Academy Award for Things Have Changed

Curtis Hanson's film Wonder Boys starred Michael Douglas as a stalled novelist and teacher, and Dylan wrote the song to suit its rueful, worn-out mood. The track pairs a loping groove with a narrator who sounds detached and slightly amused by his own decline, close in spirit to the voice of Time Out of Mind. When the Oscar was awarded in 2001 he was on tour in Australia, so he performed the song by satellite link from there. Afterward he kept the statuette with him on the road and often placed it on an amplifier or the stage, a small joke repeated night after night. The award brought his writing to a wide new audience and set the stage for the album that followed later that year, Love and Theft.