Speaker 1: This is the book I feel I have it in
Speaker 1: me to write. And there's so much documented that's never
Speaker 1: been pulled together, which is not just the making of
Speaker 1: the film, but the influence of the film. Why the
Speaker 1: film looks so unusual, Why it's an art house film
Speaker 1: that was made to cash in on a band before
Speaker 1: they split up, and actually it was the beginning of
Speaker 1: something rather than the end of something.
Speaker 2: We're totally rock and roll.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll leave you.
Speaker 3: You're reading little Hands this, It's time to rock and roll,
Speaker 3: rocking up, I totally booked.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to book do on Rock, the podcast for
Speaker 2: those about to read and rock Americ Sanitch. If you'd
Speaker 2: like to support the podcast, get episodes commercial free. Sign
Speaker 2: up for the backstage Pass from Patreon. It's just five
Speaker 2: dollars a month the link in the show notes, or
Speaker 2: you can go to book down rock dot com now.
Speaker 2: Our guest Samira Ahmed is the author of A Hard
Speaker 2: Day's Night, part of the British Film Institute's Film Classics series.
Speaker 2: The book examines one of the most influential music films
Speaker 2: ever made. A Hard Day's Night, released in July of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four at the height of Beatlemania. The film
Speaker 2: was directed by Richard Lester and followed John, Paul, George
Speaker 2: and Ringo through a fictionalized thirty six hours in their
Speaker 2: lives as they traveled to London for a television appearance.
Speaker 2: What could have been a simple pop star vehicle became
Speaker 2: a groundbreaking film that helped redefine music movies, influence the
Speaker 2: modern music video, and captured a rapidly changing Britain in
Speaker 2: the mid nineteen sixties. Samira's book explores not only how
Speaker 2: the film was made, but Wyatt's reputation has continued to
Speaker 2: grow more than sixty years later. Samira, Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for such a beautiful description of
Speaker 1: what I was trying to do in that book. So
Speaker 1: thank you sounds like maybe I pulled it off.
Speaker 2: Oh you did a fascinating read. A fascinating read, and
Speaker 2: for you is there's so much that we can get
Speaker 2: into from your aspect here. You've watched A Hard Day's
Speaker 2: Night as an eleven year old discovering the Beatles, as
Speaker 2: a broadcaster, as a film critic, and as someone fighting
Speaker 2: a landmark equal pay case. So talk about this film's
Speaker 2: importance to you and what convinced you that you had
Speaker 2: something new to say about this film.
Speaker 1: Well, like you hinted, I mean I first discovered the
Speaker 1: film as an eleven year old. The BBC broadcast all
Speaker 1: six of the Beatles films, the feature films, and the
Speaker 1: Shay Stadium documentary and the Less It Be film, all
Speaker 1: of those at Christmas nineteen seventy nine. And my family
Speaker 1: were early adopters, and we had a Betamax video recorder
Speaker 1: and my elder brother taped all the films off TV,
Speaker 1: and I discovered the Beatles through those films, particularly A
Speaker 1: Hard Day's Night and Help I Think and to some extent,
Speaker 1: Yellow Submarine. And I used to come home from school
Speaker 1: every day I used to put one of these films on.
Speaker 1: So I probably watched A Hard Day's Night once a
Speaker 1: week for a really long time, so it's possible I
Speaker 1: may have watched it more than most people on the planet.
Speaker 1: And as I grew older, I'd always loved the Beatles,
Speaker 1: and about three years ago I discovered the earliest complete
Speaker 1: concert recording they've made in the UK, the so called
Speaker 1: Stow tape, where they played a boy's private school and
Speaker 1: a student recorded the whole concert. So it's in really
Speaker 1: good quality, there's not screaming all over it. And he
Speaker 1: shared the tape with me three years ago and that
Speaker 1: story went around the world, and it was about the
Speaker 1: social history. It wasn't just about the music being brilliant
Speaker 1: or the band. It was about why did the Beatles
Speaker 1: resonate what was going on in Britain at that time,
Speaker 1: And people got in touch to say, even though they
Speaker 1: didn't particularly regard themselves the Beatles' fans, they really connected
Speaker 1: with that story. So I thought, I thought a lot
Speaker 1: about A Hard Day's Night. And I had been on
Speaker 1: there's a great podcast called I'm the Egg pod here,
Speaker 1: which I had been on talking about the album and
Speaker 1: the film, and I realized I had more to say.
Speaker 1: When I've discovered the BFI series hadn't covered this book
Speaker 1: because iont. I was surprised, but I was also relieved
Speaker 1: because I thought, this is the book I feel I
Speaker 1: have it in me to write. And I actually pitched
Speaker 1: it and wrote it really quickly because I did lots
Speaker 1: of research. But there's so much documented that's never been
Speaker 1: pulled together, which is not just what you know the
Speaker 1: making of the film, but as you say, the influence
Speaker 1: of the film why the film looks so unusual, why
Speaker 1: it's an art house film that was made to cash
Speaker 1: in on a band before they split up, and actually
Speaker 1: was the beginning of something rather than the end of something.
Speaker 1: So all that's gone into it, And I've had lovely
Speaker 1: feedback from a lot of people who knew the Beatles
Speaker 1: in the sixties actually and said that they felt they'd
Speaker 1: learned stuff from it, which is all you could ask for,
Speaker 1: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, yeah. You describe A Hard Day's Night as
Speaker 2: a snapshot of Britain in nineteen sixty four. What aspects
Speaker 2: of British society does it capture better than most history books.
Speaker 1: Well, for the first thing, I think it just gives
Speaker 1: you a sense of how weird it was with Beatlemania.
Speaker 1: There had been you know, like Sinatra in America. There
Speaker 1: had been pop stars that had fanatic followings in the
Speaker 1: UK before, but there was something but beatle The Beatles
Speaker 1: and the way they connected with all generations. There wasn't
Speaker 1: a lot of pop music television, so they weren't on
Speaker 1: mainstream light entertainment variety shows like more common wise with
Speaker 1: comedians and things. It's equipment to them going on on
Speaker 1: the ed Sullivan Show, and the hysteria just continued to
Speaker 1: grow around them. So what you see in this film
Speaker 1: is it captures the way that they couldn't go anywhere
Speaker 1: without screaming fans just appearing from anywhere. It captures that
Speaker 1: sense of them on television as a medium which kind
Speaker 1: of transmitted them to the world. I mean, the cover
Speaker 1: of the book is a spoof of the it's a
Speaker 1: play on the film posters that have been contact sheet.
Speaker 1: It's the Beatles split into four TV sets and I
Speaker 1: like their there are kind of contagion being transmitted to
Speaker 1: the world. So the world of television and how powerful
Speaker 1: a force it was in people's lives were captured in
Speaker 1: this film. And of course the changing social picture of
Speaker 1: Britain we had, although it's you know, you glimpse it
Speaker 1: rather than it's made a big point of it's a
Speaker 1: multi racial audience. There are teenage girls of color and
Speaker 1: teenage boys of color in that audience. Because the so
Speaker 1: called Windrush generation of Commonwealth immigrants like my parents came
Speaker 1: to Britain in nineteen sixty from Indian Pakistan. They were,
Speaker 1: you know, very much changing the picture of Britain. And
Speaker 1: the other thing about Britain at the time is the
Speaker 1: changing economic picture of work. So there are a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting career women in this film, and I know
Speaker 1: a lot of women who became makeup artists. In the sixties, television,
Speaker 1: the screen world is a big growing place and women
Speaker 1: were starting to make their impact in all kinds of ways.
