How did Bob Dylan’s ‘A Complete Unknown’ recreate 1960s NYC? New Jersey

The times they change – and so does the neighbourhood.

For the new Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet, production designer François Audouy was tasked with painstakingly recreating the rock legend’s Greenwich Village haunts from more than 60 years ago.

But he faced a challenge. Although some of these places are still alive, downtown Manhattan does not look like it did back then.

“It lacks the patina of 1960s New York,” Audouy told The Post. “But the other thing though is it’s almost impossible to shoot a movie like this on a street where every company is going to ask for $1 million or $100,000 or more to allow the level of control that we need.”

So director James Mangold shot most of “A Complete Unknown” — in theaters Dec. 25 — on location in Jersey City and Hoboken, NJ, where he and Audouy could change whatever they wanted. Real buildings with character, even across the Hudson, were preferable to an artificial studio in LA, the designer said.

“When you’re in a business like a cafe or a restaurant and you look out the windows, you’re not looking into a green screen. You’re looking at pedestrians walking by and cars driving by,” he added. “That’s the film we were trying to make — something that was real and as grounded as possible.”

Here’s how “A Complete Unknown” hit Dylan’s New York City.

Dylan’s first apartment

While creative liberties were taken with some sets, Dylan’s first NYC apartment at 161 W. Fourth St., where he lived with girlfriend Suze Rotolo, was the most detail-obsessed project. Unfortunately, although still standing, the real thing was unusable.

“Unfortunately, the interior has been completely destroyed,” Audouy said.

So, studying photos by Don Hunstein and never-before-seen negatives by Ted Russell, the team transformed a Hoboken apartment that was physically “very close” to the original into Dylan’s famous abode.

“We filled it with all these details from the photographs, like his exact chair, the same handmade furniture, the same record player, the same typewriter,” said the designer. “We rebuilt his desks and his and all that.”

They also built a fully functional kitchen. “The stove worked, you could make a cup of coffee, you could wash the dishes, you could open the fridge, you could go to the toilet, we could pour a bath,” he said.

The room was so realistic, in fact, that Chalamet often relaxed when he wasn’t shooting to better transform into Dylan.

“Timmy would spend hours on set just getting comfortable with the room,” Audouy said. “He basically had a time machine at his disposal to do whatever he wanted. He could go back to the 1960s and go to his apartment and hang out.”

Cafe what?

A 19-year-old Dylan performed at Cafe Wha? at 115 MacDougal St. in 1961 shortly after he arrived from Minnesota and he was still nobody. Guitar in hand, he sang some Woody Guthrie songs to a rapturous response.

The music club has been chugging along since it was founded in 1959. But so much of its West Village area is visibly different — for example, the Kettle of Fish bar has since moved to Christopher Street — that Audouy’s team was forced to rebuild the iconic Jersey facade Avenue in Jersey City.

“The Jersey Hub,” Audouy called it.

“That corner was all based on research,” said the designer. “We built Cafe Bazaar across the street from it, which no longer exists … We had Cafe Figaro, which was an inside-out building, and Kedel of Fish.”

Gas light

You can still visit the underground coffeehouse and folk club where Dylan recorded “Live at the Gaslight 1962.” Kind of. The place closed its doors in 1971. Now the establishment at 116 MacDougal is the cocktail bar Up & Up. Above it sits a tattoo parlor. So Audouy had to build the biz.

However, he was more concerned with capturing a mood than delivering a picture-perfect replica.

“We wanted to have a Gaslight that felt like Gaslight,” he said. “But then we had other sets that we actually decided to make as close to the real thing as possible, like Columbia Records and Bob’s apartment.”

To achieve the essential underground atmosphere, he found a legal basement in one city and created an entrance in another.

“We shot in an old Washington Elks lodge in Hoboken, which had big old bones and hadn’t been updated in … ever,” he said. “And in the basement there was a really good bar, which we turned into Gaslight as closely as possible.”

The front was then set up at the Jersey Hub. The audience watches as Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) descends the Gaslight stairs to find Chalamet’s Dylan playing on stage.

“You see the sign and you get a feel for it,” Audouy said of the perfectly smooth transition from outdoors to indoors. “It’s not like we’re doing a ‘Seinfeld’ episode.”