Late last week, a clip from Todd Haynes‘ experimental Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There appeared on YouTube, and some bloggers spent the weekend debating whether or not to post it on their own sites. It’s the first upload for YouTube user adin1978, but the clip–which depicts a run-in between Dylan (played in this scene by Cate Blanchett) and Allen Ginsberg, played by comedian David Cross–bears a timecode stamp at the bottom, which means it was probably leaked by someone very close to the film. There’s a possibility that this was done with Haynes’ consent, to test early web buzz, but being that this is the first real glimpse of the film we’ve seen, there’s a also a solid chance that the clip was leaked against the filmmakers’ wishes.

Yesterday, Ray Pride posted on Movie City Indie about his decision not to embed the clip, but linked to a post by Scott Macaulay at the FILMMAKER blog which allegedly did contain the clip. “For all I know this is an early viral transmission intended to stoke interest in the movie by getting run on sites like this one. So, I’m embedding it below unless I hear otherwise,” Macaulay wrote. As of this morning, that blog post no longer exists.

There’s no indication whether Macaulay second-guessed his decision and removed the clip himself, or if he did so in response to a request from the filmmakers. But, the clip itself has not been removed from YouTube (which is usually the first step copyright holders take when their material has been distributed against their will), and as of this morning, it’s still embedded on a number of sites. I’m going to take my chances and embed the clip here, for two reasons: a) YouTube makes it incredibly easy for unhappy copyright holders to remove their work from the site, so anything that is allowed to stay up for several days, pirated or not, is fair game for bloggers to disseminate; and b) David Cross’s interpretation of Ginsberg deserves to be seen by as many eyes as possible.