No word on whether Bob Dylan’s lawyers got to see the most recent version of Factory Girl, such as it is, before its release last week (for Sienna Miller’s Oscar consideration only; the beleaguered biopic is still not finished), but they should probably just stick to protecting his music copyrights. The recent legal brouhaha was over Dylan’s unflattering depiction in the film as the catalyst for Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick’s slide into drugs, mental illness, and suicide, which Dylan and his people hotly deny. The Edie Sedgwick entry in Michael Gray’s The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia says, “There’s no evidence – and no real grounds to suppose – that Dylan and Edie had any personal relationship at all, let alone a significant one,” and goes on to say that the only connection lies in the rumor that she was the titular “blonde on blonde” from Dylan’s 1966 double album and is seen whispering in his ear in a photo on the album’s foldout sleeve.
But perhaps Dylan’s lawyers got to Gray, too, before publication, because The Weinstein Company has videotaped testimony from Edie’s brother Jonathan Sedgwick supporting the story that she was madly in love with the folksinger and was destroyed after she aborted his baby and he dumped her. On the tape, he says: “She told me she was totally in love with him…she also explained…she lost a child which she claims was Bob Dylan’s child. She had gotten into an insane asylum, and she was so wacked out on drugs that they aborted her because the child would’ve been just strung out…she said that was the saddest moment of her life.” (Page Six) (BBC News)