There are a lot of terms you could use to describe AJ Weberman: activist, critic, garbologist, Dylanologist gadfly, writer and lunatic. He is all of these and more. This British-led documentary follows AJ around his home city of New York. Recently cast from his family home with a restraining order in place, and fresh out of jail on drug dealing charges, he shares a flat with characters that are equally as, "interesting" shall we say. Weberman is a man made famous in the '60s and '70s for his relationship with Bob Dylan. Rolling Stone magazine has called Weberman "the king of all Dylan nuts.”
He started out as a critic and writer of Dylan’s work, using his own interpretive method of deciphering his lyrics which he self-coined "Dylanology". This soon led to a fascination that meant probing deeper into Dylan’s life, and resulted in him famously rummaging through Dylan’s garbage and finding everything from dirty diapers to a letter to Johnny Cash. This notoriety led to another self-coined term, "Garbology", which is rummaging through famous people’s trash to attempt to find meaning and cultural understanding. In the film he attempts to tackle Woody Allen’s only to be stopped by an inquisitive neighbour.
While a great admirer of Dylan as an artist, he somewhat deplores him as a man. The large proportion of vilification stems from Weberman’s belief that Dylan used heroin - strange, as Weberman is a large drug user himself, but whether he deems cannabis and acid more acceptable than heroin is never really discussed.
There was originally contact between the two, and many of these exchanges Weberman secretly recorded, providing the most interesting and undeniably most entertaining material in the movie. It's particularly humorous the moment Dylan finds out that Weberman is recording these interactions and bellows “I don’t believe you, Weberman!” - the same phrase and tone he used responding to the infamous Judas heckler. Hearing Dylan tell him he’s going to write a song about him as a “Pig” too, is also relentlessly funny. In the early days, when these exchanges were taking place and before Weberman clearly got too weird, it’s still strange to think why Dylan tolerates it at all. It’s almost as if there was initially a mutual fascination between the two. Weberman would constantly chastise and criticise Dylan on the phone; one of the biggest music stars in the world. Why would he allow Weberman to call back again and give him shit? At one point Dylan himself responds with “C’mon! Who’s better than me?” as Weberman jibes him about Steely Dan being so. Maybe he just couldn’t quite fathom why a man so clearly obsessed with him was so critical. This is something that comes to the surface as a viewer too.
Weberman is a deluded character - sane and undeniably intelligent, but deluded. He clearly has a malevolent edge to him, the restraining order in place from his wife being the result of a physical attack. Alcohol, it seems, is an enemy of his too. Weberman comes across as more of an opportunist than an inventor. His Garbology feels like something he elaborated on to make a buck in the wake of the popularity the Dylan episode provided him with. So, his subsequent life (or "profession") has really been one continuous extension of this Dylan fascination, and in turn it is a perpetually fascinating watch.