A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : MOSS & STONE DEPT. : Stupid Bob Dylan Tricks, the Movie

Bob Dylan devotees listen up. Dylan purists, cover your eyes.

Future film audiences will see imitators of America’s rock poet performing such hybrids as a rap version of “Like a Rolling Stone” and a Dylan-Joan Baez cover of “It Ain’t Me, Babe” in an upcoming documentary from director Ken Kwapis (“Vibes,” “He Said, She Said.”)

Tentatively titled “It Ain’t Me, Babe,” the film is a look in on the contestants for the annual Bob Dylan look-alike contest held each July at the Speakeasy club in New York’s Greenwich Village. Kwapis, with producers Sarah Jackson and Coleman De Kay and a handful of New York University film school grads, just returned from Manhattan after a week’s worth of shooting the event on two 16-millimeter cameras.

“I wanted to make a film about quirky Americana,” Kwapis said of the 10th annual Bob Dylan Imitator Awards. “It seemed to me to be the most perverse idea for an event, but a wonderful thing to document.”

Fittingly, Rhino Records, the people who released two compilations of cover versions of “Louie Louie,” put up the seed money to finance the movie. They’ll shop for a distributor when the film’s finished.

Would-be Dylans competed in five categories: Folk Dylan, Amphetamine Dylan, Post-Motorcycle Accident Dylan, Born-Again Dylan and Freestyle Dylan, where the competitor can sing any Dylan song in a non-Dylan style--or any non-Dylan song in the Dylan style.

Kwapis said Freestyle was the most popular category among the 40 entrants; only one entrant sang in the Born-Again category. There were also female Dylans and a black Dylan. The favored attire was frizzed hair, dark sunglasses and a black leather jacket, Dylan’s trademark outfit from his “Blonde on Blonde” days.

Kwapis now travels to Manchester, England to shoot the European Dylan contest held this Fall.

His final thought: “My fantasy is to see the real Dylan enter and lose.”