After a few cocktails, the couple just does not care as much. Like before ceremony, feral, psychotic. After ceremony, people are like little baby doves. They’re just like, “Whatever, I just want to party.” Hi, I’m Melissa Pasanen. I’m a wedding planner, and today we’re going to be reviewing some of your favorite weddings from your favorite movies.
Let’s watch a scene from The Wedding Singer. I’ve definitely had to grab the microphone before from somebody. It’s usually not with a wedding vendor, I have to say. It’s usually with people giving speeches that should not have the microphone or that have had a few cocktails, but you know, I have had wedding vendors have to be removed from weddings, and it’s uncomfortable, but we hope it’s not always like a full-fledged moment in person of somebody absolutely cracking at the seams.
Hey, buddy, I’m not paying you to hear your thoughts on life. I’m paying you to sing. Well, I have a microphone, and you don’t. SO, YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY DAMN WORD I HAVE TO SAY. I’VE HAD TO REMOVE A catering captain from a wedding who was being unhinged to the point where guests were coming up to me and being like, “This man just spoke to this waitress horribly, and that shouldn’t be something that’s allowed in front of everyone.
” I called the owner of the catering company outside, and I was like, “If you don’t have somebody come here and forcefully remove him, I’LL DO IT MYSELF.” I HAD SOMEONE’S son come to a wedding that was underage, and don’t know how he got alcohol. He was in the reception space, and we were setting it up during cocktail hour, and I was like, “Hey, you got to get back to cocktail hour.
Like, we’re moving furniture. You’re going to get hurt. You really need to not be in here.” And he threatened to beat my ass, and was picked up and carried outside, and they ordered him an Uber and sent him home. I always tell everyone right when we’re planning the wedding in the months leading up, I’m like, “Do you give me permission to have executive decision-making power the day of your wedding? And should anything arise, unless the building is truly on fire, I will not tell you, and I will have the power to fix it myself.” And they always
say yes. So, I’ve not told brides that like I had a bride’s mother refuse to walk down the aisle because she was having a moment, she was being the main character. Never told her. Now, we’ll watch a scene from Father of the Bride. It was unbelievable. I had never seen a line form so fast. It was as if they knew what the food was costing me.
>> I just love it because it’s kind of like the first movie that was like truly about weddings and the chaos that can come with them, especially when you decide to have it in your own house, which is a whole beast in itself. I was ready to relax and taste the food I’d been hearing about for the past 5 months, when There’s some cops out front, they want to talk to you.
Cops? I’ve heard we’ll handle this together. I got George for honor valet. And I just loved that the planner was so crazy, and just completely steamrolling the dad. I I have to say, I mean, like I’ve not been I’ve definitely steamrolled some parents, but like in a polite way. You know, look, when you have a wedding at your house, a lot of people are under the misconception that it’s going to be cheaper, and with a tent and permits, and having to bring everything in essentially, like it’s a bare space, it can actually be quite expensive and
time-consuming to you guys. And the parking is a real thing. Do you have a permit for parking 200 cars in the street? Well, the the problem is, officer, that we’re supposed to have four parking attendants. If this was me and my company, I’d be like the one greeting the cops. I wouldn’t bring dad into it unless I absolutely had to, and my team would be out there handling that while I would be inside if there was a big moment going on.
So, you know, it’s never just one person at a wedding. The problem lies in people that try to bring in a planner halfway through because they get overwhelmed and then we’re just sorting through the BS. Having to just smile and nod and be like, “Oh my god, I wouldn’t have done this, this, and this.” And just make it work.
Let’s watch a scene from the drama. What’s your favorite thing about Charlie? Um I I I love that he’s very smart. Um very caring and open-minded. I’ve definitely worked with photographers that were maybe inflicted on me because somebody’s sibling used them for their wedding or whatever and their energy was not great.
One time, right before the ceremony, the huppah, which is the wedding arch in a Jewish wedding, had something wrong with it and the florist was trying to get it perfect. And so, she had to get on a ladder and the photographer was like, “We have to hurry up and get a shot.” So, he made everyone get in front of the huppah while the florist was inside of it on a ladder fixing something and he’s like, “I can remove her post.
” But like everybody in the photo was highly uncomfortable and like afraid something was going to fall on them. And I was just like, “This is not the vibe.” Okay, good. Good. Good. Okay, so keep those things in mind, okay, Charlie? Mhm. What’s your favorite thing about Emma? Um Shh. She’s uh kind. Oh my gosh, I want a photographer that has good energy.