Speaker 1: So all of that is captured incidentally in the background
Speaker 1: to a film which looks document entry style. Even though
Speaker 1: it's a scripted film, there is a mixture of I've
Speaker 1: described it as a fantasy documentary.
Speaker 3: Eric.
Speaker 1: There are moments that are real. There's fans screaming on
Speaker 1: the street. Some of them were paid to turn up,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them turned up just because they
Speaker 1: heard the Beatles were filming. So everything feels you're not
Speaker 1: quite sure where the reality stops and the surreality of
Speaker 1: Richard Lester's comedy style begins.
Speaker 2: You know Richard Less and let's talk about him, because
Speaker 2: he's often described as a film secret weapon. What did
Speaker 2: he bring to the project that maybe another director might
Speaker 2: not have.
Speaker 1: Well, it start with he's kind of an outsider. He's
Speaker 1: an American who had made his head in Britain and
Speaker 1: loved British humor and he had a very strong anti
Speaker 1: deaferential sense. So when the sewers crisis happened, he's one
Speaker 1: of those people who thought, who are these idiots who
Speaker 1: are ruling us? He goes on to make a film
Speaker 1: like How I Won the War, which is scathingly anti
Speaker 1: war and anti the kind of political forces that send
Speaker 1: young men to die. And his sense of humor just
Speaker 1: gelled with the Beatles, who watched a lot of television,
Speaker 1: knew the comedy of particular couple of actors, Piece of
Speaker 1: Cellars who's known very much in America, Spike Millier, and
Speaker 1: he's less well known. The two of them were in
Speaker 1: a comedy troupe called The Goons, which began on radio.
Speaker 1: People like King Charles grew up a huge fan of it.
Speaker 1: The Beatles used to listen to that, and it transposed television.
Speaker 1: Some of these actors wrote TV series and films, and
Speaker 1: which Leicester had worked with them on a lot of
Speaker 1: these projects. So they had a shared sense of humor,
Speaker 1: I think, and he bought that surreality. And also it
Speaker 1: wasn't that he knew the Beatles, but he had a
Speaker 1: strong sense. I read some lovely interviews with Richard Leicester
Speaker 1: of his heart being in sync with a young audience.
Speaker 1: He was about ten years older than them, but he
Speaker 1: kind of came up with lots of creative ideas about
Speaker 1: how to film them, how to capture them, how to
Speaker 1: turn the surreality of some of those crazy press conferences,
Speaker 1: like the one at JFK when they first arrived in
Speaker 1: the US, when they're being asked about their haircuts and stuff,
Speaker 1: and they just bat back these inane questions from journalists,
Speaker 1: and he found a way of turning that into surreal
Speaker 1: moments where if you watch the press conference scene in
Speaker 1: a hard day's night, they're giving answers that don't quite
Speaker 1: make sense because he kind of mixes.
Speaker 3: Up the answers and the questions.
Speaker 1: At one point, Paul's being asked, you know, how how
Speaker 1: do you feel about your father? And he goes, oh,
Speaker 1: not really, We're just good friends, which makes no sense
Speaker 1: at all. Yeah. He he films things that could have
Speaker 1: just been done dead straight as a kind of pop
Speaker 1: art collage, and that sense of a comedy surrealism, which
Speaker 1: isn't about big laughs, but it's about playfulness. That's what
Speaker 1: really makes this film stand out.
Speaker 2: I think Richard Lesser had other writers in mind, including
Speaker 2: some of Britain's biggest sitcom talents. What did Alan Owen
Speaker 2: bring that those writers might not have.
Speaker 3: It's a great question.
Speaker 1: So Richard lest did know a lot of the comedy
Speaker 1: writers at the time, and Alan Owen, well, he was
Speaker 1: from Liverpool. He's originally Welsh, but you know, Liverpool was
Speaker 1: his home. And I think one of the things this
Speaker 1: film captures very well is the sense of the way
Speaker 1: that Liverpudlians talk. They have their own code, they have
Speaker 1: They're very, very witty, and it's something George Harrison has
Speaker 1: gone on to say that, you know, everyone in Liverpool
Speaker 1: is very well I mean, in his view, is very
Speaker 1: sharp tongued and sharp witted. And so if you watch
Speaker 1: that film, even I as an English speaking person and
Speaker 1: get all the lines and all the jokes because it
Speaker 1: moves so fast and they're speaking in their own idiom.
Speaker 1: But alan On makes it feel authentic as a result,
Speaker 1: and he's writing dialogue for them that's obviously not necessarily
Speaker 1: what they would have said, but he kind of plays
Speaker 1: with what the real persona I were like. So John
Speaker 1: Lennon is the kind of you know, sharp mouthed, kind
Speaker 1: of quip quip stuff you know, Ringo's a bit more laconic,
Speaker 1: you know, Paul is a bit more eager to please.
Speaker 1: And while subsequently the Beatles in real life might have
Speaker 1: felt that they were slightly stereotyped by the version of
Speaker 1: themselves in this film, I like their there being a
Speaker 1: version of the Beatles that's a fictional version of themselves.
Speaker 1: And Alan know and did a great job at capturing that.
Speaker 1: Some of the situations he puts them in, you know,
Speaker 1: I just thought were really like the press conference scene
Speaker 1: he wrote. He wrote scenes during the filming, so they
Speaker 1: they saw how the Beatles responded, So the film was shot
Speaker 1: more or less in ordin. As they've gained in confidence,
Speaker 1: they realized George was actually a really good acting at
Speaker 1: a real presence. He was very laid back, and they
Speaker 1: wrote that extra scene for him in the ad agency.
Speaker 1: They wrote the scene for him where he's giving their
Speaker 1: roadie a shave in the using the mirror in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: you know, just little moments like that. So there's a
Speaker 1: sense of the film is responding in real time to
Speaker 1: what the Beatles are offering up as they go along.
Speaker 2: One of the great Beatles stories Ringo accidentally inventing the
Speaker 2: phrase A Hard Day's Night. The film's producer, Walter Shenson,
Speaker 2: needed a title song almost overnight, and by the next morning,
Speaker 2: John and Paul had delivered A Hard Day's Night. And
Speaker 2: the detail that the lyrics were written on a birthday
Speaker 2: card for Julian Lennon. That's another great one. Did you
Speaker 2: uncover any other small human moments like that which made
Speaker 2: these larger than my figures feel more relatable? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that is such a great one, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Because I one of the things I felt quite moved
Speaker 1: by was the fact that the real life that John
Speaker 1: was married, that he had a one year old son.
Speaker 1: These facts were of kind of kept out of the script,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't an official secret that he was married.
Speaker 1: I thought it was a shame that the reality of
Speaker 1: the women's lives around the Beatles was sort of kept
Speaker 1: out of it. One of the stories that I, I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize, but it was out there if you
Speaker 1: went looking for it, was that John Lennon's real father
Speaker 1: had turned up during the shooting of this film. This
Speaker 1: is the father who had abandoned the family, disappeared off
Speaker 1: to America, and suddenly it turns up after years at
Speaker 1: the theater where they're filming, you know, the concert sequences
Speaker 1: and there's crowds of people trying to get in, and
Speaker 1: if you remember the film, of course, there's a scene
Speaker 1: in which the grandfather is trying to get back into
Speaker 1: the theater and tried to send you know, I'm Paul's grandfather,
Speaker 1: and the real guy who say I'm John's dad turns
Speaker 1: up and you know, the message got through to John
Speaker 1: that your father's turned up, and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: in no polite terms, to get lost. They did subsequently
Speaker 1: arrange for him to have a meeting with him. But
Speaker 1: I just just what a strange and just you know,
Speaker 1: upsetting things to happen in the middle of all that chaos.
