GET BACK Takes LET IT BE And Turns It Into A Beatles Extravaganza

Now streaming exclusively on Disney Plus:

The BEATLES: GET BACK 
(Dir. Peter Jackson, 2021)

In the 1978 Beatles parody, All You Need is Lunch, narrator, Monty Python’s Eric Idle announced that “in the midst of all this public bickering, Let it Rot was released as a film, an album, and a lawsuit.”

But while this three-part documentary doesn’t touch on any of the legalities surrounding the project, Idle’s spoof acknowledges that for a long time there’s been a dark cloud hovering above the Beatles’ original swan song. 

 

Now, the reason for this reputation comes down to the oft told narrative that the Beatles went into the GET BACK/LET IT BE production hating each other, suffered dreary sessions with mediocre material, and the film is a sloppy, badly edited rockumentary. 

 

Although the film was released in the early ‘80s on Beta, VHS, and laserdisc, it soon went out of print was never re-issued on DVD, Blu ray, or any home video format. The word is that Paul McCartney has regularly blocked re-issues of LET IT BE, but it should be noted that George Harrison, John Lennon, and Ringo Starr also despised the film.

 

So after 40 years, we’ve got this delicious docu-series that shapes the Michael Lindsay-Hogg shot footage into a trilogy treasure trove of revelatory footage. The story is now an accessible breakdown of the Beatles’ final days that at times makes us feel like we’re in the same room as the Fab Four.

 

Each entry begins with this disclaimer: “The GET BACK project in January 1969 produced over 60 hours of film footage, and more than 150 hours of studio recordings.” 

 

Part 1 kicks off with a 10-minute montage of old Beatles footage to give us their backstory leading up to 1969. This recap will surely be seen as redundant to many as these are tales well told, but nonetheless they get us to speed.

We join the Beatles as they rehearse at Twickenham Film Studios, where the plan is for the group to write, rehearse, and play live 14 new songs in two weeks for a TV special. Their time is short because the studio is due to be used for the shooting of THE MAGIC CHRISTIAN, starring Ringo and Peter Sellers. As they sit in front of Ringo’s drums, the boys appear to be in good spirits as they joke around and jam on such tunes as “I’ve Got a Feeling” and “Don’t Like Me Down.”

One of the most famous bits from the LET IT BE movie is when George and Paul seemingly have a scuffle in which George says “I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play. Or I won't play at all, if you don't want me to play.” While it played as a harsh moment in Hogg’s film, we get to see it in full context, and understand that it was simply band bickering.

 

After an hour and a half of Beatle babbling (funny that George seems to be the most vocal in this first segment), working out songs, some of which are destined to later solo albums, covers of tunes by Dylan, Chuck Berry, Ben E.King, and even Hank Williams, the film builds up to a cliff hanger. One the members ups and quits (no Spoilers).

 

Part 2 gets even juicier as we hear a private conversation of John and Paul recorded by the filmmakers with a hidden microphone in a flower pot. This is followed by more of the same as the boys flesh the new songs out (expect a lot of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Two of Us,” and, of course, the title tune), engage in witty chats, and a pop-in by Peter Sellers, but it’s a bit of a let-down as he barely says anything. The Beatles then take their operations to familiar ground, the studio at Apple Headquarters, but not before Paul lays down a demo of “Oh, Darling” as the lights go out. Also, the TV special concept is abandoned.

 

But despite the change in scenery, the Beatles intend to go forward with their plan of recording songs without edits or overdubs, and now the idea to use the footage for a feature film. So as the lads from Liverpool goof around in the studio, the day that they need to come up with a big finale for the film looms nearer. So after considering several locations, they decide on the rooftop at Apple for their grand conclusion.

 

This brings us to Part 3, which contains the meat of the matter: the Apple rooftop performance – one of the most famous farewells in rock history, first though we’ve got to go through well over an hour of more studio stuff, but since this includes film of the Beatles cutting the version that appears on the album, Let it Be, it’s okay by me.”

