Speaker 1: Rock's Greatest Stories all in one podcast. Here's one from
Speaker 1: a recent episode of book Don Rock. Samira Ahmed is
Speaker 1: the author of A Hard Day's Night, part of the
Speaker 1: British Film Institute's Film Classics series. The book examines one
Speaker 1: of the most influential music films ever made. A Hard
Speaker 1: Day's Night. That Can't Buy Me Love sequence is classic.
Speaker 1: It's such a great representation of youth breaking free from
Speaker 1: authority and tradition. It's still there when you watch it.
Speaker 1: Probably the most iconic of all the scenes from the film.
Speaker 1: You call it the most complex in the entire film.
Speaker 1: What makes it so much more sophisticated than it first appears.
Speaker 2: Well, I love that it's actually shot in three different
Speaker 2: locations weeks apart, because you know, you just assume that
Speaker 2: it's just all in the editing. But the scene where
Speaker 2: they come out on the fire escape and they go
Speaker 2: we're out, that's one location. That's the Hammersmith ODI in
Speaker 2: West London as it was in old Cinema, and then
Speaker 2: they run down that fire escape. And then when they're
Speaker 2: running across the field that was shot in Eiseleworth nearly
Speaker 2: through airport. In fact, a community group got in touch
Speaker 2: with it, and they did a screening of the film
Speaker 2: in those same playing fields just the other weekend to
Speaker 2: mark you know, PAUP. McCartney's birthday, which was lovely because
Speaker 2: the playing field is still a place you can visit.
Speaker 2: I've been there. But the other location is Gatwick Airport, Britain,
Speaker 2: London second airport, and they basically had a helicopter and
Speaker 2: if you think about it, when they first seemed to
Speaker 2: run into the field, they suddenly you're very aware that
Speaker 2: it's a judgery shot. It's the helicopter going up, and
Speaker 2: that's why they were shot from a distance running around
Speaker 2: larking in the field. And what's interesting is that that
Speaker 2: was in a way the first part of the sequence
Speaker 2: that was shot. But the cameraman was an experienced ex
Speaker 2: military cameraman had shot a lot of planes, had shot
Speaker 2: to air raids over Germany and stuff for Winston Churchill,
Speaker 2: and they footage as sent to number ten Downing Street
Speaker 2: for him to monitor what was going on. So he'd
Speaker 2: gone up with a helicopter and when he got up
Speaker 2: he realized that the battery in the camera was run down,
Speaker 2: so the footage was running through at low speeds. When
Speaker 2: you played it back a normal speed. It had that
Speaker 2: speeded up silent movie slapstick effect. So they shot the
Speaker 2: rest of the stuff kind of to match it. So
Speaker 2: Richard Lester was very good at responding to an accident
Speaker 2: and saying, well, let's make this a feature, because he
Speaker 2: loved Buster Keaton. There's the whole sequencer chase sequence later
Speaker 2: with the Policeman, which is based on Cops the nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty two bus to keep the film, so they shoot
Speaker 2: the stuff in the playing field later and they mock
Speaker 2: up a version of the helipad so it looks like
Speaker 2: it's the same location and they speed up the footage.
Speaker 2: But those are three different locations shot weeks apart, and
Speaker 2: at one point John Lennon isn't even there because they
Speaker 2: used to film, despite the fact that they all had
Speaker 2: other commitments, and John Lennon went off to a literary
Speaker 2: luncheon for his first book. And so there's moments when
Speaker 2: they seem to be doing like a dosey dough on
Speaker 2: the helipad and the camera is being held, but what
Speaker 2: you assume is John and he points the camera down
Speaker 2: at his feet and his beetle boots. That's Richard Lester,
Speaker 2: you know, so sometimes they substitute, he substitutes himself for
Speaker 2: the missing beetle. So you wouldn't know any of this
Speaker 2: and literally unless you weren't looking for the information. And
Speaker 2: I read a lot of interviews that he had done
Speaker 2: with people like Stephen Soderberg, accounts had given at previous screenings.
Speaker 2: Because of Richard Lester is very much still alive, but
Speaker 2: just very frail, and he still lives in England. And
Speaker 2: I think more than anything, I wanted this book to
Speaker 2: be homage to him as an American who made Britain
Speaker 2: it's his home, and together with the American producers of
Speaker 2: this film, I love that it took a true of
Speaker 2: Americans to give the Beatles back to Britain and the
Speaker 2: world as the most exciting new British phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder how much of A Hard Day's Night, Oh,
Speaker 1: is It's magic to accidents like you mentioned, like the
Speaker 1: sped up film effect only because the camera battery is
Speaker 1: running low and that Richard Lester was smart enough to
Speaker 1: keep I mean, how much of the movie has those moments?