Speaker 1: I thought there were moments like that, and then things
Speaker 1: like some of the people who were just on the
Speaker 1: periphery of this. So there's a photographer called David Hern
Speaker 1: who had covered the Hungarian uprising. It'd been in places
Speaker 1: a real danger, and he said he was freaked out
Speaker 1: by the hysteria that the fans created around the Beatles.
Speaker 1: He'd never seen anything like it. Needs to ply monopoly
Speaker 1: with them on the train while they were filming, I
Speaker 1: was fascinated by even a war photographer was deeply disturbed
Speaker 1: about the scale of Beetle Banya.
Speaker 3: I thought that was quite interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard some Beatle experts talk about that PTSD
Speaker 2: that all four members must have had in the years
Speaker 2: following the breakup or the end of the Beatles, because
Speaker 2: it was it took a while for them to get
Speaker 2: out of that phase and be comfortable in their own
Speaker 2: skin and in their own careers. That Can't Buy Me
Speaker 2: Love sequence is classic. It's such a great representation of
Speaker 2: youth breaking free from authority and tradition. It's still there
Speaker 2: when you watch it, probably the most iconic of all
Speaker 2: the scenes from the film. You call it the most
Speaker 2: complex in the entire film. What makes it so much
Speaker 2: more sophisticated than it first appears.
Speaker 1: Well, I love that it's actually shot in three different
Speaker 1: locations weeks apart, because you know, you just assume that
Speaker 1: it's just all in the editing. But the scene where
Speaker 1: they come out on the far escape and they go
Speaker 1: we're out, that's one location. That's the Hammersmith Odie in
Speaker 1: the West London as it was in ald Cinema, and
Speaker 1: then they run down that fire escape and then when
Speaker 1: they're running across the field. That was shot in Eiseleworth
Speaker 1: near he Through Airport. In fact, a community group got
Speaker 1: in touch with it and they did a screening of the
Speaker 1: film in those same playing fields just the other weekend
Speaker 1: to mark, you know, Paul McCartney's birthday, which was lovely
Speaker 1: because the playing field is still a place you can visit.
Speaker 1: I've been there. But the other location is Gatwick Airport, Britain,
Speaker 1: London second airport and they basically had a helicopter and
Speaker 1: if you think about it, when they first seemed to
Speaker 1: run into the field, the suddenly you're very aware that
Speaker 1: it's a judgery shot. It's the helicopter going up and
Speaker 1: that's where they were shot from a distance, running around
Speaker 1: larking in the field. And what's interesting is that that
Speaker 1: was in a way the first part of the sequence
Speaker 1: that was shot. But the cameraman was an experienced ex
Speaker 1: military cameraman had shot a lot of planes, had shot
Speaker 1: to air raids over Germany and stuff for Winston Churchill
Speaker 1: and they footage ascent to number ten Downing Street for
Speaker 1: him to monitor what was going on. So he'd gone
Speaker 1: up with a helicopter and when he got up, he
Speaker 1: realized that the battery in the.
Speaker 3: Camera was run down. The footage was.
Speaker 1: Running through at low speeds. When he played it back
Speaker 1: a normal speed, it had that speeded up silent movie
Speaker 1: slapstick effect. So they shot the rest of the stuff
Speaker 1: kind of to match it. So Richard Lester was very
Speaker 1: good at responding to an accident and saying, well, let's
Speaker 1: make this a feature, because he loved Buster Keaton. There's
Speaker 1: a whole sequencer chase sequence later with the Policeman, which
Speaker 1: is based on Cops nineteen twenty two. Bus to keep
Speaker 1: the film, so they shoot the stuff in the playing
Speaker 1: field later, and they mock up a version of the
Speaker 1: helipad so it looks like it's the same location and
Speaker 1: they speed up the footage, but those are three different
Speaker 1: locations shot weeks apart, and at one point John Lennon
Speaker 1: isn't even there because they used to film, despite the
Speaker 1: fact that they all had other commitments and John Lennon
Speaker 1: went off to a literary luncheon for his first book,
Speaker 1: And so there's moments when they seem to be doing
Speaker 1: like a dosey dough on the helipad and the camera
Speaker 1: is being held, but what you assume is John and
Speaker 1: he points the camera down at his feet and his
Speaker 1: beetle boots. That's Richard Lester, you know. So sometimes they substitute.
Speaker 1: He substitutes himself for the missing beetle. So you wouldn't
Speaker 1: know any of this, and literally unless you went looking
Speaker 1: for the information. And I read a lot of interviews
Speaker 1: that he had done with people at steven Soderberg Accounts,
Speaker 1: had given at previous screenings. Because the Richard Lester is
Speaker 1: very much still alive, but just very frail, and he
Speaker 1: still lives in England. And I think, more than anything,
Speaker 1: I wanted this book to be homage to him as
Speaker 1: an American who made Britain it's his home. And together
Speaker 1: with the American producers of this film, I love that
Speaker 1: it took a true of Americans to give the Beatles
Speaker 1: back to Britain and the world as the most exciting
Speaker 1: new British phenomenon.
Speaker 2: How much of Hard Day's Night, Oh, is it's magic
Speaker 2: to accidents like you mentioned, like the sped up film
Speaker 2: effect only because the camera batteries running low, and that
Speaker 2: Richard Lester was smart enough to keep I mean, how
Speaker 2: much of the movie has those moments?
Speaker 1: A lot has it, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: best of those moments is that within the first two
Speaker 1: to three seconds of the opening film, when you suddenly
Speaker 1: start with that cord of the opening track and you
Speaker 1: see through the Beatles are running down that alley next
Speaker 1: to Maribone station and George trips over and falls flat
Speaker 1: hard on his face, Ringo lands on top of him.
Speaker 1: They get up and they keep running, you know, And
Speaker 1: that happens a couple of times things like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: in that whole sequence, there's a lot of fans falling
Speaker 1: over quite badly in the crush, so you have that
Speaker 1: sense there's real peril, there's real jeopardy. If they hadn't
Speaker 1: got up and run again, you know, would they be
Speaker 1: able to shoot that sequence? Everything shot as fast as
Speaker 1: it can be because they never know when the police
Speaker 1: are going to shut down shooting, as they sometimes did
Speaker 1: this if the crowds are too big, or the crowd
Speaker 1: might get out of control. And you know, they had
Speaker 1: a moment after the first day of shooting on the
Speaker 1: train where the young technician was carrying the cans of
Speaker 1: film looked a bit like a Beatle and he starts
Speaker 1: to being chased by girls and he tried to outrun them,
Speaker 1: and he dropped a load of the film and they
Speaker 1: had to, you know, abandon some of the tape that
Speaker 1: got lost, So the whole film has a sense of
Speaker 1: urgency about it. And there's another moment when they're rehearsing
Speaker 1: a number in the studio when George leans on his
Speaker 1: amp and it kind of starts to always fall off
Speaker 1: its stand and you actually hear the.
Speaker 3: Thump of it. So I think all that adds to
Speaker 3: a sense.
Speaker 1: Of authenticity, doesn't it that he left all these accidents in.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's why it stands up so well over time
Speaker 2: as well, because there are those real moments. You suggest
Speaker 2: that A Hard Day's Night helped create the modern music video.
Speaker 2: When people talk about the birth of MTV modern music video,
Speaker 2: does the camp Binmen Love sequence deserve to be at
Speaker 2: that center of the conversation.
Speaker 3: I think it does.