Now, having seen LET IT BE numerous times, I don’t think it’s as doom and gloom some folks think, but Jackson’s new fangled remix is a massive improvement. This is apparent in the rooftop climax, which now can be seen as a joyous concert after the Beatles’ fruitful time in the studio. Without the time limitation, Jackson is able to use more songs, and make some amusing drama out of the cops that showed up to try shut down the gig. Also the people on the street get some funny moments answering the interviewer’s questions.

Jackson really pulled it off here. It seems his work on his first doc, the excellent 2018 war documentary THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD, proved to him where he could go in interpreting history. 

 

While neither LET IT BE nor GET BACK contain my favorite batch of Beatles songs, I have a new perspective on the material from seeing the Beatles working on songs, bullshitting with each other, and experiencing those precious moments when inspiration takes hold. Just be prepared for hours and hours of that. A lot of folks who aren’t hardcore Beatles fans, may find GET BACK boring, but since a large percentage of the world’s population are hardcore Beatle fans, that’s alright.

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NON EXCLUSIVE: A Sneak Peek At Peter Jackson’s GET BACK & More

Another NON EXCLUSIVE! Sure, most everyone who has any interest has already seen this, but I still wanted to blog about the first look at Sir Peter Jackson’s upcoming rockumentary THE BEATLES: GET BACK due out sometime in 2021. Plus I want to give some back story to the project, which Jackson assures is a lot more that a reworking of the material that made up LET IT BE, which documented the beginning (or maybe the middle) of the end of Beatles’ career. But first, here’s the nearly 6 minute clip that just dropped today with an intro by the LORD OF THE RINGS filmmaker:

As you can see this lively, fun montage centering around a rehearsal of the classic “Get Back” indeed whets fans appetite for the finished film. But how did we get here? Well, Sherman set the wayback machine for early 1970 when the Beatles got together at a sound stage at Twickenham Film Studios, where they shot scenes for their films A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and HELP!, to rehearse songs for their next record, intended to be a back to their roots record (advertised with the tagline: “The Beatles as nature intended”) with the working title of “Get Back,” after McCartney’s newly written rocker. Director Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who had shot a batch of the group’s promotional films, and a crew were hired to shoot John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr as they worked on new songs.

The sessions were frankly kind of boring, and had some cringe-worthy moments when the tired-looking blokes were caught bickering by the cameras. They moved the project to Apple Headquarters and things went a bit better as they laid down the studio tracks for the album that would come to be named Let it Be. The grand finale involved the Beatles performing a set on the rooftop of Apple, which concluded with “Get Back” as police approached.

In Eric Idle’s Beatles parody, The Rutles: All You Need is Cash, Idle’s David Frost-style narrator said, “In the midst of all this public bickering, Let It Rot was released as a film, an album and a lawsuit.” This wasn’t far off, as there were pesky legalities in the dissolution of the band. As the band wasn’t really happy with either the album (Lennon said the “recordings were the shittiest pieces of shit we ever recorded”), they decided to go out on a much higher note with their final album, Abbey Road, though it was released in 1969 before the Let it Be album, and movie dropped in 1970, one month after the Beatles’ break-up.

In the years following its release, the film, LET IT BE, was shown on TV multiple times, but nowhere near as much as the Beatles’ other movies. In the ‘80s it was released on videotape on both VHS and Beta formats, but it went out of print before the end of the decade. Still, I remember seeing copies of it (on VHS, not Beta) at various video stores in the ‘90s, but it was still hard to find, and currently it sells for hundreds of dollars on eBay. 

In 2003, a new remix of the album entitled Let it Be...Naked was overseen by McCartney, who wanted to fix the songs that he felt producer Phil Spector ruined, in particular removing the orchestra from “A Long and Winding Road,” and stripping down other tracks. 

At the same time, it was planned to re-master and re-release the movie on DVD, but both McCartney and Starr felt that it was still too dark to re-visit and blocked the release. In 2016, McCartney spoke in an interview about finally putting it out: “I keep bringing it up, and everyone goes, ‘Yeah, we should do that.’ The objection should be me. I don’t come off well.”

The full film of LET IT BE has shown up on YouTube in fairly decent quality over the years, but has been quickly taken down. The last time I looked it wasn’t there.

