Many of you may have noticed how I comment periodically on the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie and how spectacularly bad it is. So what's my obsession with this movie? Well, I saw it in the theater when I was twelve, and I actually liked it. This movie did provoke my interest in the Beatles, as I intimated in my most recent post about the soundtrack, and I actually heard most of its covers of songs from Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road before I heard the original Beatles recordings. But once I heard the original records, the motion picture soundtrack covers sounded horrible by comparison. Worse still, the movie depicted a false picture of the group. The Sgt. Pepper movie mostly presents the Beatles' music as wholesome and squeaky clean family entertainment - almost in the style of Disney. Excuse me? The movie was based on the group's most drug-inspired album! This movie was not what the Beatles were all about, and anyone too young to remember the Fab Four who comes away from this movie believing otherwise will end up getting a completely erroneous idea of the group. This is more offensive than the atrocious covers, the bad acting, the underdone "storyline," or even the fact that the non-story mostly rips off Yellow Submarine. Like many other attempts to cash in on the Beatles' legacy, the 1978 Sgt. Pepper movie is a lie. Having been swindled by this lie at the tender age of twelve, I have made it my (day in the) life's work as a Beatles fan to steer subsequent generations of Beatlemaniacs away from this movie.
However - and there's always a "however" where the Beatles are concerned - there are two Beatles-inspired movies, also from 1978, that every fan of the group must see. Like the Sgt. Pepper movie, they were not successes when they were first shown. Unlike the Sgt. Pepper movie, they didn't deserve to flop like they did, and they have since been rediscovered by new audiences.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand is not about the Beatles per se. Rather, it's a movie about Beatlemania - specifically, the original American fans from 1964 who bought their first records and saw them on "The Ed Sullivan Show" that February. It captures all the zaniness and madness that was inflicted on New York City during the band's first visit to the U.S., and it really makes you feel like you were there. It was the first feature film from director Robert Zemeckis, who would go on to direct the Back To the Future movies and Forrest Gump, among other films.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand is a comedy that centers on a group of fans from Maplewood, New Jersey, just outside New York City, who hope to get into the studio audience of Ed Sullivan's variety show to see the Beatles perform live. Pretty soon they start making an effort to get into the Plaza Hotel, where they're staying. One of them - Pam, a girl who's due to be married soon and wants one last night of fun before her wedding - ends up in the Beatles' hotel room while they're out and fondles their instruments. Also on board are Janis (played by Paul Newman's daughter Susan), a folk music fan who goes to New York to protest the Beatles for "undermining artistic integrity" and Tony, a Four Seasons fan who is ticked off at Top 40 station WINS for playing all this British music at the expense of American acts - and, upon meeting WINS disc jockey Murray the K (who played himself), makes that verbally clear. The Beatles themselves only appear through TV monitors in Ed Sullivan's TV studio, and when Pam hides under a bed after they've entered their hotel room, you only hear their voices and see their feet. The film is careful to keep the focus on the fans, who, in retrospect, were the real show.
Eventually, Janis realizes what her idol Bob Dylan (who in 1964 was only a year away from going electric at the Newport Folk Festival) already knew by then; the Beatles were pointing music in the direction it had to go. The world has already changed because of John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and nothing can stop further change from going forward. Tony's attempt to disable the transmitter for Sullivan's broadcast symbolically fails. You can't stop progress.
Despite a small budget, and despite Steven Spielberg as an executive producer, I Wanna Hold Your Hand was a money-losing flop. Released in April 1978, it suffered from not having any stars in its cast - Nancy Allen and Theresa Saldana were its biggest names - and it did better in previews than with paying customers. But its boisterousness and overall fun make it one of the best movies ever made about Beatlemania, and it's worth seeking out.
Another must-see is a Beatles parody documentary that was a forerunner to This Is Spinal Tap. The Rutles were a spoof of the Beatles that originally appeared on Monty Python alumnus Eric Idle's BBC sketch comedy "Rutland Weekend Television," with pastiches of Lennon-McCartney songs composed by Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (who played Ron Nasty, the John Lennon of the group). The Rutles concept was developed by Idle and Lorne Michaels, the producer of the American TV sketch comedy "Saturday Night Live" (which showed some of the early Rutles sketches in the States), into a full-fledged TV movie, All You Need Is Cash. It traces the Rutles from their origins in Liverpool to their status as a rock and roll legend "that will last a lunchtime." We learn that their first album was recorded in twenty minutes . . . and the second took even longer. They became the biggest band on the planet thanks to a special something ("I think it was the trousers") and produced their greatest work, Sgt. Rutter's Only Darts Club Band, after getting high on tea. ("Lots of tea. Indian tea . . . and biscuits!") But after the tragic loss of their manager (who accepts a teaching post in Australia), they're unable to carry on, and their final project, Let It Rot, was released as an album, a film, and a lawsuit.
The Beatles's story is retold in The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash with tongue-and-cheek humor, all of it with a loving nod and a wink to the Beatles - none of the satire is mean-spirited, and all of it is funny. Neil Innes and Eric Idle (who plays Dirk, the group's Paul) lead a cast that includes cast members of "Saturday Night Live" (John Belushi does a wicked parody of Beatles financial adviser Allen Klein), Michael Palin as the Rutles' press agent, and a thinly disguised George Harrison as a reporter looking into the Rutles' production company's troubles. In one scene, Palin is hilariously oblivious to all of the people coming out of the company's building carrying items stolen from the office, including furniture and a stuffed bear, as he tells Harrison that it's only "petty pilfering" exaggerated by the media. Mick Jagger and Paul Simon offer commentary on the Rutles, and Neil Innes' many pastiches of Beatles songs sound like the real thing. Check out this classic Rutles performance from "The Ed Sullivan Show!" :-D
The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash aired on NBC on Wednesday, March 22, 1978. on NBC in the U.S. For some reason - the slump NBC was going through at the time? a general lack of TV viewers on Wednesday nights? bad promotion? - the movie had the lowest ratings of any show aired in prime time television that week, but it was eventually rebroadcast in 1985 by PBS and has since become a favorite among fans of both the Beatles and parody.
As for the Sgt. Pepper movie . . . well, it could have been lovingly done like these two movies, and as I Wanna Hold Your Hand and The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash came out before Sgt. Pepper and flopped, it probably wouldn't have done better than it did even if it had remained true to the Beatles's spirit. But Sgt. Pepper producer Robert Stigwood wasn't interested in presenting the Beatles respectfully. He only wanted to rip off their music and make money. Which is ironic, as the bad guys in the Sgt. Pepper movie are evil because they only love money - and they express their love of money by singing Beatles songs, even as the good guys express their beliefs in joy and love singing . . . Beatles songs. Something inconsistent with that picture, isn't there? But then, the songs had no common theme or narrative links, so how could they tell a logical story? The Sgt. Pepper movie was meant to be great entertainment, and I guess it is, if your idea of great entertainment is Alice Cooper dunking his face in a cream pie . . . twice!
To be fair, though, most Beatles fans have gotten over Robert Stigwood's assault on the Beatles' legacy, since the film was a monumental flop and has mostly been forgotten. But, as I said in my 2001 article on this movie, that doesn't mean Stigwood shouldn't be punished for it.
So - cream pies ready? :-D
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