Pulled from theaters almost as quickly as it was released in 1976, this bizarre experimental documentary pairs an all-star selection of Beatles covers with images of WWII.
Because they exist on the divide between ubiquitously popular and personally beloved, the Beatles seem to get these catastrophically tone-deaf 'homages' regularly - the Stigwood/Bee Gees Sgt Pepper and Taymor's Across The Universe are the most notable, but there's also the lengthy variety show medley on Rolling Stone's appallingly bad 10th Anniversary special (which horrified everyone at the magazine who was not named Jann Wenner - https://uproxx.com/tv/rolling-stone-10th-anniversary-special-40th-anniversary/), Zemeckis' blessedly cancelled mocap Submarine remake, and this attempted late-80s animated jukebox musical that was cancelled when the producers admitted to lying about having the song rights https://lostmediawiki.com/Strawberry_Fields_(partially_found_production_materials_from_cancelled_musical_animated_film;_1980s-1989)
That *ahem* ARCHIVAL site also came through for me recently in locating the long-lost workprint of another, more direct piece of Beatles arcana - the never released 'official documentary' The Long And Winding Road, which was initiated by road manager Neil Aspinall in 1968, was worked on periodically through the 70s, and was still a going concern at least up until Lennon's murder (in his deposition against the Beatlemania stage show only days before, he said that it infringed on the Beatles' own plan for a filmed reunion to conclude the documentary). I've only seen part of it, but it's basically a narrationless recap of the group's career in Michael Wadleigh-Woodstock split-screen juxtaposition style. NOt going to link to it directly for obvious reasons, but here's an overview from the Lost Media Wiki: https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Long_and_Winding_Road_(found_workprint_of_unfinished_Beatles_documentary;_1970s)
My brother has a copy of the elaborately-packaged 2 LP soundtrack. He bought it out of sheer curiosity--it was a fixture in the music sections of small town department stores (like Pamida or Alco) in the seventies. 20th Century Records must have spent a fortune on this thing, and presumably they had to sell it somewhere, and if nothing else it stood out among all the Barry Manilow and C.W. McCall 8-tracks.
Weirdly, I know of this movie! I’ve never seen it, but I collect Beatles covers and stumbled across the soundtrack a few years ago. It somehow manages to take all these interesting musicians and make them mostly boring and same-y, probably because of the bombastic orchestrations, courtesy of the London Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic, slathered under everything so we don’t miss the drama of it all. You’ve called out the best tracks, to which I would add Tina Turner’s “Come Together,” but overall this is syrupy gruel.
It's an interesting kernel of an idea (postwar popular music and the counterculture as a direct reaction to WWII - and behind that, WWI and the Depression - is a self-evidently accurate but strangely underexplored notion, give or take a historian like Jon Savage) blown up into its most crassly, pointlessly literal extreme
I could swear that I saw this as a kid on our extremely localized pay TV service in the late '70s, but that can't be right, can it? Anyone know how quickly Fox locked this away?
I imagine that “Myra Breckinridge” has a cult following, but I can’t fathom why. I’ve watched it twice and was shocked how little appeal it would have for those who love weird movies. Another candidate for the No Cult Canon?
Because they exist on the divide between ubiquitously popular and personally beloved, the Beatles seem to get these catastrophically tone-deaf 'homages' regularly - the Stigwood/Bee Gees Sgt Pepper and Taymor's Across The Universe are the most notable, but there's also the lengthy variety show medley on Rolling Stone's appallingly bad 10th Anniversary special (which horrified everyone at the magazine who was not named Jann Wenner - https://uproxx.com/tv/rolling-stone-10th-anniversary-special-40th-anniversary/), Zemeckis' blessedly cancelled mocap Submarine remake, and this attempted late-80s animated jukebox musical that was cancelled when the producers admitted to lying about having the song rights https://lostmediawiki.com/Strawberry_Fields_(partially_found_production_materials_from_cancelled_musical_animated_film;_1980s-1989)
[This is where I sheepishly admit to kind of liking the Taymor movie.]
That *ahem* ARCHIVAL site also came through for me recently in locating the long-lost workprint of another, more direct piece of Beatles arcana - the never released 'official documentary' The Long And Winding Road, which was initiated by road manager Neil Aspinall in 1968, was worked on periodically through the 70s, and was still a going concern at least up until Lennon's murder (in his deposition against the Beatlemania stage show only days before, he said that it infringed on the Beatles' own plan for a filmed reunion to conclude the documentary). I've only seen part of it, but it's basically a narrationless recap of the group's career in Michael Wadleigh-Woodstock split-screen juxtaposition style. NOt going to link to it directly for obvious reasons, but here's an overview from the Lost Media Wiki: https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Long_and_Winding_Road_(found_workprint_of_unfinished_Beatles_documentary;_1970s)
My brother has a copy of the elaborately-packaged 2 LP soundtrack. He bought it out of sheer curiosity--it was a fixture in the music sections of small town department stores (like Pamida or Alco) in the seventies. 20th Century Records must have spent a fortune on this thing, and presumably they had to sell it somewhere, and if nothing else it stood out among all the Barry Manilow and C.W. McCall 8-tracks.
Weirdly, I know of this movie! I’ve never seen it, but I collect Beatles covers and stumbled across the soundtrack a few years ago. It somehow manages to take all these interesting musicians and make them mostly boring and same-y, probably because of the bombastic orchestrations, courtesy of the London Symphony and the Royal Philharmonic, slathered under everything so we don’t miss the drama of it all. You’ve called out the best tracks, to which I would add Tina Turner’s “Come Together,” but overall this is syrupy gruel.
What?! I have never heard of this and it sounds like such an obviously horrible idea. I can’t believe it got make.
It's an interesting kernel of an idea (postwar popular music and the counterculture as a direct reaction to WWII - and behind that, WWI and the Depression - is a self-evidently accurate but strangely underexplored notion, give or take a historian like Jon Savage) blown up into its most crassly, pointlessly literal extreme
I could swear that I saw this as a kid on our extremely localized pay TV service in the late '70s, but that can't be right, can it? Anyone know how quickly Fox locked this away?
I imagine that “Myra Breckinridge” has a cult following, but I can’t fathom why. I’ve watched it twice and was shocked how little appeal it would have for those who love weird movies. Another candidate for the No Cult Canon?
I remember stumbling on this album in a midwestern record store back room in the 00s. I sure hope I had sense to grab it.