Speaker 1: And in fact, even before that, the very first pop
Speaker 1: video I'd argue is when they're on the train and
Speaker 1: they go into that guard's character they're playing cards and
Speaker 1: the music starts up of I should have known better?
Speaker 3: I think think it is, isn't it?
Speaker 1: And if you watch that sequence, it's the first time
Speaker 1: in cinema that you start to hear the song before
Speaker 1: you see them singing or performing it, and then it's
Speaker 1: suddenly jump cuts to them in the same seats, but
Speaker 1: they're playing instruments. We take it for granted that pop
Speaker 1: videos work this way. No one had ever done this before.
Speaker 1: It's all in the editing. The way that Paul even
Speaker 1: looks like he's miming along or jiggling his head to
Speaker 1: hearing the song on the radio, the next moment singing
Speaker 1: it out loud, and then the can'tbine we love sequence
Speaker 1: is the kind of you know, it's arguably the inspiration
Speaker 1: for The Monkeys. I mean, the whole TV show spins
Speaker 1: out of these running zany foursome of guys playing around
Speaker 1: in a field in a slapstick way. There's a huge
Speaker 1: amount of slapstick in sixties pop music cinema, even before
Speaker 1: the MTV comes along. And I find it quite ironic,
Speaker 1: Eric that MTV has basically been shutting down across Europe.
Speaker 1: It's you know, very much in retreat, and that this
Speaker 1: film has outlived the art film that had invented. I mean,
Speaker 1: they famously gave him a Vanguard Award in nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: four as the father of the the pop video and
Speaker 1: he jokingly demanded a paternity test, but you know he's
Speaker 1: outlived his child again. And the other one i'd point
Speaker 1: out looking ahead a bit because I look at the
Speaker 1: other films that they made, and including Help, which is
Speaker 1: their follow up with Richard Leicester. Those films all shot
Speaker 1: the pop music treatments in that film in the studio
Speaker 1: with a cigarette smoke sort of filtered through blue lights.
Speaker 1: Or they're in the Bahamas with these beautiful girls, all
Speaker 1: again shot through beautiful sunlight. I mean that interspitual the
Speaker 1: jurand Geran exotic videos of the ninety six eighties like Rio,
Speaker 1: doesn't it?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Samira I met as the author of A Hard
Speaker 2: Day's Night, part of the British Film Institute's Film Classics series.
Speaker 2: David Jansen plays the young truant who meets Ringo during
Speaker 2: one of the film's most memorable sequences. What insights did
Speaker 2: he share about working with the Beatles and Richard Lester.
Speaker 1: Oh, it was such a joy to talk to David Jansen,
Speaker 1: who he realized is one of the few members of
Speaker 1: the original Casters still around because he was ten years
Speaker 1: old at the time and now he's in his seventies,
Speaker 1: and one of the things is he was quite an
Speaker 1: o experienced actor. He had been in the stage production
Speaker 1: of Oliver for about a year and he'd done a
Speaker 1: lot of television, so he turned up with his own
Speaker 1: clothes on the shoot. He hadn't realized that Ringo was
Speaker 1: incredibly hungover. It comes straight from an all nighter. I
Speaker 1: love the way the Beatles. We talk about burning the
Speaker 1: candle at both ends, and they did that a lot.
Speaker 1: So they cut back a lot of the dialogue that
Speaker 1: they had scripted for Ringo, and the dialogue was written
Speaker 1: to be learned in short bursts. They didn't expect the
Speaker 1: Beatles to be learning pages and pages. They would learn
Speaker 1: it on the day. Do the scene, move on to
Speaker 1: the next scene. So they cut that right back, and
Speaker 1: he described beat you to me the way that they
Speaker 1: improvised with the fiddling with the camera. They're walking alongside
Speaker 1: each other, which wasn't the original plan, riginal plan where
Speaker 1: they stood and looked at each other and talked to
Speaker 1: each other. But the reason that suit still works is
Speaker 1: something very modern. Isn't there about two men who can't
Speaker 1: quite communicate, and so it's like driving along next door
Speaker 1: to each other in a car, isn't it, And you
Speaker 1: talk to your son without looking at him, and you
Speaker 1: can share things if you're not looking at each other
Speaker 1: in the eye. I also love the fact that there's
Speaker 1: something very poetic about Ringo essentially encountering his childhood's self,
Speaker 1: because he had in real life played Truant as a
Speaker 1: child on the shores of the River Mersey, as captured
Speaker 1: in the lyrics of the Glass Onion. So all there
Speaker 1: are all these echoes underneath, whether you know or didn't
Speaker 1: know this stuff that comes into that. And though I
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it because I won't be able
Speaker 1: to read the book, I was shocked to realis David
Speaker 1: Jensen that he was supposed to be in another scene
Speaker 1: later on in the film, And that's one of the
Speaker 1: possibly the only era of judgment I would argue that
Speaker 1: Richard Lester made, which is failing to have that return
Speaker 1: of his character, which would have had a lovely symmetry
Speaker 1: to it when he was sposed to turn up again,
Speaker 1: and David explained how and why it was that he
Speaker 1: wasn't included in that scene.
Speaker 2: You suggest that Victor Spinetti's frantic TV director was inspired
Speaker 2: by the BBC producer that Lester observed that day. Talk
Speaker 2: about that and how much of a hard day's night
Speaker 2: is rooted in those real moments that he witnessed firsthand.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so there's such a lovely role an rich
Speaker 1: fix Spietti who plays this very uptight, concerned director who
Speaker 1: doesn't really understand pop music but is very very anxious
Speaker 1: about it all going horribly wrong and.
Speaker 3: Then the band not turning up. Richard Lester said two things.
Speaker 1: One was that it was supposed to be a sort
Speaker 1: of exaggerated version of himself because Richard Lester spent ten
Speaker 1: years in television. He directed hundreds and hundreds of light
Speaker 1: TV shows, a lot of the mistakes like Grandfather coming
Speaker 1: up through the trapdoor with stuff that he'd witnessed, so
Speaker 1: he's working in all these jokes about how television works.
Speaker 1: When Richard Lester got the job and was just definitively
Speaker 1: going to be working on the film, he went along
Speaker 1: see the Beatles in action and meet them. And it
Speaker 1: was at a theater in London where they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be for a show, and there was complete chaos
Speaker 1: and the Beatles turned up late. They were very good
Speaker 1: humored through it all the way that they always were.
Speaker 1: But the director of this TV special was the BBC
Speaker 1: director was absolutely frantic and tearing his hair out with
Speaker 1: the kind of anxiety. So when Richard left a witness
Speaker 1: doll that he thought, this is all part of the story,
Speaker 1: isn't it that everyone around them is kind of caught
Speaker 1: up in the anxiety of it. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I subsequently found, which I quoted the book, is
Speaker 1: you know, there were a lot of other TV shows
Speaker 1: that they did, and there was a great TV appearance
Speaker 1: they've done in nineteen sixty three. Again it was a
Speaker 1: live show, which is what the scene in this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be, supposed to be a live broadcast concert
Speaker 1: on television, and the director of it had had to
Speaker 1: write a big explanation to the head of his department
Speaker 1: about why it have been such a disaster because no
Speaker 1: one could hear anybody else. The Beatles were seeing out
Speaker 1: of tune because they couldn't hear themselves over the screaming.
Speaker 1: The cameras were always on the wrong shot because they
Speaker 1: didn't have any direction because they couldn't hehar the director.
