World Gone Wrong contains the third song I planned to include in the Dylan-inspired war screenplay I never got around to writing. Good As I Been to You contained ‘Canadee-I-O’ and ‘Arthur McBride,’ about, respectively, a woman who poses as a sailor to make it to the New World and two cousins who get into a violent showdown with a group of military recruiters.
‘Two Soldiers’ would have been the tragedy of the bunch. It details a moment between (you guessed it) two soldiers about to ride into battle. Each promises to do the right thing by the other’s family should he be the sole survivor. Things don’t work out so well.
So let’s get this puppy cast. I’m thinking Keira Knightley in the ‘Canadee-I-O’ segment. Hell, maybe you reunite her with Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp as the boyfriend and the captain who falls for her. Nah, forget Orlando Bloom. Give Daniel Radcliffe some post-Harry Potter work.
The ‘Arthur McBride’ segment needs two protagonists who can be alternately frivolous and menacing. How about Casey Affleck and, um, Owen Wilson in a career-redefining role?
And finally today’s entry, ‘Two Soldiers.’ We need a blue-eyed Boston boy… I’d say Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio but they feel a little too old. Might want to go with a newcomer here. And as the “tall dark man who rode by his side,” Chewitel Ejiofor.
Get their agents on the line… we’re greenlighting this baby. And, please, enjoy the song.
His voice was low with pain.
“I’ll do your bidding, comrade mine,
If I ride back again.
But if you ride back and I am left,
You’ll do as much for me,
Mother, you know, must hear the news,
So write to her tenderly.
“She’s waiting at home like a patient saint,
Her fond face pale with woe.
Her heart will be broken when I am gone,
I’ll see her soon, I know.”
Just then the order came to charge,
For an instance hand touched hand.
They said, “Aye,” and away they rode,
That brave and devoted band.
Straight was the track to the top of the hill,
The rebels they shot and shelled,
Plowed furrows of death through the toiling ranks,
And guarded them as they fell.
There soon came a horrible dying yell
From heights that they could not gain,
And those whom doom and death had spared
Rode slowly back again.
But among the dead that were left on the hill
Was the boy with the curly hair.
The tall dark man who rode by his side
Lay dead beside him there.
There’s no one to write to the blue-eyed girl
The words that her lover had said.
Momma, you know, awaits the news,
And she’ll only know he’s dead.
Meet Me In Montauk 
Dylan live review from a couple of weeks back:
http://wallernotweller.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/review-hop-farm-festival-2010-w-bob-dylan-ray-davies-villagers-pete-molinari-laura-marling-the-magic-numbers/
So write the screenplay already! We can pitch it to the studios together (I’ll be your agent:))