Cut to 2019, when it’s announced that Jackson will be tackling the 56 hours of footage the Lindsay-Hogg shot, and putting together a new version of the project which will revert to the original title, GET BACK. Jackson’ intent is to construct a film that utilizes different, unseen footage of the Beatles from the sessions, and give the material a more uplifting spirit. As Sir Jackson said at the time, “Sure, there’s moments of drama - but none of the discord this project has long been associated with.”

The other good news is that the original LET IT BE will finally get a re-release, although only in a digital format. Still, that’s something.

As the above montage shows a lot of promise, this is an exciting time for fans who have waited for the redemption of the reputation of this ill-fated project. With the success of his 2018 doc, THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD, which featured painstakingly restored footage from WWI, Jackson has shown that he can pull off wonders in reviving history. I do wonder how he’s going to deal with the legendary rooftop concert as the original film contained a great deal of the performance. You can’t really have a film about this chapter in the Beatles’ story without it, so he’s got to include it.

I am beyond psyched to see THE BEATLES: GET BACK as soon as I can. The set release date is August 27, 2021 - 51 years, and a few months, after both the album and film, LET IT BE, originally dropped. Here’s hoping that we’ll all still be around next summer to see it.

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That Time A Beatle Had A Cameo In A Monty Python Film That He Financed

Every now and then, someone posts on Facebook, Twitter, or some social media network that they just noticed that Beatle superstar George Harrison appears briefly in the 1979 comedy classic MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN. They usually note that they have seen the film many times, but only now did they see Harrison’s cameo.

This is because he is easy to miss in a crowded set that does little to single out the legendary musician, despite that John Cleese’s character introduces him to Graham Chapman’s Brian as “the gentleman who's lending us the mount on Sunday.” Watch the 10-second scene:

Harrison only had one line – one word actually (“Hullo!”), but since it was noisy and he was barely audible, it was later dubbed by Michael Palin, doing his best Liverpudlian impression. The bit part was uncredited, but the former Beatle was given a priceless moniker: Mr. Papapadopoulos.

The cameo came about because Harrison was one of the movie’s Executive Producers, and that came about because he largely financed the hilarious biblical satire. According to Eric Idle, a good friend of Harrison’s since they met in Los Angeles in 1975 at a screening of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, Harrison “pawned his house and arranged a loan of $5m. When he was asked why, he just said: 'Because I want to see it'. Not many people pay $5m for an admission ticket.”

It wasn’t Harrison’s first foray in a Python-related project as the year before BRIAN, he played a television journalist, credited as “The Interviewer,” in Idle’s TV movie parody of the Beatles, The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash. The almost unrecognizable Harrison appears in two scenes in the mockumentary, both set outside the headquarters of Rutle Corps. Watch one of the scenes, featuring Palin’s spoof of Beatles press officer Derek Taylor:

Several years before that, Harrison put in a performance of “Pirate Song” which begins as “My Sweet Lord” then becomes a rowdy sea shanty on Idle’s BBC2 comedy program, Rutland Weekend Television:

Idle directed videos (then called promotional films) for two songs from Harrison’s 1976 album, Thirty Three & 1/3: “Crackerbox Palace” and “True Love.” Both are highly amusing Pythonesque (of course) films - click on their titles to watch them. 

After BRIAN, Harrison and his manager Denis O’Brien worked on over two dozen films for the studio they founded, Handmade Films, including such classics as WITHNAIL & I, and such flops as SHANGHAI SURPRISE (1986), in which he put in a cameo as a Night Club Singer (that’s how he’s credited).

Anyone who would read such a post as this would no doubt be aware that yesterday was the sad anniversary of Harrison’s death at the all too young age of 58. Luckily he left behind a wealth of timeless work, so much so that it’s easy to forget he’s gone.

The fact that people are still finding and being delighted by a blink and miss it moment in one of the most re-watchable comedies of all time is a testament to his massive legend. To respectfully contradict his good friend, Idle, it’s a legend that will last many lunchtimes.

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Opie Cunningham’s EIGHT DAYS A WEEK Brings Beatlemania Back To The Big Screen

THE BEATLES: EIGHT DAYS A WEEK - THE TOURING YEARS (Dir. Ron Howard, 2016)

With hope, Ron Howard’s new documentary, which serves up a greater inside look into the worldwide sensation The Beatles at their live performance peak than has ever been explored before, will help dispel the idiotic notion that the Fab Four sucked live.

