The Lost Weekend: A Love Story

Beatles fans, all your anger and resentment focused on Yoko Ono is about to be vindicated. It turns out, her influence on John Lennon was maybe even worse than you thought, at least according to May Pang. She ought to know. She was Lennon’s great lost love—and it was Ono herself who got them together. Pang chronicles her 18-month romance with Lennon in Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman, & Stuart Samuels’ The Lost Weekend, which has a special nationwide Iconic Events screening this Thursday night.

Nobody denies Pang’s relationship with Lennon, not even Ono. Pang already told her story in her memoirs, whose publishers sent her on considerable publicity tours, as viewers can tell from the talk show footage incorporated into the doc. It all started in 1970, which was a very different era. A teen like Pang could just knock on the door of Apple Records and talk her way into an entry level job. From there, she was hired by Lennon and Ono to be their personal assistant, working on their experimental films nobody ever wanted to watch.

Sensing Lennon was getting a little restless, Ono told Pang to have tryst with Lennon, because she assumed she could control their young assistant. However, a lot more developed between them than a quick and dirty weekend. It turns out, they had real feelings for each other—and Pang was much better for Lennon than Ono ever was.

This film will pretty much damn Ono in the eyes of Beatles fans, because she explicitly explains how Ono tried to isolate John Lennon from his son Julian, while forcing Pang to do her dirty work. In contrast, while he was with Pang, Lennon regularly saw and spoke with his oldest son, as Julian Lennon himself confirms on-screen. In fact, Julian Lennon is one of the major talking heads seen throughout the film, giving Pang credit for maintaining a life-long relationship with both himself and his mother (Lennon’s first wife).

We also hear from archival interview footage that Lennon started to see Paul and Linda McCartney socially again while he was with Pang. Had he stayed with Pang, it is easy to imagine (so to speak) the possibility of a Beatles reunion. Plus, the music he produced during their time together was less didactic and much more fun to listen to. Yet, somehow Ono exerted a Svengali-like hold over Lennon, at least when she was close enough to exert her evil powers of mesmerism, metaphorically speaking.

The Beatles: Yellow Submarine, Restored & Re-Released

Only a true cultural milestone could inspire licensed toys from Legos and Hot Wheels, as well as a reference in a taunting letter from the Zodiac Killer. As their movies go, the Beatles were relatively okay with it. It was fifty years ago today, or rather July 17^th that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the original Fab Four saved Pepperland from the Blue Meanies in The Beatles: Yellow Submarine (trailer here), directed by George Dunning, which opens today at the IFC Center in a fresh new 4K restoration, commemorating it 50^th anniversary.

For Millennials out there, the Beatles were sort of like the Monkees, but they were British. They were extremely popular while they were together, but its not like they were Rutles, mind you. Their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, might be the greatest rock & roll movie ever, but it was a tough act to follow-up. At the time, they had rather mixed feelings regarding Help! and Magical Mystery Tour, so they reportedly agreed to an animated film as an easy way to fulfill their contract. However, the look of the picture, designed by Heinz Edelmann (and not Peter Max, as is commonly assumed), perfectly fit the band’s growing allegiance to the counter-culture.

The story is loose and not especially concerned with logic or continuity, but it is really just a clothesline on which to hang the trippy visuals and some eternally catchy Beatles tunes. Idyllic Pepperland has been invaded by the music-hating Blue Meanies, so the Lord Mayor dispatches Old Fred, a salty old mariner, to find help in the Yellow Submarine. Coming up in Liverpool, Fred chances upon a brooding Ringo [Starr], who volunteers himself and his three mates. Presumably, they will chase out the Blue Meanies using music, but they never really discus a plan, per se.

Along the way, the Beatles sing “All Together Now,” pick up Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D., the “Nowhere Man,” and get separated from Fred and the yellow sub, before inevitably coming together once more, naturally. There are also plenty of quotes from previous Beatles songs, in addition to the proper musical numbers, which include greatest hits from Revolver (the title tune and “Eleanor Rigby”) and Sgt. Pepper (the albums’ title track and “When I’m Sixty-Four”), as well as a few originals.

As an animated film, Yellow Submarine looks very much like a product of its time—in fact its flying glove and sparkling rainbows truly helped establish the visual vocabulary of the era. The patchwork screenplay, including contributions from future Love Story scribe Erich Segal (who was a former classmate of Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams, the acknowledged inspiration for the Nowhere Man), is all over the place, but it shrewdly took a page from Hard Day’s Night by showcasing the playful goofiness of the Beatles personalities.

In fact, there is something appealingly innocent about Yellow Submarine, harkening back to a time when animation for adults did not necessarily entail adult subject matter. The film is still G-rated, but a lot of the sly puns and references are sure to be lost on children. Frankly, it probably also helps to have a basic grounding in Beatlemania. The truth is, song like “When I’m Sixty-Four” take on an additional significance when you know the band’s dramatic history. Recommended as vicarious nostalgia for an era that wasn’t as good as its PR cracks it up to be, Yellow Submarine starts a special engagement today (7/9) in New York, at the IFC Center.

A Hard Day’s Night: Meet the Beatles, There are Four of Them

Oddly, nobody actually says the word “Beatles” in their first movie. It’s not like anyone needed to. It was clearly emblazoned across Ringo’s bass drum. Of course, just about everyone knew who they were. Beatlemania was already a full-fledged phenomenon that would be even further stoked with the initial release of Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (trailer here). Digitally restored by Janus Films in time for its fiftieth anniversary, Lester’s iconic introduction to the band re-releases this Friday at New York’s Film Forum.