Speaker 1: And so I love the fact that this film in
Speaker 1: a sense is an artifice because when the content happens
Speaker 1: like spoilering, like the concert goes beautifully. But of course
Speaker 1: when they shot these sequences for the feature film, the
Speaker 1: Beatles were actually miming in a theater full of screaming
Speaker 1: fans rather than playing live. So there is an artifice
Speaker 1: in conveying the controlled chaos of it.
Speaker 3: And I like that.
Speaker 1: You know, in the end, the film looks good because
Speaker 1: Richard Lesson, you went to fake stuff and went to
Speaker 1: do stuff for real. And I did interview two of
Speaker 1: the girls who are in that constant sequence. He was
Speaker 1: screaming along, so that was quite insightful as well.
Speaker 2: He's the most valuable player I think here of all
Speaker 2: the decisions he's made and the things that he did
Speaker 2: to make this movie stand up so well over time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean I particularly appreciate it. I think
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that I learned was how
Speaker 1: he had made this one of a successful by using
Speaker 1: television techniques. So in live TV, you have multiple cameras
Speaker 1: on the act and you cut between them live from
Speaker 1: the director's booth. In cinema usually you have maybe one
Speaker 1: or two cameras and those is probably just one and
Speaker 1: you shoot the same sequence repeatedly, and instead he just
Speaker 1: got all the best camera when he could the time
Speaker 1: there was a lull in the British film and it's
Speaker 1: just they got the top camera operators in the UK
Speaker 1: and they just because they knew they wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to hear anything of the screaming, they said, just shoot
Speaker 1: and shoot and shoot when the Beatles are playing whatever
Speaker 1: you like, and then they compose the whole film in
Speaker 1: the edit. So part of the frenzy of that concert
Speaker 1: sequence is sometimes you see a camera and it starts
Speaker 1: like it's on ringos face and it's only zooms at
Speaker 1: high speed across the theater to catch and it jiggles
Speaker 1: around looking for a place to land. And those were
Speaker 1: not moves that were shot to be included in the edit.
Speaker 1: They were shot just to find the next good thing.
Speaker 1: And then the idea is that you know you could then,
Speaker 1: but Richard Lester thought, no, I can use some of
Speaker 1: that that gives. So you know, he uses the stuff
Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to see to help convey the energy.
Speaker 3: And again we take it for granted.
Speaker 1: Now we have all those reality style comedy shows like
Speaker 1: The Office, where you know it's there's a camera crew
Speaker 1: and that pulls the focus or it zooms around to
Speaker 1: catch someone just off the edge. I mean, Richard left
Speaker 1: arkadly invented all those formats. There's a sitcom feel to
Speaker 1: this that is fifty years ahead of its time.
Speaker 2: Wow. Never even thought about that as well. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: you argue that the story of women in a hard
Speaker 2: day's night is much richer than the stereotype of just
Speaker 2: screaming girls. What do modern audiences miss when they reduce
Speaker 2: speedlemania to that single image.
Speaker 1: Well, for a start, they're patronizing, and I think it's
Speaker 1: very interesting that whenever pop bands or pop stars have
Speaker 1: big female fan followings, they always dismissed. So David Bowie's
Speaker 1: teenage girls often excluded from the story of his fame,
Speaker 1: and they're a huge part of his story, And in fact,
Speaker 1: I made a documentary about them called I Dressed Siggy Stardust,
Speaker 1: which pointed out that, you know a lot of his
Speaker 1: early fans were the teenage girls who influenced his dress
Speaker 1: and so on, and the Beatles as well. Everything was
Speaker 1: just produced to all those streaming girls. Now, they're obviously
Speaker 1: a big part of it. But one thing, and the photographs.
Speaker 1: What book is full of photographs. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of boys in the audience screaming along too, which I
Speaker 1: think is interesting. But if you look at the world
Speaker 1: that the Beatles moved through, you know, through the TV
Speaker 1: studio and through the news conference, and in the hotels
Speaker 1: and so on, in the nightclubs where they try to escape,
Speaker 1: they're encountering adult women of their own generation are a
Speaker 1: little bit older, sophisticated city women who are in nightclubs
Speaker 1: with their boyfriends or working in an advertising agency or
Speaker 1: assistant directors. And I like the idea of it capturing
Speaker 1: this changing world of work where women's opportunities were opening
Speaker 1: up in a big way. And of course it started
Speaker 1: to be reflected in the Beatles songwriting, where they're encountering,
Speaker 1: you know, rather than just writing the songs which were
Speaker 1: written to a kind of fifties formula, a bit brill
Speaker 1: building style about you know, I want to hold your
Speaker 1: hand and she loves you. It's not to write songs
Speaker 1: like you won't see Me or Norwegian Wood I once
Speaker 1: had a girl, or should I say she once had me?
Speaker 1: You know, songs that you are more about women who
Speaker 1: aren't at the beck and call of their men, and
Speaker 1: I feel all that transition is going on in this film.
Speaker 1: And I love that I was able to identify one
Speaker 1: of the girls in the nightclub who's a really famous
Speaker 1: fashion design in Britain called Adina Ronne. And she's in
Speaker 1: the scene where she's got a long blonde hair and
Speaker 1: she's drinking glass of wine. John Lennon's talking to her,
Speaker 1: and she's sitting with what's presumably her boyfriend, and if
Speaker 1: you look carefully, her lovely leather booted leg is erotically
Speaker 1: cupped by her boyfriend's holding her foot in his hand.
Speaker 2: A chat.
Speaker 1: It's such a love little and that's one of the
Speaker 1: photograph that put in the book. And I loved just
Speaker 1: taking them time to revel in actually what interesting women
Speaker 1: characters are in this film. They're not in it for
Speaker 1: very long. And there's Anna Quail, the theatrical figure that
Speaker 1: John Lena bumps into in the theater goes. I think
Speaker 1: she knows him, but she can't quite place him. You know,
Speaker 1: these lovely little cameos. They're so rich, aren't they, And
Speaker 1: they just they give you a sense of there's so
Speaker 1: much more to it. The one thing that I think
Speaker 1: is a shame and it is and it's not you know,
Speaker 1: Richard Lester was deliberately being sexist. But I think it's
Speaker 1: a shame that the school girls on the train were
Speaker 1: a little bit you know, finger in mouth like Toddler's
Speaker 1: and I know that, you know George Mett's wife, Patty Boyd,
Speaker 1: you know, and so there's a lovely meat cute there.
Speaker 1: But I thought it was a shame that that's the
Speaker 1: that's kind of image that I think is dated a
Speaker 1: little bit. And similarly, there's a woman in the nightclub
Speaker 1: who incidentally is the bond girl that you see in
Speaker 1: the title sequets to Goldfinger, with all the title sequence
Speaker 1: is projected onto her bikini clad body, Margaret Nolan. But
Speaker 1: she plays a kind of comedy big busted because you know,
Speaker 1: woman in the casino who has no lines of dialogue.
Speaker 1: And I think some of those that's to do with
Speaker 1: the script. I mean, there was a whole scene that
Speaker 1: was cut Eric which was quite sexist, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think on the whole they had a good eye
Speaker 1: for not they, but the producers around them had a
Speaker 1: good eye for what would and wouldn't work the film.
Speaker 1: That's no, it's not mean spirited. And the other thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to mention is that there was a whole
Speaker 1: scene that was written for Ringo which is quite racist.
Speaker 1: It would have had him going into a shop and
Speaker 1: I've got the original scripts and talked about a quote
Speaker 1: typical Jewish proprietor and trying to make a sale that
Speaker 1: would fool a load of black sailors. And the Beatles
Speaker 1: ever got to see that scene. I mean, the producer
Speaker 1: bad Nstein just saw it and just said, no way,
Speaker 1: that's racist. And so you know, there were some really
Speaker 1: good instincts and the decision makers around the Beatles as
Speaker 1: well as they themselves be of course, very passionately anti racist,
Speaker 1: which meant this film has not dated in the ways
Speaker 1: that a lot of other films have.