Anyone who’s ever given the two volumes of The Beatles Live at the BBC, or the newly remastered release of Live at the Hollywood Bowl (released on CD for the first time last week), or many of the band’s bootlegs (this guy makes a great case for their 1963 Swedish Radio Show being one of the best performances by anyone) a good listen should know that the idea is bogus, but for those who believe the oft told tales that the teenage girls screamed so loud that the Beatles didn’t even try to play their instruments or sing at their best, this doc is essential viewing that should right that wrong.

From the opening footage of the quartet at Manchester's ABC Cinema in 1963 (among the earliest color films of the group) to their historical TV debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 to their equally historic Shea Stadium show (the first rock concert ever staged in a stadium) in 1965 to their final concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco in 1966 we see the Beatles play and sing their asses off despite the roaring audience. I won’t trust anyone who watches this material, much of it never officially released before now, and says that they were a bad band live. 

Howard, who despite his big league movie directing career will always be Opie Cunningham * to me, and editor Paul Crowder (no stranger to rock docs as he co-directed and edited “Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who”) supplement the wealth of rare footage with new interview segments with surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, along with archival interview clips of John Lennon and George Harrison.

Paul and Ringo don’t really have any insights that they haven’t shared in countless other docs or interviews, but I’m always happy to see them reminiscence about the time that they were the biggest music act the world has ever known, and it’s touching to hear McCartney admit that “We were all pretty scared.”

There are also tasty testimonials from the likes of Sigourney Weaver (love the clip of her as a teenager being just another emotional, screaming fan at one of their shows), Whoopi Goldberg (her mother took her to the Shea Stadium show), Elvis Costello, Eddie Izzard, and broadcast journalist Larry Kane, who accompanied the Beatles on every date of their first two US tours.

Although I understand that he doesn’t fit into the “four guys against the world” narrative, it doesn’t seem right that original drummer Pete Best isn’t mentioned at all. The Beatles’ early years are glossed over pretty quickly to get to when they broke big – I get that – but Best deserves at least a quick shout out. 

There are some other subjects that are perhaps too tidied up as well, like the bit about Lennon’s famous quote about the Beatles being bigger than Jesus that led to album burnings and threats from the KKK, and it would’ve been nice to note the time that Ringo was replaced for a leg of their 1964 tour by a temporarily lucky bloke named Jimmy Nichol, but if Howard included every great anecdote, clip, or song from the band’s touring years it would be a mini-series half a day long.

Credit must be given to how much history Howard crams into this project; the Beatles’ own big screen offerings during the period, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and HELP (cash-ins on Beatlemania that became classics in their own right) are even covered properly. 

As a big Beatles fan since birth (it at least feels that way), I adored EIGHT DAYS A WEEK, and know that the bulk of Fab Four fans will completely groove on it too. I can’t speak for the non fans, but I bet they wouldn’t have read this far.

The film, which premiered last evening in my area at the Rialto Theater in Raleigh, and is now showing at many indie theaters across the country (it also premieres on Hulu on Saturday, September 17th), is augmented by a 30 minute bonus film of the complete Beatles “Live at Shea Stadium” concert. It looks and sounds great owing to its 4K restoration, and it wonderfully keeps the joyous Beatles live vibe going if the one hour and forty minutes of Howard’s doc isn’t enough for you.

As one could easily deduce from this review, EIGHT DAYS A WEEK only scratched the surface for me, but I’ll take it as it’s undeniably a powerful primer.

* For those who don’t get it, Opie comes from Opie Taylor, Howard's role as a kid on ‘60s sitcom The Andy Griffith Show (where he was when Beatlemania went down), and Cunningham is from Richie Cunningham, his role on the ‘70s sitcom Happy Days (which took place in the ‘50s). Sigh, wish I didn't feel like I had to explain these things.

