The Beatles Films Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Sam Mendes' four Beatles biopics: movie release and casting discussion Mar 18, 2024

Show notes

With the announcement that Sam Mendes is to direct four Beatles biopic films for release in 2027, one from each of the perspectives of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr, it'd be remiss of us not to speculate wildly about what this might involve. Will it tell the same story four times? Will bits of it only be told from one Beatle's perspective? Will it actually just be a bit more metaphysical than that, bypassing the need for narrative realism? Will it be like Beatles Peep Show? God, we hope so. Join us as we discuss all this, plus thoughts on who should play who, and the mechanics of shooting and releasing four films simultaneously then releasing them all within 12 months of each other. And a reminder to Sam Mendes that we are very much available as creative consultants for a modest fee.

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.

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Pipes of Peace video (40th anniversary Christmas special) Dec 25, 2023

Show notes

Merry Christmas! Here's a festive gift marking 40 years since Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace video, which recreates the 1914 Christmas Day truce on the Western Front of World War 1. How was this video turned around fast enough to be aired on the BBC six days after shooting? Has Paul got the acting bug after spending half of 1983 shooting Give My Regards to Broad Street? Does his decision to play both the English and the German soldier lend a sense of shared humanity and emphasise the futility of war? (Seriously, stay with us here.) And why hasn't the song endured as a peace anthem in the last 40 years, in the way that Give Peace a Chance has?

We used a clip of the charity record He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother by The Justice Collective in this episode, and so we've made a donation to The Hillsborough Survivors Support Alliance. You can donate here if you'd like to: https://www.gofundme.com/f/1qf2s20740

Thanks so much for listening in 2023. We've loved making these podcasts and we're very grateful for all the positive feedback we get. If you've enjoyed any of them, we'd really appreciate it if you gave us a five-star rating in your podcast app. It helps people find us. See you again in 2024.

Watch the Pipes of Peace video: https://youtu.be/B3q4Up5ugTc
Paul McCartney and George Martin being interviewed at the AIR Studios mixing desk by Russell Harty, 14 December 1983: https://youtu.be/xabqb5Y6Mg0
All Together Now by The Farm: https://youtu.be/iRgtzZ-mOQo
He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother by The Justice Collective, featuring a guitar and a vocal line by Paul: https://youtu.be/Ye4cELYLzJM
Paul McCartney performing Freedom: https://youtu.be/zFFLlpC9f9Q

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

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Let it Be (part 2) Dec 18, 2023

Show notes

To finish off our fourth season, thrill as our takes on why George Harrison is laughing when Ringo Starr starts playing Octopus's Garden differ slightly. Later we discuss how Let it Be's pacing is affected by showing the finalised songs in full. Would it defeat the purpose to have done this differently? Plus, is John Lennon's claim that the film was set up to make the other Beatles look like sidemen for Paul McCartney justified, given how Let it Be, The Long and Winding Road and Two Of Us are shot almost like music videos with Paul the focus? We talk about how forward-thinking Michael Lindsay-Hogg's approach was to filming the rooftop gig, and about how this was maybe underappreciated until Get Back revealed the extent of it, and about whether there's now any point releasing a remastered version: could audiences be blamed for receiving it like a shorter Get Back? (NOTE this episode was recorded and released about five months before the restored version came out.)

This episode and part 1 are both based on our viewing of Let it Be in its original form, or close to it, ie a bootleg we found online. Since we recorded this it has of course now been restored and re-released on Disney+, and we've got a short bonus episode discussing the restored version later in this feed.

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

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Let it Be (part 1) Dec 11, 2023

Show notes

Now is the winter of our discontent: or is it? Michael Lindsay-Hogg's Let it Be is widely thought a miserable affair, documenting arguments and the breakup of the Beatles. But watching it afresh after Peter Jackson's Get Back in 2021, it doesn't feel so much like that. We ask whether the widespread consensus that it's a negative depiction is actually more a failure of collective memory. What was it really set George Harrison off when he told Paul McCartney "Well, I'll play whatever you want me to play"? And what do we make of Lindsay-Hogg's decision not to let you hear any of the songs in full until the end?