Speaker 2: That's what I was about to ask, is a lot
Speaker 2: of nineteen sixties films of age poorly in terms of
Speaker 2: race and gender. But maybe those decisions are why it's
Speaker 2: largely of did that fee?
Speaker 1: I think there's two factors. I think one factor is
Speaker 1: that Brian Epstein, like a lot of managers at the time,
Speaker 1: wanted to keep romance plots out of the film, and
Speaker 1: so it means that you don't have female characters doing,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's such a big role that they
Speaker 1: might be then written in a stereotypical way, which I
Speaker 1: think helps. But the other factor is that I think
Speaker 1: Richard Lester's background in comedy means that the women in
Speaker 1: the film are there sometimes little comedy moments, you know.
Speaker 1: So the secretary in the advertising agency who's appraising George
Speaker 1: Harrison for an advertising gig, not quite realizing he's the
Speaker 1: real thing, you know. It's quite a sophisticated form of comedy,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's I think that's what he brought.
Speaker 1: And if you look at I mean it's a great
Speaker 1: show that Richard Lester made with Spike Milligan, called a
Speaker 1: show called Fred, and there was a sequel that called
Speaker 1: Son of Fred. Made us far back as the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, so only a year or so after independent
Speaker 1: television began in the UK, offering some competition with the BBC.
Speaker 1: And it's astounding how many interesting female characters there are,
Speaker 1: how surreal it is. Piece Sellers is in it as well.
Speaker 1: It breaks the fourth wall. It's that sense of, you know,
Speaker 1: women can be just interesting comedy character types rather than stereotypes.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why this film works in that sense,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have just doesn't have the dated opinions that
Speaker 1: we're still at large.
Speaker 2: Then you know, find the bookdown Rock website at booked
Speaker 2: on Rock dot com. There you can find all the
Speaker 2: back episodes of the show, the latest episode in video
Speaker 2: and audio, links to all of the platforms where you
Speaker 2: can listen to the podcast, plus all the social media
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Speaker 2: Also check out the Booked on Rock blog, find your
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Speaker 2: on Rock online store, pick up some Booked on Rock merch.
Speaker 2: It's all at booked on Rock dot com. Reading the
Speaker 2: letter by BBC TV director Barney Colehan, I think that's
Speaker 2: pronunciation cole hand. It sounds as though Beatlemania created technical
Speaker 2: problems television simply wasn't prepared for at that time. How
Speaker 2: did Richard Lester overcome those challenges in a hard day's night.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the director I was thinking of when I
Speaker 1: talked earlier about how they shot the constant sequences very practically.
Speaker 1: Richard Lester knew that although he was trying to create
Speaker 1: the idea that they're doing a live TV broadcast.
Speaker 3: He was very practical.
Speaker 1: About how he shot it, so the Beatles mind those
Speaker 1: songs repeatedly in that theater. They shot over the course
Speaker 1: of the whole day with that crowd. Richard Lester moved
Speaker 1: that audience around. So although there's the stalls and there
Speaker 1: are two circles and balconies, he either filled the stalls
Speaker 1: or he filled the upper circles. And if you watch
Speaker 1: the film carefully, you can see moments where one section
Speaker 1: is actually black.
Speaker 3: It gets blacked out and it's not lit, so the
Speaker 3: emphasis is somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So he took the time over the course of a
Speaker 1: day to capture what looked like of a live gig,
Speaker 1: but shot it really carefully, and I think that's the key.
Speaker 2: A young Phil Collins one of the children in the
Speaker 2: audience during the concert filming. Did you uncover any interesting
Speaker 2: stories of out Phil's day on a Hard Day's Night
Speaker 2: that maybe didn't make it into the book?
Speaker 1: No, I mean Phil Collins had narrated some of the
Speaker 1: DVD extras for A Hard Days Night at its fiftieth
Speaker 1: anniversary release, I think, or even earlier. So I'd watched
Speaker 1: that back and he actually had. I don't think it has
Speaker 1: many memories of the other and they're just being overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: The other future pop star, of course, was in the
Speaker 1: audience was Linda Lewis, who did a singer a lot
Speaker 1: with the likes of David Bowie and stuff as well.
Speaker 1: So I love that there are two future pop stars
Speaker 1: in that audience, and then a different kind of musical
Speaker 1: style you could argue is someone I met through social media.
Speaker 1: Her mother was in the opera scene. There's a scene
Speaker 1: where they're rehearsing for a clip from Deflator Mouse by
Speaker 1: Strauss and the grandfather suddenly comes up through the trap
Speaker 1: door in it, and they recruited these singers from the
Speaker 1: Royal College of Music at Central London, and someone had
Speaker 1: just gone around the canteen and said, you want to
Speaker 1: be in this film for shooting it twicken in studios,
Speaker 1: it's ten pounds, it's quite a lot of money. And
Speaker 1: they all had to learn a few bars of Deflator
Speaker 1: Bus and they came delivered it. And that was one
Speaker 1: of the lovely stories because this woman said she didn't
Speaker 1: want to give her name for some reason. She wanted to
Speaker 1: not be named in the book. I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but she talked about going to the canteen. They filmed this,
Speaker 1: took them studios with a couple of the other singers,
Speaker 1: and they were still in their kind of durandal, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of German rustic peasant costumes, and they went out
Speaker 1: to Paul McCartney's for an autograph. Of course, Paul McCartney
Speaker 1: had studied, you know, English literature at a level which
Speaker 1: is the kind of senior school qualification, and he started
Speaker 1: to quote Tennison at them, do you come from Haunts
Speaker 1: of Coot and Hern which is quite a famous poem
Speaker 1: that was widely taught in schools at the time. And
Speaker 1: she remembered that, and I love these little insights into
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: There was all.
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing that really comes across about the
Speaker 1: Beatles is they were all really smart. And Ringo probably
Speaker 1: had the least schooling of them all, but the other
Speaker 1: three were all grammar school boys. They were all quick witted.
Speaker 1: As you discussed, you know, Ringo came up with this
Speaker 1: ringoism of a hard day's night, and you came up
Speaker 1: with eight days a week and all these kinds of phrases,
Speaker 1: so you know, they were all quick verbally, and they
Speaker 1: had a huge range of interest in kind of they
Speaker 1: were interested in classical music and pop music and and
Speaker 1: anything that was going in poetry and all of that,
Speaker 1: and television and film and all of those references are
Speaker 1: kind of the present, aren't they. In the way that
Speaker 1: the Beatles interact with each other and their fans.
Speaker 2: That's how they were able to handle the press too
Speaker 2: quick questions because they had a bunch of questions getting
Speaker 2: thrown at him, and so they were able to be
Speaker 2: witty and not be able to say anything that's going
Speaker 2: to get him in hot water. Were the exception of
Speaker 2: you know that Lenin famous Lenin moment, you know, the
Speaker 2: bigger than Jesus moment. But otherwise they had those funny comebacks.
Speaker 1: Can I just say about that? I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know how you feel watching it back. And British journals
Speaker 1: could be just as inane, But there was something about
Speaker 1: the way those America that American press call didn't seem
Speaker 1: to get the Beetles at all and asked such inane questions.
Speaker 1: And I thought the Beatles were really smart. They didn't
Speaker 1: just say that's a stupid question. They just batted it
Speaker 1: back with, you know, with their quick wit, and they
Speaker 1: made I think they made the press fall in love
Speaker 1: with them, because they didn't mock the press exactly, but
Speaker 1: they laughed.
