A Complete Unknown filming locations: Where was the biographical drama filmed?

Timothée Chalamet's starrer A Complete Unknown has been one of the biggest films of the year as it continues to bag nominations and awards and praise from critics and audiences alike for its stellar depiction of Bob Dylan's life.

Like any biography, the locations the film was shot in add a realistic effect to the film and contribute to its authenticity. James Mangold utilized real-life locations from Bob Dylan's life for the film, and most of it was shot in New York City.

François Audouy was the production designer, who opened up on his experience as he worked on different locations to recreate Dylan's life.

Here are the locations where A Complete Unknown was shot and how the team re-created real-life events and locations for the screen.

New York City

The film found its central locations in Jersey City, New Jersey; Hoboken, New Jersey; Patterson, New Jersey; and New York, New York, to recreate Dylan's real-life events that happened in New York. As seen in the picture above, the exterior of New York's Hotel Chelsea was one of the places that the film was shot in.

Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, specifically in Hoboken and Jersey City, Audouy and his team discovered the ideal New York replica. Downtown Jersey City reproduced MacDougal Street and its many folk attractions, including the Gaslight Cafe, Minetta Tavern, Cafe Wha?, Café Borgia, and more. The team converted a whole block in Patterson, twenty miles northwest, to resemble Greenwich Village in the 1960s, complete with vintage vehicles.

Speaking of recreating the Greenwich Village, Auduoy told Elle Decor,

“The community was so open to filming. We were able to do a very, very elaborate full dress of a city block. That whole street was very inspiring to do because it was so immersive and layered with all of these businesses and things—the pickle vendor was selling pickles.”

New Jersey

Echo Lake Park in Mountainside, New Jersey, became the location where Audouy recreated the iconic Newport Folk Festival. This was one of the turning points in Dylan's life that established him in fame as he performed with a fully amplified band. Audouy says, speaking of how he recreated the concert scene,

“You pretty much have to take out a mortgage to go to a concert nowadays. This was a time where anybody could go see Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash or Joan Baez. There was no corporate sponsorship. You could have a picnic on the lawn. I was trying to recreate this very bucolic feeling."

Dayton Street School, Newark, New Jersey

A key moment in A Complete Unknown is when Dylan meets his idol Woody Guthrie, played by Scoot McNairy, at Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey.

The designer opened up on how difficult it was to find the perfect location for the shot as he talked about having to look for the perfect place for months and months until they finally stumbled on a historic high school, the Dayton Street School, the interiors of which became the replica of Greystone Park.

“It felt very authentic because it was cold and damp and we were shooting at the end of winter. It was a place you really wouldn't want to be institutionalized in.”

How did François Audouy recreate Bob Dylan's apartment in A Complete Unknown?

The set for Bob Dylan's apartment was perhaps the one that the team put much of their effort into as they recreated the iconic singer's personal space inspired by never-before-seen images shared with them by Dylan and by researching archival material and extracting information from Bob Dylan's museum.

Audouy recalled having the support of Bob Dylan's team, who gave them access to over a hundred pieces of photographic material to meticulously recreate the apartment.

A hybrid set, set in Hoboken, became the apartment that is shown multiple times in A Complete Unknown. Key details were paid attention to, based on whatever photos they had. It ended up being one of the key locations in the film, and one that Audouy himself is proud of. Speaking of which, the designer said,

“We basically built the set twice. We built a full interactive interior on stage, but then we did three walls into a location so Bob could open the windows and look out at his street and drink in the detail of what was happening down below.”

He added,

“You could really feel the story of a 19-year-old kid in his first apartment. There were moments in the film where I definitely had goosebumps, and the biggest one was probably when [set decorator Regina Graves] finished decorating Bob's apartment.”