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The Beatles' A HARD DAY'S NIGHT Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary This Weekend

A HARD DAY’S NIGHT

(Dir. Richard Lester, 1964)

Earlier this year, Beatles fans worldwide celebrated the 50th anniversary of the fab four’s historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, an event that’s been deemed, at least by CBS's Grammy Salute, “The Night That Changed America.”

So now it’s time to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Beatles’ first film, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT, which premiered on July 6, 1964 at the Pavilion Theatre in London, with a restored re-release of the milestone movie which will screen on Saturday night at 8 pm and Sunday afternoon at 2 pm at the Raleigh Grande. (click here to find out where it's playing near you).

Concerning a few days in the life of the lovable mop-tops during the height of Beatlemania, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT, crystallized the individual personalities of the Beatles into immortal celluloid. Previously the masses had loved their music, especially such huge hits as “Love Me Do,” “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” and “She Loves You,” but now fans were allowed to see the playful psyches behind the chart toppers in action.

The late, great John Lennon can be seen in his youthful sardonically witty glory, mocking the band’s handlers, and toying with journalists. Bassist and co-leader Paul McCartney, who is playing his first ever concert in Greensboro, NC, on October 30th, was even cuter and flirtier than fans suspected (or dreamed) as he repeatedly tells reporters “No, actually we’re just good friends” when asked about his dalliances.

Lead guitarist George Harrison, who passed away in 2001, was known as “the quiet one,” but he has a stand out scene in which he wanders into an advertising agency and is particularly snarky about their trend-seeking campaigns.

This leaves drummer Ringo Starr, labeled the “funny one,” who could be considered the lead character here. The late Wilfred Brambell, best known in Britain for his long-running role in the TV series Steptoe and Son (later adapted as Sanford and Son in the States) as Paul’s grandfather goads Ringo to get out from under the other Beatles’ shadows and parade the streets.

So while his band mates are gearing up for a major television performance, Ringo walks the banks of the Thames, befriends a young boy (David Janson), and gets into mischief at a pub. All the while Ringo schleps along in his lovable hangdog demeanor, the likes of which recently charmed the audience at the Durham Performing Arts Center fronting his All Starr Band.

Starr’s presence here goes a long way to show why of all the Beatles, he got the most fan mail. He even coined the phrase the film's title and theme song is based on!

Alongside the band, Vincent Spinetti makes a mark as a put upon T.V. Director. Proving a perfect comic foil, Spinetti, who passed in 2012, would go on to appear in the Beatles’ 1965 follow-up film HELP!, and their 1967 BBC special “Magical Mystery Tour.”

Director Richard Lester, hired because the Beatles loved his 1960 short “The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film,” infuses the screenplay by Alun Owen with great gusto, from the dialogue based on the boys’ banter from real life press conferences to the wacky and slightly surreal chase scenes.

Patti Boyd, later to be Harrison’s first wife (and the inspiration for the Eric Clapton classic “Layla”) can be seen as a giggling schoolgirl in the opening train scenes, and Genesis member/’80s pop star Phil Collins is one of the screaming fans at the film’s climatic concert, but good luck trying to pick him out as his visage in the crowd shots is almost impossible to recognize.

The real star, of course, is the music. The film’s soundtrack boasts a bevy of immediate classics including the title track , “I Should Have Known Better,” “Can’t Buy Me Love” (set to a sequence which is regarded as one of the first music videos), “Tell Me Why,” and Harrison’s lone composition “Don’t Bother Me.”

The grade A+ isn’t often used in movie reviews, but considering its 99% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, legendary critic Roger Ebert’s teaching it to film classes one shot at a time to study its perfection, and Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice calling it “The CITIZEN KANE of jukebox musicals,” this film definitely deserves it.

Even though it’s in black and white, A HARD DAY'S NIGHT colorfully captures the era when the world was first falling in love with Beatles. There would be many love affairs with pop sensations in the years to come, but none would ever shine as bright or have tunes that resonated as deeply.

So take the kids, whether One Direction disciples or Beliebers, to see the four lads from Liverpool as they run for their lives from hoards of screaming fans in the direction of the future. Then they can see for themselves how a revolution really gets started.

