Complete Unknown, a young Bob Dylan played by Timothée Chalamet is punched by a fan on the way out from a gig. Another person who punched the folk singer included Leon Russell’s first wife Carla Brown after she reacted violently due to a recent mugging.
Related: Pete Seeger Revealed the ‘Big Mistake’ He Made During Bob Dylan’s Newport Folk Festival Set
The “Mr. Tambourine Man” also had a fondness of boxing in real life. In 2008, comedian Daniel Russ recalled meeting him in the ring: “In comes a diminutive, skinny man. Looks to be a little older than me, has short curly hair. He turns to face me. It’s Bob Dylan.” Russ tells the gym owner, “If you paid me by the shot, I wouldn’t hit this guy ever.” The gym owner says, “Good. Don’t.”
Did Bob Dylan punch Woody Allen?
No, Bob Dylan didn’t punch Woody Allen. But according to Paul Trynka’s biography about The Rolling Stones member Brian Jones, he really wanted to.
“You know what I’d do if Woody Allen was here? Punch him in the face, knock his glasses off and tread on them,” he reportedly told Jones and his friend Prince Stanislas “Stash” Klossowski De Rola at a party in 1996. It makes sense that the two would be in contact with each other at the time since they both ran around Greenwich Village creative circles.
“Dylan was extremely aggressive,” Stash told Trynka. “Way, way out there. He would corner you, jab his finger into your chest, and he would go on and on with this amazing rap. Then he’d try to enlist you in a vendetta. He’d have these passing whims, like a hatred of Woody Allen or Terry Southern — ‘let’s all get him,’ all of it like a whirlwind.”
The feeling was reportedly mutual with Woody Allen. He made a joke in his movie Annie Hall when Shelly Duvall’s character was raving about a Dylan concert she went to. When she asked if he knew about it, he said, “I couldn’t make it. My raccoon had hepititis.”