Speaker 2: A lot has it, and I think one of the
Speaker 2: best of those moments is that within the first two
Speaker 2: to three seconds of the opening film when you suddenly
Speaker 2: start with that cord of the opening track and you
Speaker 2: see through the Beatles are running down that alley next
Speaker 2: to Marlybone station, and George trips over and falls flat
Speaker 2: hard on his face. Ringo lands on top of him.
Speaker 2: They get up and they keep running, you know, And
Speaker 2: that happens a couple of times, things like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: in that whole sequence, there's a lot of fans falling
Speaker 2: over quite badly in the crush, So you have that
Speaker 2: sense there's real peril, there's real jeopardy. If they hadn't
Speaker 2: got up and run again, you know, would they be
Speaker 2: able to shoot that sequence? Everything shot as fast as
Speaker 2: it can be because they never know when the police
Speaker 2: are going to shut down shooting, as they sometimes did.
Speaker 2: They said the crowds are too big, or the crowd
Speaker 2: might get out of control. And you know, they had
Speaker 2: a moment after the first day of shooting on the
Speaker 2: train where the young technician was carrying the cans of film,
Speaker 2: looked a bit like a Beatle and he starts to
Speaker 2: being chased by girls and he tried to outrun them
Speaker 2: and he dropped a load of the film and they
Speaker 2: had to abandon some of the tape that got lost,
Speaker 2: so the whole film has a sense of urgency about it.
Speaker 2: And there's another moment when they're rehearsing a number in
Speaker 2: the studio when George leans on his amp and it
Speaker 2: kind of starts to always fall off its stand and
Speaker 2: you actually hear the thump of it. So I think
Speaker 2: all that adds to a sense of authenticity, doesn't it
Speaker 2: that he left all these accidents in.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's why it stands up so well over time
Speaker 1: as well, because there are those real moments. Suggests that
Speaker 1: A Hard Day's Night helped create the modern music video.
Speaker 1: When people talk about the birth of MTV modern music video,
Speaker 1: does the camp Bind Me Love sequence deserve to be
Speaker 1: at that center of the conversation?
Speaker 2: I think it does. And in fact, even before that,
Speaker 2: the very first pop video I'd argue is when they're
Speaker 2: on the train and they go into that guard's character
Speaker 2: they're playing cards, and the music starts up of I
Speaker 2: should have known better? I think think it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And if you watch that sequence, it's the first time
Speaker 2: in cinema that you start to hear the song before
Speaker 2: you see them singing or performing it. And then it's
Speaker 2: suddenly jump cuts to them in the same seats, but
Speaker 2: they're playing instruments. We take it for granted that pop
Speaker 2: videos work this way. No one had ever done this before.
Speaker 2: It's all in the editing. The way that Paul even
Speaker 2: looks like he's miming along or jiggling his head to
Speaker 2: hearing the song on the radio, the next moment singing
Speaker 2: it out loud, and then the Can't Bind Me Love
Speaker 2: sequence is the kind of you know, it's arguably the
Speaker 2: inspiration for the Monkeys. I mean, the whole TV show
Speaker 2: spins out of these running zany foursome of guys playing
Speaker 2: around in a field in a slapstick way. There's a
Speaker 2: huge amount of slapstick in sixties pop music cinema, even
Speaker 2: before the MTV comes along. And I find it quite ironic,
Speaker 2: Eric that MTV has basically been shutting down across Europe.
Speaker 2: It's very much in retreat, and that this film has
Speaker 2: outlived the art film that had invented. I mean, they
Speaker 2: famously gave him a Vanguard Award in nineteen eighty four
Speaker 2: as the father of the the pop video, and he
Speaker 2: jokingly demanded a paternity test. But you know, he's outlived
Speaker 2: his child. Yeah, and again and the other one I'd
Speaker 2: pointed out looking ahead a bit, because I look at
Speaker 2: the other films that they made, and including Help, which
Speaker 2: is their follow up with Richard Leicester. Those films all
Speaker 2: shot the pop music treatments in that film in the
Speaker 2: studio with a cigarette smoke, sort of filtered through blue lights.
Speaker 2: Or they're in the Bahamas with these beautiful girls, all
Speaker 2: again shot through beautiful sunlight. I mean that interspitual the
Speaker 2: Juranjuran exotic videos of the nineteen eighties, like Rio, doesn't
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