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It was a pleasant shock to hear the news last week that Bob Dylan, America's troubadour, will receive this year's Nobel Prize in literature.

The announcement was met with praise from many people, scorn from a few critics and a flood of nostalgia that sent folks to their Spotify playlists and YouTube channels to listen to the man's many great songs.

The announcement sparked my memory of the time I was actually in the same room with Bob Dylan.

I recounted this in my still-in-progress book "The Sundance 100," which chronicles the history of the Sundance Film Festival through the stories of 100 movies that have screened there.

Here is the story of Bob Dylan's Sundance debut, "Masked and Anonymous":

Many weird movies have debuted at the Sundance Film Festival over the years, as have movies with major stars getting top billing. But for the combination of star power and sheer narrative confusion, it's hard to top "Masked and Anonymous."

The premiere screening at the Eccles Theatre in Park City was one of the most-sought-after tickets at the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. Part of that could be credited to the stellar cast, which included (in alphabetical order) Angela Bassett, Jeff Bridges, Penélope Cruz, Bruce Dern, John Goodman, Ed Harris, Val Kilmer, Jessica Lange, Mickey Rourke, Christian Slater and Luke Wilson.

But the real draw was the man at the movie's center: Bob Dylan.

The legendary singer-songwriter not only starred in "Masked and Anonymous," but wrote the script with director Larry Charles, then known for his work on Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

The movie is a muddled and incoherent ramble of Dylan's words and ideas. Dylan plays Jack Fate, a singer and oft-described "legend" just released from prison in an unnamed and war-ravaged country. Fate, the son of the terminally ill president (Richard C. Sarafian), has been booked to perform in a television extravaganza organized by a shady promoter, Uncle Sweetheart (Goodman), and a fast-talking TV producer, Nina Veronica (Lange).

Fate walks around Nina's TV studio, rehearsing his repertoire of American standards (including an weirdly irony-free rendition of "Dixie"). He is often pursued by Tom Friend (Bridges), a journalist who pumps Fate for answers to deep philosophical questions — and when Fate stays mute, which is most of the time, Friend fills in the blanks himself.

Friend, of course, is a stand-in for all the reporters who would try to ask Dylan for his secret formula and the critics who would dissect his music trying to guess the ingredients. Dylan's disdain for journalists is one of the few messages in "Masked and Anonymous" that are delivered loud and clear.

Other messages are more oblique. For example, Friend tells his religiously devout girlfriend, Pagan Lace (Cruz), "It's hard to get to the top — there's a long line at the elevator," to which Lace replies sweetly, "It doesn't matter. We'll take the stairs."

When Fate finally does speak, in the movie's final scene, the results are no less cryptic: "Sometimes it's not enough to know the meaning of things. Sometimes it's more important to know what things don't mean."

"Masked and Anonymous" is the sort of movie where Ed Harris shows up in blackface, playing a banjo. Of course, there is no sort of movie like that, except this one — and for good reason.

The Eccles Theatre audience gave Dylan a standing ovation when he appeared with Charles and the cast to introduce the movie. When the movie had ended, the applause was a good deal more tepid, because a good portion of the audience had already left. So had Dylan, who didn't hang around for the post-screening Q-and-A session.

The duty of fielding the audience's questions fell to Charles, who made it clear there was one question he refused to answer: who wrote it. (The credits featured the pseudonyms Sergei Petrov and Rene Fontaine for Dylan and Charles.) "We don't talk about the writing of this movie," Charles said curtly.

Lange, however, forgot that warning. When asked why she signed on, Lange said, "Who wouldn't want to work with these actors and speak these words that Bob Dylan wrote?"

"Masked and Anonymous" was a bomb, never playing in more than 20 theaters at a time during its 2003 theatrical run and earning just over $533,000.

The failure didn't hurt the careers of any of its principal players. Dylan published "Chronicles: Volume One," the first part of his autobiography, in 2004, and in 2006 released his next album, "Modern Times," to critical acclaim. A decade later, he received the Nobel Prize in literature.

Charles, making his feature-film debut, bounced back quickly: In 2006, he had a hit bringing Sacha Baron Cohen to the big screen with the docu-comedy "Borat: Cultural Learnings for America to Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." He followed that with Bill Maher's 2008 documentary "Religulous" and two more with Baron Cohen: "Brüno" (2009) and "The Dictator" (2012).

In 2003, the Sundance Film Festival hit sort of a high-water mark of celebrity attraction. Stars such as Holly Hunter, Robert Downey Jr., Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman appeared in big movies that year, and Matt Dillon and Salma Hayek showed their directorial debuts. Pop star Britney Spears was there, not because she had a movie at Sundance (she didn't), but because that's where the parties and the paparazzi were.

"Masked and Anonymous" remained just that to the general public, to whom the movie was quickly forgotten. For the stars attracted by Dylan's allure, though, it was irresistible. Even stars, it seems, can be starstruck.

Sean P. Means writes The Cricket in daily blog form at http://www.sltrib.com/blogs/moviecricket. Follow him on Twitter @moviecricket. Follow the progress of "The Sundance 100" on Twitter @TheSundance100.