If you are still trying to figure out if the four lads from Liverpool were mods or rockers, you will not get a straight answer in AHDN, but that is all part of its charm. Instead, the Beatles just sort of be themselves as they gracefully deal with the challenges of superstardom, while trying to keep Paul’s grandfather out of trouble (his other grandfather). They run from hordes of screaming fans, play sound-checks, accidentally get arrested, and generally riff off each other. It is all still breezy fun fifty years later thanks to the wit and easy charm of Alun Owens’ screenplay and the Beatles themselves.

Looking back at AHDN, it is remarkable how profoundly it shaped our perceptions of the Beatles’ personas: George is the cerebral one, John is the snarky one, Paul is a bit of a pushover, and Ringo is a goof. It also established a deceptively formula format that has proved exceedingly difficult to emulate, as a host of meet the band box-office duds proved (Spice World, anyone?). To be fair, it is hard to compete with enduring original songs like the title smash hit, “All My Loving,” “And I Love Her,” “I Should Have Known Better,” and “She Loves You.”

Lester and the Fab Four also had a not-so-secret weapon in veteran comedic character actor Wilfrid Brambell, who was then nearly as recognizable as the Beatles from his leading role in the hit sitcom Steptoe and Son (remade in America as Sanford and Son). He has a way of mugging that seems rather dryly amusing. He also demonstrates perfect timing playing off the Lads. Likewise, Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans do a Mutt-and-Jeff routine as characters based on the Beatles’ personal assistant and road manager that nicely balances broad rubber-faced comedy with a kind of hyper-real sense of what it must have been like to ride the Beatles whirlwind.

AHDN provides a time-capsule of mid-1960s London, where you could buy milk from vending machines and television broadcasts involves transistors and dials. Yet, it still feels fresh and unspoiled. It is rather mind-boggling to suggest this, but AHDN would be a fine way for parents to introduce their children to the Beatles, because despite their mischievous inclinations, they essentially come across as good kids. More importantly, it is just funny in a good-hearted way and rocks (innocently and politely). It is a true classic that looks and sounds great after Janus’s careful 4K restoration. Highly recommended for any serious film lover, A Hard Day’s Night opens this Friday (7/4) at Film Forum.

Get Back on the Bus: The Magical Mystery Tour Returns

It was a film produced in psychedelic color that debuted on BBC1 at a time when most British televisions were black and white.  It was programmed for Boxing Day, a traditional evening of family television viewing, guaranteeing those least inclined to appreciate a spot of hippy goofiness were most likely to see it.  Due to its disastrous reception, many Beatles fans only know The Magical Mystery Tour as the bestselling album.  After years of obscurity, the film has been re-released for public consumption, even returning to broadcast television with a special presentation this Friday on PBS’s Great Performances (promo here) to be followed by the premiere of Francis Hanly’s behind-the-scenes documentary Magical Mystery Tour Revisited.

The plot, such as it is, will hardly matter to diehard Beatles fans.  The real attraction is the music, including the band’s only video performance of “I Am the Walrus,” done in precisely the style one might expect.  The audience follows the day-glo tour bus as it makes a series of surprise stops throughout the English countryside.  Ringo Starr plays Richard Starkey who takes his recently bereaved Aunt Jessie on the tour, bickering like cats and dogs every step of the way.  The other three lads are also on the tour, essentially playing unnamed versions of themselves, as well as a pack of trickster wizards.  Stops will include a visit to an army recruiting station, a chaotic marathon, a brief swing through a London strip club, with a number of wacky dream interludes in between.

Seen with contemporary eyes, MMT, directed by the Fab Four with the assistance of former Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Knowles, looks exactly like the trippy jokiness we would expect from the post-Pepper Beatles.  Sort of like a series of Python sketches stitched together, but not nearly as consistently funny, it makes perfect sense to find Terry Gilliam singing its praises in Revisited.  Still, the film itself very definitely feels like a giddy time-capsule from a more innocent age when Postmodernism was little more than glint in the eye of the French intelligentsia.

At just under an hour’s running time, MMT offers viewers the title song, “Fool on the Hill,” “Your Mother Should Know,” and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band performing “Death Cab for Cutie” amidst its improvised tomfoolery.  Frankly, the latter number might be the most memorable, since it accompanies a PBS-safe striptease.  Ironically, the making-of-program clocks in at almost exactly the same length.  We hear from both surviving Beatles as well as Martin Scorsese, who evidently saw every movie ever made when he was a teenager and influenced by everyone of them.  Hanly also incorporates some archival footage of John Lennon and George Harrison.  Everyone seems to credit or blame Paul McCartney with the original concept for MMT, but that hardly makes any sense, since “Revolution #9” played backwards clearly implies he died before 1967.

MMT is neither the affront to good taste many argued at the time, nor the lost masterpiece most fans will be hoping for.  It is the product of its time, well in keeping with the playful personas carefully crafted by the Beatles.  An amusing but minor film, it is certainly worth fans’ time for the music and to satisfy their curiosity when it airs on free TV this Friday (12/14), along with Hanly’s companion film, as part of the current season of Great Performances.