With Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown proving to be a hit both at the box office and during awards season, it seems reasonable to assume that Hollywood will now be looking at other legendary musicians of the folk era to profile on film.
In fact, director Cameron Crowe (who previously helmed semi-autobiographical rock movie Almost Famous) has apparently been working on a Joni Mitchell movie for several years now, with rumours circulating that Meryl Streep could be in line to play the star in her later years. If Crowe is looking for a younger Joni, though, may we (and many others) suggest that Amanda Seyfried might be a good fit.
Seyfried, of course, has musical form, having previously starred in both Mamma Mia! movies. Not only can she sing, though - during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon she confirmed that she’s also a dab hand on the Appalachian dulcimer.
Fallon just happened to have a dulcimer under his desk while he was chatting to Seyfried, which he obviously invited her to play. “This is what I learned to play during the pandemic for almost two years,” she explained as it was handed to her, before wisely checking that it was in tune.
“I would love to play something that’s about a state which deserves a lot of love right now,” she continued. “Can anyone guess?”
She was of course referring to California, which is still coming to terms with the devastating wildfires that wreaked havoc across the state earlier this year.
“Joni Mitchell?” asked a probably pre-prepped Fallon. “Yes, because she wrote a lot of the songs from the Blue album on the dulcimer,” Seyfried replied, “and I learned a lot of her stuff from the Blue album when the world stopped. And I’m gonna play it for you, but guess what? I’m nervous.”
It didn’t show: Seyfried went on to sing and play a pitch perfect version of the first part of California, from Mitchell’s aforementioned Blue album, hitting some seriously high notes in the process.
Joni Mitchell is believed to have bought her first dulcimer at the 1969 Big Sur Folk Festival. Speaking to Acoustic Guitar magazine back in the ‘90s, she told interviewer Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers: “I had never seen one played. Traditionally it’s picked with a quill, and it’s a very delicate thing that sits across your knee. The only instrument I had ever had across my knee was a bongo drum, so when I started to play the dulcimer I beat it. I just slapped it with my hands.
“Anyway I bought it, and I took off to Europe carrying a flute and this dulcimer because it was very light for backpacking around Europe. I wrote most of Blue on it.”
Seyfried was correct, then, but could she play Joni Mitchell in a movie? She certainly has the acting chops - she won both Golden Globe and Emmy Awards for her portrayal of another real-life figure, convicted fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, in 2022 series The Dropout - and now we have confirmation that the musical talent is there, too.
In fact, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that she learned to play the dulcimer in preparation for a potential role in Cameron Crowe’s Mitchell project. We already knew that Timothee Chalamet spent his lockdown months learning the guitar for A Complete Unknown - maybe Seyfried was doing something similar?
Case (of you) closed, we’d say, but time will tell.
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