Speaker 3: They laughed at them.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, at first they just thought, who are these
Speaker 2: these kids with the strange haircuts from the UK? You know,
Speaker 2: they didn't know what to think at the time, And yeah,
Speaker 2: they just they fell in love with them.
Speaker 3: Okay, what's one other thing?
Speaker 1: Just was an American insight. So the future Olivia Harrison,
Speaker 1: of course, was a teenager in California at the time
Speaker 1: this film came out. I had interviewed her at at
Speaker 1: the launcher of the Beatles sixty four documentary, which came
Speaker 1: out a couple of years ago on Disney Plus, and
Speaker 1: she talked about the importance of the Beatles hair, which
Speaker 1: is of course captured in such glory in this film
Speaker 1: up closed a lot of the time. But she said,
Speaker 1: how you know, being a high school teenager and you
Speaker 1: never saw her like that, you know, everyone had the
Speaker 1: preppy look or they were sporty jocks, and that it
Speaker 1: was a real shocking thing to see young men with
Speaker 1: such lovely hair, and that it freaked out a lot
Speaker 1: of American men, both teenage boys themselves and their dads.
Speaker 3: I don't know what your memories are.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean your father has told me. Right,
Speaker 2: I was going to say, it's before my time, but sure,
Speaker 2: I remember. No, that's okay. My mom and dad talked
Speaker 2: about that. How Yeah, they that was kind of it
Speaker 2: was a culture show. It wasn't something anybody had been
Speaker 2: prepared for. But what's interesting here about in the States
Speaker 2: is during that time, it was like this welcomed relief
Speaker 2: or outlet for teenagers here in the States after the
Speaker 2: John F. Kennedy assassination. You know, That's what you know,
Speaker 2: my parents have talked about, and other people from that generation,
Speaker 2: like man, they just kids needed somewhere to release that
Speaker 2: all that pent up sadness and frustrations over the changing times,
Speaker 2: and it was like they just came along at just
Speaker 2: the right time, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I'm fascinated by the fact that the Beatles had
Speaker 1: signed the contract to make this film in October sixty three,
Speaker 1: but by the time they start shooting it in March
Speaker 1: sixty four, they've already been on Ed Sullivan and they
Speaker 1: have become the biggest band in the world. And somehow
Speaker 1: they're still shooting on the streets of London without any
Speaker 1: big security or anything, you know, And as I mentioned
Speaker 1: once or twice in the place, we turn up and
Speaker 1: saying I'm sorry, you're not alatitude on the streets day
Speaker 1: because it's dangerous. They would improvise it, go inside the theater,
Speaker 1: and they shot the press conference sequence a couple of
Speaker 1: days earlier than planned, just improvising, and they managed to
Speaker 1: bring up people to come play it being the journalists
Speaker 1: and wrote and journalists had turned out to watch the shoot.
Speaker 1: But the fact that the Beatles are already the biggest
Speaker 1: thing in the world and they're shooting a film just
Speaker 1: on the streets, and also crucially, they're still enjoying it.
Speaker 1: They're not, even though they are trapped by the fame,
Speaker 1: the joy they have when they're performing for each other,
Speaker 1: you're right, and even when they're running from crowds, the
Speaker 1: way that they laugh and they look at each other,
Speaker 1: you can tell it's still joyful for them. And I
Speaker 1: think within a year that's all changed, hasn't it.
Speaker 2: But within a couple of years, yeah, then it just
Speaker 2: becomes just unbearable. They stopped touring because they know they
Speaker 2: didn't feel anybody was taking their music seriously, just screaming
Speaker 2: fans wherever they played, and that's why they stopped touring.
Speaker 2: But John later admitted that he was the band was
Speaker 2: worried that their old friends from Liverpool might think they
Speaker 2: sold out. But despite all those worries, two hundred thousand
Speaker 2: people turned out for the Liverpool reception. Was that the
Speaker 2: more that the Beatles realized they hadn't lost Liverpool after all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's something that's a really astute observation.
Speaker 1: They were more worried about going to Liverpool for the
Speaker 1: Northern premiere than they were about the original world premiere
Speaker 1: in front of Princess Margaret in London because being from
Speaker 1: Liverpool going back home and being you know, they were worried,
Speaker 1: as I quote John in the book, are saying that
Speaker 1: you know that they had somehow they had become too clean,
Speaker 1: they'd kind of sold out in a way, and he's
Speaker 1: argues that we sort of had. And there's great news footage,
Speaker 1: The original newsual footage that were shot by Grenada Television
Speaker 1: is available at the BFI Archives. I went and watched
Speaker 1: a lot of this footage, and you know, you can
Speaker 1: tell they just they're just so touched by the crowd.
Speaker 1: There's two great stories, one of which is of course
Speaker 1: John doing one of his notorious Hitler salutes. Not because
Speaker 1: I think he was, you know, thinking of himself as
Speaker 1: Hitler any more than he thought of himself as Usus Christ.
Speaker 1: But I mean, partly it was just a trope at
Speaker 1: the time all British school boys were obsessed with World
Speaker 1: War Two. But also there's something about these adulation, the
Speaker 1: adulation of these crowds, and I think he's got a
Speaker 1: kind of ironic distance from it, like why these so
Speaker 1: many hundreds of thousands of people turning up to waive
Speaker 1: at me? You know, it's seen madness. But the other
Speaker 1: story that I've learned since writing the books, it might
Speaker 1: go to second edition is Michael Palin, of course, was
Speaker 1: a very good friend.
Speaker 3: Of George Harrison.
Speaker 1: George Harrison's big supporter of the Python, and that's part
Speaker 1: of the subsequent story of A Hard Day's Night is
Speaker 1: you know how they all went on to pursue film
Speaker 1: in different ways. And I didn't realize that George Harrison
Speaker 1: had stolen the trun should belonging to the Chief Police
Speaker 1: Constable of Merseyside Police on that Northern premiere in Liverpool
Speaker 1: and he kept it all those years, And at some
Speaker 1: point in the nineteen eighty I was reading Michael Palin's
Speaker 1: diaries from that decade quite recently, and one day for
Speaker 1: his birthday, George Harrison just gave him the truncheon that
Speaker 1: he had stolen from the premier.
Speaker 3: He was quite a rule breaker with George.
Speaker 1: People think it was John, but I think George is
Speaker 1: the one who's really the most anti authority, and I
Speaker 1: love that he just lifted the truncheon and kept it
Speaker 1: as a souvenir.
Speaker 2: We know they captured the minds and hearts of the
Speaker 2: youth in the UK and the States. But what's interesting
Speaker 2: is that many older critics were pleasantly surprised by the film.
Speaker 2: Why did A Hard Day's Night win over so many
Speaker 2: reviewers who might have been expected to dismiss a Beatles movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that really surprised me.
Speaker 1: I went through all the old press cuttings, and almost universally,
Speaker 1: with the exception of the Financial Times reviewer and ironically
Speaker 1: Sight and Sound, which is the kind of siniesques magazine,
Speaker 1: people loved them. And I think it was partly a
Speaker 1: lot of these reviewers were relatively speaking Middle Ages and
Speaker 1: were probably in their late thirties or forties. They hadn't
Speaker 1: known what to expect, and they were charmed by the
Speaker 1: fact the Beatles were really interesting, charismatic people.
Speaker 3: I mean, like Elvis.
