Alan G Parker's latest Beatles-related documentary is about John Lennon's last ten years - or maybe the last 15 or so? We look at the film's unfocused approach, its long, seemingly unedited anecdotes, and the perspective lent it by its choice of talking head contributors. We also discuss its use of AI animation, from both a creative and ethical perspective.

• You can currently watch Borrowed Time on Prime Video. If not it's widely available digitally, and as we mention, it had a Blu-ray and DVD release too.
• Watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQpCDjvjLSI
• Ed mistitles Kenneth Womack's excellent book, John Lennon 1980: The Last Days in the Life, but he's read it, we promise: https://kennethwomack.com/books/beatlesbooks/john-lennon-1980-the-last-days-in-the-life/

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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A film that contains one of the most famous cinematic depictions of the Beatles: Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Justin Long and Jason Schwartzman's brief cameo as Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr in Rishikesh, India is widely quoted and memed. We ask what assumptions it makes about the Beatles' personalities. How responsible was the Yellow Submarine film for how a generation, particularly in America, thinks of the Beatles' individual characters and does that play a role here?

The film itself parodies music biopics so of course there's a lot else to talk about. We discuss the tropes of the music biopic. How many of them will there be in the Sam Mendes Beatles films?

• The theatrical version of the film: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/walk-hard-the-dewey-cox-story
• "American Cox: The Unbearably Long Self-Indulging Director's Cut" is on YouTube for free: https://youtu.be/8UdDZ9xmcfk
• Beatles scene, with the deleted bits: https://youtu.be/6frgnqTo1eM
• Ray https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/ray-2004 and Walk The Line https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/walk-the-line
• An "artist hits on the famous riff" scene from Straight Outta Compton: https://youtu.be/XC61gApOFac
• David Krumholtz, who plays a manager in Ray, and in Walk Hard: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0472710
• The Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere trailer: https://youtu.be/oQXdM3J33No (Krumholtz is a record exec in this too)
• The Tim Robinson sketch: https://youtu.be/6v1qNVZmofI
• Limmy's Wrong Way Down a One Way Street: https://youtu.be/LW7Iv-V1-Jo

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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On Friday 29 September 1967, John Lennon and George Harrison appeared as guests on The Frost Programme, whose host David Frost had just interviewed Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, with whom the Beatles were then prominently associated in the press. They discussed their newfound practice of transcendental meditation and the public were interested enough that the two appeared again, five days later, on Wednesday 4 October to continue the discussion, this time in front of a questioning audience of academics and doctors.

We discuss first how remarkable it is that pop stars were given a platform like this to debate theology, and how different the environment was compared to today's discussion programmes, in that everyone was given time to make their points without interruption, and the two Beatles weren't condescended to or shouted down. It's interesting too to note the group dynamic: George is the much-more serious leader here and John takes a back seat, adding humour but not undermining their points.

• Watch the Friday 29 September 1967 broadcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpYg2H34piw
• The Wednesday 4 October 1967 broadcast (note the YouTube video is mislabelled as 29 September): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGkbNu06-k
• Dr John Allison's paper, Respiratory Changes During Transcendental Meditation, published in The Lancet on 18 April 1970: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014067367092427X
• Details of the BBC Third Programme broadcast of King Lear from 29 September, which the Beatles mixed live into I Am The Walrus: https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/shakespeare/search/index.php/title/av68007

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.

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

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First question about this new documentary from Kevin Macdonald and Sam Rice-Edwards: is there anything new in it? It's a resounding yes: we discuss the framing device the film uses to evoke the chaos and political turmoil of Nixon-era early 1970s America. One big selling point for the film is also the archive of recorded phone calls between John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Allen Klein, May Pang, and other assistants, and we look at what this reveals about them. And it's interesting to note that this seems remarkably free of airbrushing: there are editorial decisions made here that don't flatter John or Yoko, and we talk about what this means for the creative direction of the Lennon estate.

• As of mid-April 2025, the film is out in UK cinemas. See where it's showing near you: https://shorturl.at/eFZyD
• Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/oxagfYjeMV4
• Details of the live box set to be released in 2025: https://www.noise11.com/news/john-lennon-reissue-for-2025-will-be-9-disc-live-box-set-20250407

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.

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

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Sam Mendes has his cast, then: Harris Dickinson as John Lennon, Paul Mescal as Paul McCartney, Barry Keoghan as Ringo Starr, and Joseph Quinn as George Harrison. What do we think of the official cast announcement? Can fans get past the idea that not every actor looks exactly like the Beatle he's playing? What do these actors' other performances suggest they could do with the Beatles story? Plus we discuss the release strategy, now it's seemingly confirmed that all four films will be released in the same month. How will this work?

• Some of the other films we mention here if you want to check out the actors include Dickinson in Triangle of Sadness, currently on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002645p/triangle-of-sadness
• The Banshees of Inisherin, with Barry Keoghan, on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/en-nz/movies/the-banshees-of-inisherin/7Cj38ALjonSC
• The wonderful All Of Us Strangers, with the double McCartney impact of Paul Mescal and Lennon Naked's Andrew Scott, on Disney+: https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/movies/all-of-us-strangers/3J3PiHRIdy65
• Mescal's Oscar-nominated turn in Aftersun, on BBC iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001w9pm/aftersun

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.