Very key. In fact, I struggle with working with photographers that I haven’t actually seen them do their job before because sometimes people find people on Instagram. So many Instagram snafus that have been inflicted on me. I I think my favorite one was a videographer that came wearing a 2-ft tall hat like he was going to Burning Man to a wedding and a T-shirt.
The bride saw him and was just like, “What is he wearing?” And then other ones have just been people that think they’re great because they have a certain number of followers, but their work is very subpar and their attitude is trash. So, it’s not everything on Instagram, guys. Now, we’re going to watch a scene from My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Wait, is this the set? Wait. What is that? Oh my god. It reminds me a lot of my family cuz we’re Greek, so this movie speaks to me. WHERE DID EVERYBODY GO? IT’S LIKE not that deep when you have a makeup artist usually, so you know, people wake up with I had someone wake up with a black eye because they fell. So, you know, people do crazy things before their wedding sometimes and it’s nothing a little makeup can’t cover.
And Nicole, let’s go. Let’s go. Daddy, is that my tux? The men have it so easy. The way that I plan out their day is honestly, I just tell them, “Hey, you have to be dressed at this time.” The men are going to sleep in, they’re going to roll out of bed, play around of golf, and then just show up in a tux. Let’s watch a scene from Shotgun Wedding. I’ve actually never seen this.
My dad invited your ex? Okay, so I have strong opinions about this. I actually have a podcast about uh relationships uh because I’ve seen so much with weddings over the years and I literally just talked about exes at weddings and how I think it’s actually egregiously disrespectful to the partner. I’d be like, “What is his purpose?” Like is he paying for the florals? Is he a singer? What what what is his function other than being a menace to the groom? Didn’t think he’d actually come.
Well, know, he never RSVP’d. >> No, it’s a very very cool move. Really excited to meet him. Oh god, the challenges of a destination wedding are endless, honestly, because you’re not local. Um so, one of the biggest thorns in people’s side is actually getting the attire to the venue, which people don’t really always think about beforehand.
And then it’s like, we’re going on a plane. I have this huge dress. I can’t afford to check it, you know, like I need it to come on with me. And all of your vendors are going to have to be local. So, you’re going to have to kind of trust in the process because if you’re on these little islands, there’s there’s really only like two vendors that can do the job sometimes.
And you kind of have to just be like, it’s going to be this one. So, a lot to consider with a destination wedding. Now, let’s watch a scene from 28 days. Okay, I’m having PTSD watching this scene where they just destroyed the wedding cake because I had this exact moment happen at a wedding. And it was the vendor that did it, not the guest, which I’ve had a few guests come close to.
No, people don’t respect the cake table. Sometimes people like work with the venue and they were just hired like the day before. And they kind of come in with like attitudes where they’re like the one running the show. And it’s like, you’re running food. So, this guy was being rude to me all day, honestly. He was mansplaining to me like, I’ve been in the industry 30 years.
He kept kind of like overstepping and doing things that I was like, wait, no, don’t do that. So, at one point, I turn around and we had the cake table beautiful. The reception space was finished and the photographer was in there taking photos of everything before the guests come in. I always make them take detail shots.
And he took it upon himself for some unknown reason to move the cake table in the middle of her taking the photos. I watch this man topple the table and the cake falls. They were against a wall. It was like kind of like smooshed into the wall? I get four forks from the kitchen, and me and my assistant like fashioned the forks together in a way where we could like made the cake stand up, and then we put like draped a white napkin over it cuz it was a white cake.
So like from the back, it was like crime scene. Like what happened here? What the F happened to this cake? And from the front, it looked moderately okay from a certain angle. It was completely fine. Like they just didn’t care. After a few cocktails, a couple just does not care as much. Like before ceremony, feral, psychotic.
After ceremony, people are like little baby doves. They’re just like whatever, I just want to party. Don’t worry, I’ll replace it. Okay. I mean, a drunk guest is two things. The life of the party and the best time, and also the worst person in the room. It’s like one or the other. They’re carrying the the fun, or they’re like doing too much.
We need to cut them off. Like I’ve had to cut people off where I tell the bartender like anytime this person comes up, apple juice. And they’re so drunk, they don’t even know it. I have like almost full body tackled people before. I’ve explained this to my team cuz I’m like, I’m a veteran, and my team sometimes a little bit younger, and I’m like, you’re just never going to know when to like be on.
You kind of have to just be watching everyone and everything, and like thinking two steps ahead. So like, when I see someone walk really close to a table that has the cake on it, I’m like, oh god, we got to push the table back. It’s in the way, or like someone go stand there because people are getting too close to it.
