The Audacity of Ambition

Timothée Chalamet Aspires In Public

Timothée Chalamet. Getty Images.

Catch-up service:
Tolstoy on Disagreement
Why Are Some Successful Leaders Mentally Ill?
The End of Cheap Progressive Signalling
The Bud Light Debacle
Banishing the Inner Critic
Stop Making Sense

First, some John & Paul news. We now have so many upcoming events in the UK that together they can legitimately be called a ‘tour’. More are on the way; watch this space. If you can make any of these ones (apart from the sold out one) then please come along. Details at the venue websites.

AND if you pre-order from this marvellous independent bookshop in Queens Park, London, then you’ll get a copy signed and dedicated by me.

OK, on with the show…

After Timothée Chalamet won an award for Best Actor at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, he did something shocking: he gave a speech about why he deserved it. Rather than confining himself to wide-eyed astonishment and gushing gratitude, as is the form, he talked about how hard he had worked. Preparing for the role of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown took five and a half years of his life, he said. He poured everything into playing “this incomparable artist, Mr Bob Dylan, a true American hero.”

Then Chalamet got to what he really wanted to say: that he had his eyes on a higher prize. No, not (just) an Oscar. He reminded his starry audience, politely, that the trophy in his hand was a mere bauble:

“I can’t downplay the significance of this award because it means the most to me, and I know we’re in a subjective business. But the truth is [here he slows down his speech for emphasis] I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats, I’m inspired by the greats, I’m inspired by the greats here tonight. I’m as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando, and Viola Davis, as I am by Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there.”

Chalamet is right: people don’t usually talk like this. To declare himself in pursuit of greatness was unusual, audacious, even brave. Predictably enough, he was accused of arrogance and male entitlement. Here is Emma Specter, of Vogue (who, to be fair, seasons her criticism with humour):

‘Wanting to be “one of the greats” is no crime, of course, but in the current age of Elon Musk’s DOGE bros running amok throughout the federal government and Mark Zuckerberg ordering the removal of tampons from Meta bathrooms, I’m finding it a little bit difficult to be as swayed as I might otherwise be by a show of aspiration from any man in the public eye.’

Chalamet’s speech was of a piece with the story he has been telling about himself during his publicity campaign. In interviews, he has talked about what went into his preparation: learning everything about Dylan: learning his songs, learning to play the guitar like him, to sing like him, as well as to talk and walk like him. This took a ferocious level of commitment (“170%” as Chalamet puts it, with mysterious precision). He passionately wanted to do Dylan justice, having fallen utterly under his spell. That meant focusing single-mindedly on the task before him. He switched his phone off for the three months it took to shoot the movie.

Note that the actors Chalamet cites as role models in his speech are those renowned for devotion to the craft and theory of acting. He isn’t aspiring to the (deceptively) effortless greatness of a Cary Grant or Tom Hanks, but rather to be a master of Process and Method; an acolyte of the tradition of furrowed brow and manly endeavour that is embodied by Brando and Day Lewis. He also cited athletes, perhaps having taken to heart Tyler Cowen’s maxim that everyone serious about their work should adopt a training mindset.

The work and the attitude has paid off. Whatever you think of A Complete Unknown, I haven’t seen many people seriously criticise Chalamet’s performance, including and especially his renditions of Dylan’s songs. On reflection this is extraordinary, since imitating Bob Dylan successfully is the definition of a fool’s errand.

Just living inside the character of Dylan for all that time may have played a role in raising Chalamet’s sights. In 2004, Dylan recalled the extent of his own youthful ambition. “Popular culture usually comes to an end very quickly. It gets thrown into the grave. I wanted to do something that stood alongside Rembrandt’s paintings.” On a song from his last album, Dylan playfully-but-seriously puts himself in the same frame as William Blake and Beethoven, and why not?

Dylan chose an unlikely path to fame. Being a scruffy folk singer with a guitar into symbolist poetry at a time when pop stars wore suits and did dance routines was hardly the path of least resistance. He wanted popular success but ultimately he was aiming to join the pantheon, and that entailed doing things differently from his peers. Chalamet has taken this lesson to heart too, in his way. While most film stars have taken roles in superhero movies, he has so far avoided them. While it’s uncool, as an actor, to refer to how hard you work, Chalamet talks about it a lot.

But it was his declaration of ambition that was electrically charged. Why? I think because it felt out of time. Chalamet is 29; a Millennial. His generation has been raised to be very wary of presenting themselves special in any way. To do so is to risk accusations of entitlement from peers, and condescension, verging on contempt, from elders. The aim of the game is not to rise above one’s peers or to stand out from them but to fit in; consequently it must be maintained that nobody is special and everyone is just riding their privilege. The only people allowed to draw attention to their endeavour, and to their uniqueness, are the marginalised and disadvantaged. To flout this rule is to invite moralising derision. Specter was relatively polite; Chalamet’s critics on TikTok were much harsher.

The denial of specialness isn’t exclusive to Millennials, but they have been bathed in it. It is culturally pervasive among the educated classes. Satisfaction is taken in revealing that our most celebrated artists are terrible, privileged, selfish men who got away with it. Genius is a construct of power and nothing more. Humans themselves must be brought down a notch or three: books on evolution strenuously deny that our species is exceptional. Technologists declare that consciousness is just a blob of compute, an LLM in spongey form. Honestly, humans, get over yourselves, and prepared to be overmastered.

Timotheé Chalamet was not exalting the human race or single-handedly restoring the category of great men. He was just giving a speech about wanting to be the best at what he does. But by publicly aspiring to greatness he perpetrated a kind of mild transgression - not a frontal assault on cultural orthodoxy, but the opening up of a little fissure within it. I want to be up there, Chalamet said, leaning over a microphone set too low for him. And nobody need look down on him for that.

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