This episode and part 2 are both based on our viewing of Let it Be in its original form, or close to it, ie a bootleg we found online. Since we recorded this it has of course now been restored and re-released on Disney+, and we've got a short bonus episode discussing the restored version later in this feed.
The clip we mention of George Harrison talking to George Martin in the studio is from the Hey Jude sessions, and you can see it at https://youtu.be/nb8Ue3mk0Qo

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

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Stuart Sutcliffe: The Lost Beatle Dec 04, 2023

Show notes

This 2005 BBC Four documentary, narrated by Paul Morley and featuring contributions from Astrid Kirchherr, Pauline Sutcliffe, Tony Sheridan, Rod Murray and Horst Fascher, looks at the life of fifth Beatle Stuart Sutcliffe before his tragic death at 21. It makes the case that he would’ve been a significant artist in his own right, but spends a lot of its time looking at his work with the Beatles, so we discuss how well it manages to fulfil its brief.

It’s also not the only BBC documentary of this period to be a bit coy about the idea of John Lennon having had a sexual relationship with a man (see also our episode on The Brian Epstein Story), and we ask how helpful this approach is and examine the techniques the film uses to further the suggestion.

Watch the film free on YouTube: https://youtu.be/k1Yrwyfk2NQ
Narrator Paul Morley is a regular figure on BBC pop music documentaries. He’s on record as not being a Beatles fan, and fair enough, but perhaps if you’re writing articles for the Guardian – albeit interesting and well-argued ones – about how the world wouldn’t be any different without them, you’re not the best candidate to voiceover documentaries about them: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/06/showing-off-the-beatles
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499080/

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

Twitter https://twitter.com/beatlesfilmpod
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Mad Men: Lady Lazarus (featuring Tomorrow Never Knows) Nov 27, 2023

Show notes

Mad Men's Matthew Weiner paid $250,000 to use the Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows in season 5, episode 8, "Lady Lazarus". We talk about the licensing of Beatles music in film and TV, which is also referenced in the episode, where the agency is trying to find a song for a Hard Day's Night parody advert. This episode is in August 1966 and we discuss how the characters are feeling the paranoia of the sixties closing in on them. America is tense and chaotic: the Richard Speck murders in Chicago and the Texas University sniper shootings have just happened, just as the Beatles are flying in to protests because of John Lennon's "bigger than Jesus" comments.

As for Don Draper, his young wife has left copywriting to become an actor, and she's bought him a copy of Revolver to play while she goes out to a class. Start with the last track, she says. Don sits in his chair, kicks off his shoes, and hears the sound of a generation about to leave him behind.

Watch Mad Men: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/tv-series/mad-men
Don Draper listens to Tomorrow Never Knows: https://youtu.be/6OquASU1y5A
The song Don can’t tell from the Beatles is September in the Rain by The Wedgwoods: https://youtu.be/IFCqKSrrMJQ
And in fairness he's not far off: the Beatles did it in the Decca audition: https://youtu.be/EElKJao9cmA
The University of Texas tower shootings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting
The Richard Speck murders: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Speck
The book Pete Campbell reads, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Crying_of_Lot_49/Py5bngEACAAJ
The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_New_York_Trilogy/VRfe-QG_ls4C
Read Ed's 2012 review of Mad Men season 5: https://www.theshiznit.co.uk/review/mad-men-season-five.php

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

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Paul McCartney: In the World Tonight Nov 20, 2023

Show notes

First shown in May 1997 on VH1 and ITV, Geoff Wonfor's promotional documentary for Paul McCartney's Flaming Pie album is a bit of a puff piece, but an interesting one. For context, this is all shot when Linda McCartney is receiving cancer treatment, which the public doesn't know about. We talk about how the film and the album might give insights into Paul's state of mind, and what sort of future he's contemplating.

Watch the film: https://youtu.be/-BhnIClthqQ
Watch the video for the Smokin' Mojo Filters' cover of Come Together, featuring Paul Weller, Noel Gallagher, Steve Cradock, Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, and Paul, Linda, Stella and Mary McCartney: https://youtu.be/IK0sMC5ntpc
Read about the David Blaine incident in 2003: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/sep/19/marketingandpr
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0168065/

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

Twitter https://twitter.com/beatlesfilmpod
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The Compleat Beatles Nov 13, 2023

Show notes

Directed by rock doc specialist Patrick Montgomery, 1982's The Compleat Beatles still represents the only real attempt at a feature length documentary covering their whole career, and was a huge success in the early days of the home VHS market. It was released at a time when there was renewed interest in the band after John Lennon's murder, and in the 20-year anniversary of Love Me Do, alongside a lot of other Beatles products.