Speaker 1: This is one of the biggest things that emerges from
Speaker 1: watching the Beatles on film. They have a natural charisma
Speaker 1: and charm. And I know Elvis's films weren't all that good,
Speaker 1: but he's always watchable and he's always wonderful in everything.
Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, the Beatles were like that.
Speaker 1: They were themselves, and they had a warmth that just
Speaker 1: came through the camera. And these critics got to work out,
Speaker 1: like they would say in the reviews, oh I can
Speaker 1: tell them apart now they noticed how much came naturally
Speaker 1: to them. They can made comparisons to the Marx Brothers
Speaker 1: or Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. You know, this was
Speaker 1: high praise at a time when those filmmakers were being
Speaker 1: were highly regarded, and and even in Germany where you
Speaker 1: know the spiel magazine, which you know you thought how
Speaker 1: to cope with the translation, they talked about that it's
Speaker 1: a treat for sinyasts, so I think they surprised everyone,
Speaker 1: and they also particularly their their magnetism, and there's an
Speaker 1: animal sexuality, even though it's slightly diluted by the comedy
Speaker 1: that surrounds them in this film. Some of the critics
Speaker 1: comparing them to other British pop stars as a pop
Speaker 1: starck called Cliff Richard who whose music whose musicality was
Speaker 1: quite an influence on them, and Hank Marvin and the
Speaker 1: guitar playing in this band, the Shadows was a big
Speaker 1: influence on on the guitar playing of the Beatles, and
Speaker 1: he'd been considered a big heart drop up until this point,
Speaker 1: but he suddenly looks like nothing compared to the energy
Speaker 1: of the Beatles, and.
Speaker 2: That the next thing.
Speaker 1: I know, And I don't know how what you made
Speaker 1: of that section in the book, because it's he never
Speaker 1: made it in America, although he made a couple of
Speaker 1: big films that had very much an American audience in mind,
Speaker 1: particularly Summer Holiday, which was the second film that came
Speaker 1: out a year before Hard Day's Night. But it was
Speaker 1: ironic that those films were made to an American formula
Speaker 1: to try and break through in America, and they don't work.
Speaker 1: Whereas the film that The beatlesmaker Hard Day's Night is
Speaker 1: deliberately a black and white. It's an art house film.
Speaker 1: It looks like the French nouvelle varg you know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't quite make sense. There's no love interest. It breaks
Speaker 1: all the rules. They don't even speak in you know,
Speaker 1: recognizable Southern English and posh English. You know, the American
Speaker 1: the Americans is all. The first screening of it at
Speaker 1: Billy Wilder's house said you're going to redub this, surely
Speaker 1: you know?
Speaker 3: And they didn't.
Speaker 1: You know if you didn't understand it while you just
Speaker 1: got carried on on by their charm. I mean that's
Speaker 1: These are all reasons why the film has endured, because
Speaker 1: it dared to be completely original, and originality is always
Speaker 1: what endures, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that's why did joined the book by observing
Speaker 2: that while we grow older, the Beatles, you know, A
Speaker 2: Hard Day's Night never do. Why do you think those
Speaker 2: four young men still have What do you think they
Speaker 2: have to say to audiences in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: I think they speak of the joy of camaraderie and friendship,
Speaker 1: of sticking up for each other, about living in the moment,
Speaker 1: and about celebrating doing what you do really well. They
Speaker 1: were great musicians and they that songwriting, that sense of
Speaker 1: the performance of doing their music to the best their abilities.
Speaker 1: That's hugely inspiring for us all, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Final question? If you could sit down with John, Paul,
Speaker 2: George and Ringo today, ask them one question about a
Speaker 2: hard day's night, what would it be.
Speaker 1: It's tricky because I have sat down with Paul mccartner.
Speaker 1: I interviewed him for a couple of hours for his
Speaker 1: book Lauge, and the thing is, I don't know how
Speaker 1: much they would remember because it was just one It
Speaker 1: was a period a few weeks in the whorld of
Speaker 1: their life. I suppose, I would argue, is if they
Speaker 1: watched the film again, you know, are they how do
Speaker 1: they feel about it now? Because I think at the
Speaker 1: time they liked it, they wanted to make more films.
Speaker 1: But over the time, I think they're worried that it
Speaker 1: caught them in an aspect in a way, the cliche
Speaker 1: of the sort of the mop tops, and of course
Speaker 1: they moved on so quickly from that. So I'd like
Speaker 1: them to watch it afresh and then tell me, now,
Speaker 1: can you see why this will listen Jed.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for checking out the Booked on Rock podcast.
Speaker 2: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for your support, and make sure
Speaker 2: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
Speaker 2: media and let people know about Booked on Rock. And
Speaker 2: if you do like the podcast, make sure you subscribe
Speaker 2: give a five star review. Wherever you listen to the
Speaker 2: bookd on Rock podcast, We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
Speaker 2: tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
Speaker 2: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
Speaker 2: episodes on the bookdown Rock YouTube channel. Find it at
Speaker 2: Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
Speaker 2: the show. The book is titled The Hard Day's Night.
Speaker 2: It's part of the British Film Institute's Film Classics series.
Speaker 2: It's out now. Find out where her books are sold.
Speaker 2: Look for at your nearest bookstore. Go to book down
Speaker 2: Rock dot com to find your nearest independent bookstore. Where
Speaker 2: can people find you online?
Speaker 1: Samarra, I've got a blog called Samera Armored dot Blog.
Speaker 1: I should say I am not the same Samera Armored
Speaker 1: as a great Chicago based writer Samra Armed who's a
Speaker 1: young adult writer. But she's a friend of mine, you know,
Speaker 1: I like and I have interview that she's brilliant, but
Speaker 1: she wrote books like this book Won't Burn and Hollow Fires.
Speaker 1: But she's a different smera armored to me. We often
Speaker 1: get each other's emails, which is quite entertaining, but that's
Speaker 1: and I'm also on on Blue Sky and X at
Speaker 1: Samira Armored UK. And I should say there's also an
Speaker 1: audiobook of this which you might enjoy all.
Speaker 2: Right, well, as usually I always put the links to
Speaker 2: all of those in the show notes so people can
Speaker 2: find you and reach out to you.
Speaker 1: And can I mention one other thing, which is I
Speaker 1: have a podcast called Through the Square Window where every
Speaker 1: month me and my co host we look at vintage
Speaker 1: TV shows from a month of a year, so we
Speaker 1: did nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 3: Recently we looked at Moonlighting, for example.
Speaker 1: I have to subscribe a bit like with this book,
Speaker 1: you look through something from the path through the prism
Speaker 1: of what was going on at the time, what's the
Speaker 1: social history moment, but also how does it look today?
Speaker 1: Can we see the start of something or do we
Speaker 1: see something that has dated and is obsolete, like an.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm literally subscribing right now before I let you go.
Speaker 2: What's the name.
Speaker 3: Of it again? Through the square window.
Speaker 2: Through the square window. I am a TV fanatic. Are
Speaker 2: we talking about? Is it Moonlighting with Bruce Willis?
Speaker 3: Are we talking about?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And simple Shepherd.
Speaker 2: Watch it every week with my dad. That was a
Speaker 2: must watch.
Speaker 1: We looked at the first episode of Twin Peaks for example.
Speaker 1: My god that that show holds up.
Speaker 2: Oh, fantastic. Okay, I'm subscribing. Always looking for new podcasts. Okay, great, Samira,
Speaker 2: thank you, fantastic book. I hope you do a sequel.
Speaker 2: If you do, come back on we'll talk about it.
Speaker 3: I will I would love to and thank you so
Speaker 3: much for having me on. It's a reel through.
Speaker 2: That's it.
Speaker 3: It's in the books.