The Beat Generation icon, poet Irwin Allen Ginsberg , who was 70 at the time of the interview, had been dead for eight years by the time the film was finally finished. He said in the film that he cried the first time he heard Dylan's song "It's Coming". He said he realized that the torch of the "Beat Generation" had been passed on to a younger generation.
Singer Joan Baez sings "Son of the Virgin Mary" on stage in her first film appearance. Bob Dylan saw her on TV, called her amazing, and said the girl might need a partner. Later, they met. At the Newport Music Festival in 1963, the girl invited him to sing "God is on our side" on the same stage, and they really became partners. Ironically, when Bob Dylan toured the UK two years later, Joan Baez wanted to work with him again, but Bob Dylan steadfastly refused. Bob Dylan rarely compliments others, and in the film, in addition to expressing admiration for his predecessors Woody Guthrie and Johnny Cash, only Joan Baez is highly praised.
Martin Scorsese interviewed many of Bob Dylan's young friends, mostly singers. When the film was recorded, these people were already old. Some of them looked like middle class, some like proletariat, and some like intellectuals. Only Maria Maldau still looks like a singer, a singer trying to catch the tail of youth
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