You know, if there’s nowhere else it can go. But you always kind of have to think two steps ahead. And with a drunk guest, you’re always just keeping your eye on them. Like, are they going to grab the mic, you know? It’s always a little bit of a nail biter. Let’s watch a scene from Wedding Crashers. Sanjay Collins. Chuck Crandall.
Excited to be here. Shamus O’Toole. Mario Shea. I’m ready to get drunk. People really do try to come to weddings when they’re not invited, especially in New York City because people get married at a lot of places that are technically open to the public like St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and people really do try to like get in on the action and I have had to be a bouncer many times. At St.
Patrick’s Cathedral when they’re when you’re having a wedding ceremony, they still let the sides open to tourists. The bride is about to walk down the aisle. By the way, St. Patrick’s Cathedral has like on-site security and the bride is about to walk down the aisle fluffing her dress. I see a tourist try to climb over the barrier to get a good photo of a stranger getting married and I tackled her. Like I’m not even joking.
The security literally was like, “We need to hire you to work at St. Patrick’s.” They were so impressed. I was like, “You got to go.” Literally get out of here. She’s like, “I got to get a photo.” I’m like, “You don’t even know these people. Get the hell out of here.” Like crawling over the barrier. Ridiculous.
Who is that? That’s a Luigi and a Gina Sanacore. You know the banker. I had somebody at a wedding um tell me that an entire table that RSVP’d no showed up and were demanding seats. Like we’re talking 15 people. Ah, God, this wedding was actually atrocious. I still have PTSD. It was a 300-person wedding and at a wedding there’s table numbers, everything is strategically planned, assigned seats, you know, it’s kind of very curated and I had someone come up to me and they were wearing jeans, number one, the whole table at a formal wedding and they
were literally like angry at me and I’m they’re like, “We don’t have a table.” And I’m like, “Oh my God, what has gone wrong? Did we miss something?” And I’m like looking and I see their their names are nowhere. I I actually tell the groom because I was like, I don’t know everybody. I don’t know the family lore.
I I don’t know, you know, all the trauma. I’m like, this table is saying they need a table, but I don’t see them on the list. And the groom’s like, They RSVP’d no. And I I was like, do you want me to tell them to leave? And he was just like, Just just try and do what you can. So, we had catering bring in a whole table.
We sat everyone down. They were utterly rude to us. Like, egregiously angry that they didn’t have a table after they all said they weren’t coming. And they were in like, t-shirts and jeans. It was so egregious. The groom was better than me cuz I would have been like, don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split ya.
Let’s watch a scene from Bride Wars. A terrible mistake has been made. One, I assure you, has never happened before in the house of St. Clair. Your weddings have been booked on the same day. Can you say that again? I’m sorry, what? Your weddings have been scheduled for the same date. Mother F, are you insane? The Plaza is our lifelong dream.
Very on brand. Honestly, the iconic venues like the Plaza, they do book up. There’s only so many good Saturdays in the year, you know? I had a bride get married. And if The funniest thing was it was a December wedding. And she told me some lore when we were done with the wedding about how she lost her friend, which by the way does happen with the bridal party.
Sometimes your friendships do get tested. And she told me that the maid of honor uh scheduled her wedding for the same day. And was not in the wedding. Didn’t come to the wedding. Now, let’s watch a scene from Monsoon Wedding. Indian weddings are so fun, but they are a whole different beast. So, it is a multi-day affair and they are usually 500 plus people.
So, it is very expensive. It is a whole elaborate extravaganza. I had an Indian ceremony be 2 and 1/2 hours and we have to utilize fire. It’s a whole thing. Um actually, the mother of the bride fainted halfway through that ceremony and pushed over the flowers and then we had to stop for a second. But yeah, they’re really elaborate, really expensive.
There’s a lot that goes into it. Probably triple the amount of vendors of a non-denominational wedding of 150 people and they’re really fun now. And the the one thing I love about an Indian wedding is we do not shy away from color. Color is extremely prevalent in the design and I love color. For working in a city like Boston, Manhattan, we can’t utilize the animals and depending on the venue, we can’t utilize fire.
So, I’ve had to get a little creative. You know, we’ve had people just come in. They’re not on an animal, but there’s like a there’s a drum playing. They’re, you know, playing them into the space. So, it’s it’s still elaborate. It still feels like a moment. We’re utilizing lots of marigolds if they’re in season. So, well, we can’t use elephants and horses in cities nine times out of 10.
So, that’s just not a thing in a big city. And also, outside of a big city, if it is permitted, you know, animal cruelty, we have to like be careful. But the one big thing is fire because that is necessary for a ceremony and we’ve had to get creative with people like jumping over like an LED candle or a stick or something.