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

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We finish off this season with a look at the film's use of footage that's been colourised from black and white. Was this done, as Iain Lee suggested to Ed on his Talk Radio show in 2016, because American audiences don't like black and white? We think there's a bit of mileage in that: more specifically that the brief here was to present this footage to a new audience with a bit of sheen. We also discuss talking heads in the film like Eddie Izzard, and look at what they contributed, as well as some who appear only in the Blu-ray extras, like Paul Greengrass.

• Here's the full audio of the eight-minute call Ed made to Iain Lee's radio show after they'd both seen Eight Days a Week in the same screening, August 2016: https://youtu.be/dOggLQlN8GU
• The film we mention coming to IMAX briefly in April 2025 is One to One: John and Yoko: https://www.imax.com/en/gb/movie/one-to-one-john-and-yoko

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.

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

• Instagram https://instagram.com/beatlesfilmspod
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Has Ron Howard's 2016 documentary effectively been superseded by other films since? Probably the first official Apple film to be released as part of the Beatles legacy project, it's very polished and pays a lot of respect to fan culture, in particular teenage girls. But nine years on, does it cover too much of the same ground as other films, like Beatles '64, to be significant?

• You can rent the film online in a few places: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/movie/the-beatles-eight-days-a-week-the-touring-years or pick up the two-disc Blu-ray for the special features, which really complement the film as we discuss.
• The detail about Matt White's role in originating the idea for the film comes from this article by his friend David Royle, written after White passed away: https://documentarytelevision.com/case-study/in-memory-of-matt-white-david-royles-tribute-to-the-late-archivist-and-producer/
• Read Ed's review from 2016: https://www.theshiznit.co.uk/review/the-beatles-eight-days-a-week--the-touring-years.php
• Watch the trailer: https://youtu.be/0fFyZzqPDws
• The clip of teenage fans at Shea Stadium in 1965, one of whom may or may not be Meryl Streep: https://youtu.be/x6aNSHLg18Y

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.

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

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The coming together of two great British cultural institutions feels fated, but how well did Russell T. Davies pull it off? We look, of course, at how accurate they've been when it comes to Beatle detail, and in particular at the characterisations of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Matt, a Whovian, explains how this episode fits into the canon and how this season of Doctor Who compared tonally to others, while Ed, who thinks he might have seen a couple of the Christopher Eccleston ones 20 years ago, mainly just listens.

• Watch the episode on BBC iPlayer if you're in the UK and have a licence: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001z8c7/doctor-who-season-1-2-the-devils-chord
• Or on Disney Plus if not: https://www.disneyplus.com/series/doctor-who/1ml73V6phgyZ
• Some clips of the a non-Eccleston Doctor playing a Beatle (identities revealed in the episode): https://youtu.be/cOzmhlgwM4E
• Hear the Beatles-related Doctor Who audio story, Fanfare for the Common Men, on the "Into the TARDIS" podcast: https://shows.acast.com/into-the-tardis/episodes/doctor-who-1963-fanfare-for-the-common-men-part-1

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.

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

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We look at Radoslaw Piwowarski's Beatles-themed film, which won the Golden Shell at the 1985 San Sebastián International Film Festival. It's the story of teenagers in 1964 communist Poland trying to forge an identity through their love of the Beatles. We talk about cinema behind the Iron Curtain (the Polish People's Republic was under communist rule both in the story and when the film was released) and what that means for freedom of expression, both for the filmmakers and the characters. Is the Beatles' music, which we hear in the film, treated with a special reverence given how it was contraband to the characters? And as the boys are forced to have haircuts we talk about the cultural significance of the Beatles' hair and what that meant in a regime where signifiers of rebellion were more dangerous than in the West.

• Watch the film on YouTube with English subtitles: https://youtu.be/ymPnya34a4g
• The poster with the four shaved heads we mention is the one we've used for this episode's image (albeit with our logo photoshopped in)
• Bruce Channel's Hey Baby from 1959, which briefly popularised the harmonica, a craze which helped with the Beatles' early popularity: https://youtu.be/ik9dxkKriV0
• Some more information on El Cóndor Pasa, the folk song popularised by Simon & Garfunkel but which has versions in lots of countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_C%C3%B3ndor_Pasa_(song)

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.

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

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We weren't big fans of this 2023 Apple TV+ documentary series: it's prurient and invasive, and in the parts where it suggests conspiracy theories but then does nothing to back them up, it's pretty irresponsible. We discuss the techniques it uses in the context of the contemporary true crime boom, and ask whether we'd have liked it more if we had no personal investment in John Lennon's murder. Could it have achieved more by doing what it briefly threatens to, and framed itself around how thinking around criminality and mental illness, and gun control in the United States, has moved on since 1980?

• Watch it on Apple TV+: https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/john-lennon-murder-without-a-trial
• RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy: https://youtu.be/7H8ZV7QrVZY
• Netflix film Amanda Knox: https://www.netflix.com/title/80081155
• News of the World journalist Paul McMullan defending phone hacking on BBC Newsnight in 2011: https://youtu.be/ZV9Sh_R3wB4
• The documentary Ed mentions is Active Shooter: America Under Fire: https://www.justwatch.com/uk/tv-series/active-shooter-america-under-fire
• Kenneth Womack's John Lennon 1980: The Last Days in the Life: https://kennethwomack.com/books/beatlesbooks/john-lennon-1980-the-last-days-in-the-life/
• John's surgeon Dr David Halloran in the BBC radio series "I Was": https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tfsqb
• Paul McCartney was interviewed on the March for Our Lives on 24 March 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_for_Our_Lives

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.

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

• Instagram https://instagram.com/beatlesfilmspod
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