It's a different beast to The Beatles Anthology, but how does it measure up? We talk about whether it was the original source for some of the best known Beatle stories, how its narration by Malcolm McDowell gives it gravitas, or tries to, and what the impact is of featuring ancillary characters from the Beatles' early story, like Allan Williams, Tony Sheridan and Horst Fascher. And the film's content is very much led by its talking heads, in particular George Martin, so we examine what effect that has.

Watch The Compleat Beatles: https://archive.org/details/the-compleat-beatles-1982
Ed wrongly calls the publishers of Love Me Do and PS I Love You "Ardwood & Beechmore"; yes, they were of course Ardmore & Beechwood. Don't write in.
Here's the screaming girl Ed mentions, from the Washington Coliseum gig, 11 February 1964: https://youtu.be/W3QG37K3h94

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

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Now and Then: The Last Beatles Song music video and documentary Nov 04, 2023

Show notes

Peter Jackson's music video for Now and Then, and the 12-minute short documentary film by Oliver Murray, Now and Then: The Last Beatles Song, were both released this week.

What do we think of the techniques used, and what does the amount of restored footage point to? Plus! Is the song a Beatles song? If a song features all four Beatles, does it automatically sound Beatley? And AI: will it kill us all?

Watch the music video: https://youtu.be/Opxhh9Oh3rg
Watch Now and Then: The Last Beatles Song: https://youtu.be/APJAQoSCwuA
If you're in the UK listen to the BBC radio documentary we mention, "Eras: The Beatles". This is the Now and Then episode which contains longer versions of the voiceovers in the documentary, among other things: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001rzkp
The two songs we reference as examples of self-consciously Beatley production are George Harrison's When We Was Fab https://youtu.be/AVu6nPTVbBQ and Tears for Fears' Sowing the Seeds of Love: https://youtu.be/VAtGOESO7W8

Meet the Beatles Films Podcast

But tomorrow may rain, so you'll follow us on:

Twitter https://twitter.com/beatlesfilmpod
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Rubber Soul Oct 30, 2023

Show notes

Jon Lefkovitz's 2014 film Rubber Soul recreates – very faithfully – John Lennon and Yoko Ono's 1970 Rolling Stone and 1980 Playboy interviews, juxtaposing them and showing how John's thoughts on issues like drugs, fame and The Beatles changed over the intervening decade. We talk about the artistic value of recreating something exactly, and how that might play into Beatles fans' expectations and desires when seeing the band played on film by actors.

It also raises questions about the significance of the rock star interview, and John's interviews in particular. His statements in these conversations were accorded great importance, and Jann Wenner's 1970 interview in particular had a huge influence on public perceptions of Lennon and Paul McCartney for decades to come, but given John's habit of stating differing opinions from one day to the next, maybe interviews with stars shouldn't be treated with such reverence?

Watch the film for free: https://youtu.be/kB8Z1LRBmTA
The Rolling Stone interview: https://youtu.be/5ZhBQRzBAa8
Jann Wenner's Lennon Remembers: https://g.co/kgs/rkV5V5
The Playboy interviews: https://youtu.be/PRDfBGagFkU
David Sheff's All We Are Saying: https://g.co/kgs/Qs8fR7
Important cow facts Ed can't quite recall: John and Yoko bought a herd of Holstein dairy cows with their upstate New York farm in 1978 (where Yoko now lives full time), and raked in money from them. One cow sold for $250,000.
William Mann's "Aeolian cadence" 1963 Beatles review for The Times: https://www.beatlesbible.com/1963/12/27/the-times-what-songs-the-beatles-sang-by-william-mann/ (which refers to Not a Second Time, not I'll Be Back)
We mention a few other films. Gus Van Sant's 1998 shot-for-shot remake of Psycho; Locke, a Tom Hardy film that takes place entirely in one car; Buried, the Ryan Reynolds film that takes place in a coffin; Disney+ series The Bear; and the one-take horror film Matt mentions is 2011's Silent House.
Watch Beautiful Boy, about David Sheff and his son: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/beautiful-boy