Venues don’t want to involve anything that’s ever a liability. So, we have to get creative with that sometimes. Now, we’re going to watch a scene from Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen. Why don’t you try my dress? That’s a great idea. >> god, this is Kaniha. That’s so kind of you. I just Wow. And unfortunately, I’ve seen stuff like this happen where people don’t voice how they’re feeling and really make it known that you know, what they want and I’m going to need everybody to all my my introverts to put on their extrovert hat and just really rise up because
the dress is very important. I have to remind everyone all the time like this is your Met Gala and sometimes people really get bullied into the dresses they pick and I’m just like why did you do that? And they’re like like this person really wanted this and I’m just like what about you? Mom, you promised I could have Grandma Madeline’s diamond bracelet.
>> Oh, I I don’t need You can have it after. Oh. Never mind, it doesn’t go. I’m cringing the whole way through this because it feels like a bad episode of Say Yes to the Dress and why are we not just voicing how we feel and being like lay off. I don’t want to wear this dress. It happens so much and there have been situations where a family member has just become the main character to the point where they’re having conversations with me, the couple, where they’re like can you interject and I’m like look as somebody who has no problem standing
up to their parents, why is this hard for you? I’m having to sit here and have hard conversations with someone’s dad. Um so a good example of this is there was a couple that had the bride’s family was paying for the wedding, the groom’s family was paying for the welcome reception and it was a 16th of what we were doing with the wedding.
So it should have been like a cakewalk um and the groom’s family was being so over the top that the bride actually text me and she was like, I’m out. I don’t even want to be CC’d on the emails anymore. Y’all got it. And then the groom called me two days before the event like should I uninvite my dad to the wedding because he’s just being so crazy about this like I’m actually so mad at him and I had to use my degree in psychology and give a little therapy to him.
Like, it’s just let it pass. Like, he’s excited. You know, it’s their moment, too. They’re paying for it. So, sometimes they will have big thoughts when they’re the ones paying for it. And you have to kind of be respectful because like sometimes I have to remind parents like yes, you’re paying for it. We love you for that.
But, this is about them. Now, let’s watch a scene from The Wedding Planner. >> But, this is perfect. You can finally meet Eddie. Come here. Eddie. Eddie. Come here. I want you to meet the wedding planner. Two most important people in my life set eyes on one another. Eddie, this is Mary, the wedding planner. Mary, this is my fiance, Eddie.
Everyone’s always comparing me to this because I I’m like a younger single woman as a wedding planner and people just always want me to be J. Lo and like be creeping on people’s grooms, which is just not the case at all. People always ask me if I would be attracted to a groom or if I’ve ever been attracted to a groom because of this movie and it’s so toxic.
Like, truly, first of all, when I meet people, immediately clients, even if they’re attractive, I never ever think about it like that ever in my whole life. But, I got to say, after planning weddings for 15 years, sometimes I’m happy to be single when I see some of these dynamics. I’m like, there is a lid for every trash can sometimes.
Hi. Hi. Uh Mary, are you okay? Mhm. Yep. If this were me and this had been my scenario where I knew the groom or I was attracted to the groom or something had happened before, I would immediately be like, that’s old news. That that has come off. I I like truly don’t think about anybody like that.
It’s immediate friend zone and nothing more, honestly. You told me your name was Steve. >> It is Steve. My last name is Edison. Friends call me Eddie. It’s nickname. >> I have a better nickname for you. How about common cheating sleazy scum? If you’re thinking >> thinking involves a machete and a pair of pliers.
It’s just so insanely toxic, like a wedding planner stealing the groom. First of all, after we see some of them involved in the planning process, like you can’t pay me. You know what I mean? Like it’s And then sometimes there’s dynamics where it’s the bride doing everything and I meet the groom the day of the wedding and I’m like, “Good luck with that.
” You know? And then sometimes I’m like, “He’s a nice guy. He’s supportive, but he’s I’m watching him put up with behavior from his partner or his parents and be kind of like” And I’m just like, “Man up, dude.” So, there’s just never been a scenario and there never will be a scenario where this would ever be realistic and I always hate that everyone compares me or asks me, “Have you seen that movie?” Because sometimes it’s the bride and I’m like, “Babe, what are you trying to ask me right now?” Because he’s not for me, ever.
QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.
Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.
Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.
The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.
Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.
Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.
Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.
that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music
industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.
The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.
Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.
Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.
The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.
Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.
Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.
Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.
Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.
The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.
Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.
The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.
Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.
Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.
The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.
Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.
The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.
Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.
They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.
She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.
She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.
She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.
She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it
well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.
Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.
What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.
The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.
They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.
Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.
Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and
Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