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10 Blink And Miss Them Movie Cameos

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Followers of this blog may have noticed that I have a fondness for film cameos. Film Babble Blog has featured lists like 20 Great Modern Movie Cameos, The Cameo Countdown Continues, and more recently Without A Hitch - 10 Definitive Directors' Cameos In Their Own Movies, but this list is a bit different because many people may not have noticed these cameos at all.

They can be difficult to catch as they go by fast but they're there just waiting for some film geek like me to point them out. So here goes:

1. George Harrison in MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN (Dir. Terry Jones, 1979) Harrison helped finance this film solely because he was a big fan so it stands to reason that they'd throw him a bit part. He can be seen in a crowd scene and although he is uncredited he actually has a character name: Mr. Papadopoulos. He has one word of dialogue ("ullo") spoken to Brian (Graham Chapman) as he is introduced by Reg (John Cleese) as "the owner of the mount" they are planning to rent. It's brief but worth looking for - if only so you can point out to your friends: "Look! There's a Beatle!" Speaking of the Beatles...

2. Phil Collins in A HARD DAY’S NIGHT (Dir. Richard Lester, 1964)

This is kind of a cheat because Collins wasn't a well known celebrity at the time (he was 13), and you can barely see him in the audience shots of the concert climax but I just couldn't resist listing it. Collins has often bragged about being one of the 350 teenage extras screaming at the Beatles, especially when he hosted You Can't Do That!: The Making of "A Hard Day's Night" (1995). Though as you can see his visage is impossible to recognize, even when enlarged, he is listed in some movie guides as being one of the stars of the film.

3. Alan Ladd in CITIZEN KANE (Dir. Orson Welles, 1941) This is a pretty infamous one - Ladd is one of the reporters in the screening room after the opening newsreel. It's a smoke filled shadowy shot but he can be clearly seen, though it took Roger Ebert's commentary on the DVD for me to identify him. He can also be seen at the end of the film smoking a pipe and even has a few lines.

4. R2D2 in STAR TREK (Dir. J.J. Abrams, 2009)

This cameo/Easter egg was rumored when the film opened last summer (there was even a Paramount sponsored contest centered on finding it) but it was pinpointed by fanboys all over the internets when the film hit DVD/Blu ray last month. It works as a funny little visual joke as well as a shout out from one science fiction franchise to another.

5. Dan Aykroyd in INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (Dir. Steven Spielberg, 1984) It may have seemed strange to see the former SNL funnyman hawking Crystal Head Vodka in advertisements that refer to the last INDIANA JONES film, but Aykroyd actually has a legitimate connection to the series. He appears in Indy's second installment as Weber, a British cohort who arranges a getaway plane for Jones (Harrison Ford), Willie (Kate Capshaw), and Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan). It's easy to miss him as it's a sweeping long shot and he's such an incidental character but he still makes the most of his 18 seconds in this film.

6. Dennis Hopper in HEAD (Dir. Bob Rafelson, 1968) This one is priceless because Hopper looks like he can't wait to get out of the studio, get on the road and shoot EASY RIDER (Monkees money funded EASY RIDER you see). Jack Nicholson, who co-wrote HEAD, is also in this scene which has the movie break down around Peter Tork with many members of the film's crew coming into the shot including director Rafelson. When he swoops behind Tork to get to Rafelson I'd like to believe he's asking "hey man, how long is this gonna be? We gotta get going!"

7. Christian Slater in STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY (Dir. Nicholas Meyer, 1991)

I know, I know - another STAR TREK cameo but this one baffled me when I first saw this film. When Slater pops up it's a dark shot and I distinctly remember the murmur in the theater as everybody seemed to collectively wonder "was that Christian Slater?" Credited as "Excelsior Communications Officer" Slater appears in a doorway, has a few lines, and then he's gone. What was he doing there? In an interview with DVD Playground he answered that question: "My mother cast that film and needed someone to fill in. Yet even so, that was probably the most nervous I had ever been in my entire career."

8. Richard Dreyfuss in THE GRADUATE (Dir. Mike Nichols, 1967) Again, this might be playing loose with the definition of cameo too, but Dreyfuss' smart part as "Boarding House Resident" always makes me laugh when I watch this film. Over the shoulder of landlord Norman Fell, Dreyfuss's delivery is unmistakable on his only line: "Shall I call the cops? I'll call the cops."

