All I know about the US Thanksgiving (ours is at another date), I learned via American movies and tv shows, so basically I imagine a crossover between
The Addams Family and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Enjoy, American friends!
Meanwhile, a streaming service I had never heard of, Pluto tv, has come to the rescue of German Star Trek: Discovery fans and made a deal with Paramount, so as of this night, yours truly will be able to watch legally again. I also reactived my Disney Plus account and paid the Mouse for a month, since yesterday was the debut of Peter Jackson's three part documentary
Get Back based on those gazillion of hours of footage from which which Michael Lindsay-Hogg, the original director, had to assemble the film
Let it Be after the Beatles' break-up. Last night I watched part 1. Now it has been decades, literally, since I watched the
Let it Be film, on a bad video during a fannish convention of sorts in Cologne, but since then I've read various transcriptions made by those dedicated souls ready to listen to the hours and hours of audio footage which were available in various corners of the internet, plus of course the biographies quote a lot from this. Meaning the content isn't exactly new to me, but the way of assembling it is.
Scattered thoughts on part 1:
- well, kudos to Team Jackson on a technical level alone. The visual and audio quality is incredible, especially compared with those grainy images I remember from that long ago video!
- directorial choices by Peter Jackson: starting with a
The Beatles in Five Minutes overview, which probably makes sense, given that unlike the original audience, the majority of today's viewers
can't be relied upon to know their George Martin from their Magic Alex, perish the thought. On a similar thoughtful note, whenever someone shows up, we get subtitles about who this person is. This includes Mal Evans the roadie and various Indian friends of George's. Also, when the Beatles play
Rock and Roll Music by Chuck Berry, Jackson doesn't just mention by subtitle that this was their opening number during the 1966 tour, the last tour they did, but intercuts the playing then concert footage with the playing at Twickenham Studios now, which is a clever way of bringing some variety into the location. Also, when we see Linda (Eastman, later McCartney) making photographs, we see those pictures she took as well. Incidentally, thanks to whichever long ago camera man decided to film Linda taking those pictures. She's intent and very focused, and you can see this was her calling, not a hobby.
- also a directorial choice: creating a narrative up to George's walkout that I don't remember being there this clearly in
Let it Be the movie, which depicts George (and everyone else) as in the doldrums from day 1, whereas in Jackson's version through the more light hearted moments early on, the choice to show George presenting
All Things Must Pass to little effect, and the intercutting between an increasingly upset George and the Lennon/McCartney interplay, it builds up to this.
- wow, everyone looks young. I used to think this only about the early Beatles, but then I was much, much younger when last watching the 1969 footage, whereas now I'm 52 years old, and looking as those guys who are, as Michael Lindsay-Hogg observes, "all 28", including him, wow, are they young. (Except Ringo. For some reason, Ringo looks middle-aged already. And today still looks that way.)
- So many of the people depicted are dead - not solely John and George, but also Linda, Maureen (Ringo's first wife), George Martin, Mal Evans, Neil Aspinall... there is an eerie poignancy seeing them all resurrected on screen. Especially Mal Evans the roadie, whom I knew only via biographies and a very few photos, and whom Peter Jackson presents as a character with much screen time. You don't just see him carrying stuff for the group, you see him interacting with Paul in particular, scribbling down lyrics, encouraging, smiling, cheering up, and you get a sense of what the relationship was like back then.
- the lengthy and intense-looking Yoko and Linda conversation from which we don't have the audio: the kind of thing that begs for RPF
- having read
Michael Lindsay-Hogg's very entertaining memoirs: it's true, he looks quite a bit like the young Orson Welles, but the illusion is scattered as soon as he opens his mouth and has a very different voice. Orson W. is actually brought up as Michael, determined cheerleader or not, feels reminded of his behavior during the stage version of
Chimes at Midnight by the the increasingly obvious dysfunction amidst the Fab Four, and no wonder
- this said, Jackson's version does a great job showing that it wasn't misery all the time even this late into the band history but that the joking mode was actually their default still; it's just that this isn't enough anymore for covering the increasing differences
- providing the surrounding footage of the snippy George & Paul conversation that made it into
Let it Be makes a great deal of difference in that both George comes across as far less hostile and Paul as far more desperate and open (I was familiar with "I can hear myself annoying you", but not with "I'm scared" ), and the pressure of being stuck with being the guy who says "come on, let's work", because Brian Epstein is dead and none of the others is going to do it really comes across this way
- you do get a good sense of the creative musical process, with the various melody snippets and riffs being all there is at the start and then, slowly, becoming songs, through various mistrials
- and one sequence of absolute magic, where I'm retrospectively amazed it wasn't in the original movie, which is Paul McCartney strumming his guitar and plucking some basic notes and nonsense words while George and Ringo listen at first looking indifferent, and then before our eyes and ears
Get Back comes into being (while you can see the previously moody George's eyes light up, smile and his feet tapping along); all this in a matter of uninterrupted minutes, and watching, I feel like Dustin Hoffmann must have when observing Paul coming up with a melody on the spot during a dinner party, shouting "he's doing it, he's doing it!" at the rest of the guests
- in addition to material which will end up on
Let it Be the album, there's also a lot of Paul's future material for
Abbey Road, George's
All Things Must Pass, as mentioned, and various Lennon and McCartney solo songs from their early solo albums: everyone might be in crisis, but creatively, they were on a high
- all this said, I will need those 24 hours of break before watching the next episode (all episodes have Jacksonian length, mind), because there's only so much riffing you can listen to per day if not a musician.
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