A complete unknownwhich hits theaters December 25th, stars Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan in a highly anticipated biopic that traces the singer’s rise in the 1960s New York folk music scene.

The story focuses on the period between 1961 and 1965 – when Dylan first became a big star – and is told chronologically and looks at the people who helped him along the way, including musicians such as Pete Seeger (Edward Norton). as well as love interests such as Suze Russo (Elle Fanning) and Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro). The film culminates in Dylan’s controversial performance at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, at a time when the folk music scene was divided between those who advocated the type of electric guitar that defined rock and roll and those who did not , who thought the acoustic guitar was the more authentic form of entertainment. And true to the film’s title, even viewers who know Dylan’s songs by heart won’t leave the film feeling 100% convinced. knowledge Dylan.

“At 24, he had become the voice of a generation,” says Elijah Wald, who wrote a book that inspired the film Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan and the Night That Divided the Sixties.

TIME spoke to experts about Dylan’s life about what the film gets right and wrong about the folk singer’s rise to fame.

How did Dylan get his big break?

Dylan was “in the right place at the right time,” says Michael Gray, author of Song & Dance Man: The Art of Bob Dylan. There were several clubs in New York City where musicians could perform as long as they didn’t expect any money. Dylan “forced his way in there,” hitchhiking with two friends and arrived in New York’s Greenwich Village in January 1961.

In 1961, Robert Shelton’s glowing New York Times review of Dylan’s opening act at a club helped the young singer land a recording contract with Columbia Records at a time when many folk musicians had deals with smaller labels.

However, Bob Dylan (1962), his first album with Columbia, was a flop. It is his second album, Bob Dylan on the loose (1963) – with “Blowin’ in the Wind” – which brought him new fame.

Dylan’s songwriting stood out in the folk scene of the early 1960s. According to Gray, most folk artists at the time “didn’t write songs. In fact, many of them felt that you shouldn’t write a song because it would mean going back to the earliest possible, most original version of an Irish, English or Scottish folk song.”

Joan Baez, who dated Dylan, also helped him by giving him a guest appearance at her concerts and covering his songs.

Did Dylan really show up in Woody Guthrie’s hospital room and play for him?

Legendary folk artist Woody Guthrie suffered from the brain disease Huntington’s disease until his death in 1967. As the film shows, Dylan Guthrie visited the hospital regularly in the early 1960s, as did Pete Seeger. It’s unclear whether Dylan, Seeger and Guthrie all regularly hung out in a hospital room.

However, in the early 1960s, Woody was wheeled out of his hospital room to meet friends, and people came and sang for him. “This is actually more likely if Dylan and Seeger had overlapped together with Guthrie,” Wald says.

Was Pete Seeger Dylan’s mentor?

The film shows Dylan showing up in Guthrie’s hospital room to play him a song, and Seeger being so impressed by the young man’s playing that he lets him stay with his family.

Although that never happened, Seeger helped bring Dylan into being by giving him many performance opportunities.

According to Wald, Dylan’s first time on stage in front of a really large audience was at a Pete Seeger Hootenanny, where Seeger brought a number of young artists on stage.

Was Johnny Cash really one of Dylan’s biggest fans?

In A completely unknown, Dylan receives fan letters from Cash.

It’s true that the singer-songwriter was one of Dylan’s biggest supporters, and several lines in the film come directly from her letters.

Cash came to Dylan’s side at crucial moments. While Dylan’s first album on Columbia Records was not a huge commercial success, Cash, a Columbia Records artist, defended it so the label did not drop Dylan, according to Gray.

Cash covered several Dylan songs. “Understand Your Man,” one of Cash’s biggest hits of the 1960s, was inspired by Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

According to Wald, Dylan, Baez, Johnny and his future wife June Carter were hanging out in a hotel room at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, jumping up and down on the beds, that’s how much fun they were having together.

What influence did the political movements of the 1960s have on Dylan’s music?

Dylan wasn’t afraid to get political, and some of his early songs are directly influenced by the civil rights movement, such as the line “How many streets must a man walk before he’s called a man?” from “Blowin’ in the Wind”.

“He sang to and for a young, white audience who were trying to figure out their place in this huge movement,” Wald explains.

Gray points out that the song “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” which opens by mentioning the assassination of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, was radical at the time because it argued, “Poor white people are being manipulated by those in charge to do this.” “It is the poor black people who pose a threat to them.”

His partner Suze Rotolo, who appears on the cover of The freewheeling Bob Dylan, was a civil rights activist and volunteered at the New York office of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The film shows her giving Dylan a talk about CORE, one of the largest civil rights organizations at the time.

Did a guitarist actually play the organ on “Like a Rolling Stone”?

Yes, as the film shows, Al Kooper came to play guitar on the recording, but there was already a guitarist.

He saw an organ on set, played around with it, and eventually came up with the iconic organ track in the song.

“From then on he was a keyboard player,” says Wald.

Was Dylan really booed at the Newport Folk Festival?

The climax of the film is the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan is booed by the audience after he plays an electric guitar instead of an acoustic guitar.

In real life, he was booed after an embarrassing performance. According to Wald, the band was not well rehearsed and there were long pauses between songs while the band members thought about what to do with themselves. Wald explains: “When he left the stage after only singing three songs, people started booing. How many of them booed because he was electric and how many booed because he left the stage? It’s impossible to sort this out.”

Why was the switch to electric drive so controversial?

As Gray explains: “The Newport Folk Festival, which was the great annual folk music party, viewed electric music as nasty, commercial – sold out – and acoustic music as pure and authentic.” The organizers “combined electric music with cheap pop and rock ‘Roll Trash.’

But the people who didn’t want Dylan to go electric were the minority. There were many participants who were prepared for this.

“Dylan was a lot more popular than he had been when he went electric,” says Wald, “and the boos became part of his legend because they counteracted the accusation that he was selling out and becoming a pop star.”