9. Sigourney Weaver in ANNIE HALL (Dir. Woody Allen, 1977) She only appears in one shot, and it's a long one, as Alvy Singer's (Woody Allen) very tall date to yet another showing of THE SORROW AND THE PITY but if you ever see this film on the big screen you can see her features better. It was her first film and I bet nobody involved could predict that only 2 years later she would break through big in ALIEN. From "Alvy's Date Outside Theatre" with no lines to science fiction icon/feminist heroine Ripley is quite a leap considering.

10. The Clash in THE KING OF COMEDY (Dir. Martin Scorsese, 1982) From the IMDb Trivia section for this film: "In the scene where Robert De Niro and Sandra Bernard argue in the street, three of the "street scum" that mock Bernhard are Mick Jones, Joe Strummer, and Paul Simonon, members of the British punk rock band, The Clash." There are many pictures of Scorsese directing RAGING BULL wearing a Clash t-shirt so there's obviously a connection between the master film maker and "The Only Band That Matters" (as they were billed at the time).

Okay! There goes another patented Film Babble Blog list. If you have any other blink and miss them movie cameos please drop me a line.

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The Beatles' HELP! Now Out On DVD

HELP! (Dir. Richard Lester, 1965)


Superintendent (Patrick Cargill): "So this is the famous Beatles?" 
John (John Lennon): "So this is the famous Scotland Yard, ay?" Superintendent: "How long do you think you'll last?"
John: "Can't say fairer than that. Great Train Robbery, ay? How's that going?"

A seminal film that I saw many times in my youth has been reissued yet again, this time in a 2 disc DVD edition in fancier packaging than before * and it's a great thing. Though the extras are inessential (the 30 min. documentary is fine, but who's going to watch a featurette about the film's restoration process more than once?), the movie itself looks better than I've ever seen it - sharper with much more vivid color. Colour (British spelling) was pretty much its only original gimmick - The Beatles now in full colour!

The Beatles' first feature, black and white of course, 1964's A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (also directed by Lester) is widely regarded as a classic, one of the best rock 'n roll movies ever, blah blah blah while HELP! has been almost lovingly dismissed.

I'll say this - A HARD DAY'S NIGHT may be the better and more important film but HELP! is a lot more fun. It captures the group right before they discarded their cuddly mop-top image and became another entity all together and it makes a strong case for their oft overlooked mid-period music as well.

* It is available also in a collector's edition with book of the screenplay, lobby card reproductions, and a poster that all retails at $134.99! 
The plot? Oh yeah, some ancient mystic religion hunts down laconic but wacky drummer Ringo Starr and his mates because he happens to be wearing their sacrificial ring. They hunt him across the globe with locations in Austria and the Bahamas (simply because the Beatles wanted to go there so it was written in). Along the way they play (or more accurately lip-synch to) a bevy of great songs - the title track, the Dylan influenced "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away", "Ticket To Ride", and George Harrison's unjustly underrated "I Need You" among them.

Watching it again I remembered why I loved it so much as a kid - it displayed a fantasy version of the Beatles' lives in which they all lived together in a groovy connected townhouse flat that had grass as carpet in one section and a neat bed compartment sunken floor that John slept in, it has moments of comic surrealism like when Paul McCartney is shrunken to cigarette size ("The Adventures Of Paul On The Floor" the subtitle calls it), and has a silly James Bond spoofing plot that doesn't matter at all.

If you haven't seen HELP! it's one to put in your Netflix queue or on your Amazon wish list - if you have seen it before you should really re-discover it now because of how splendid this new remaster looks and how funny it still is. Or you could wait a few years 'til the next reissue or whatever the new format's version of it will be.

Post Note: Another bonus that this new DVD set has is an essay in its booklet by Martin Scorsese. He writes "Everyone was experimenting around this time. Antonioni with BLOWUP, Truffaut with FAHRENHEIT 451, Fellini and Godard with every movie - and HELP! was just as exciting." I would've never thought to put Richard Lester's work on HELP! in that class but if Marty says it is - it is.

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