I LOVE Yellow Submarine. Loooooooove Yellow Submarine. I'm old enough to remember The Beatles upending New York, which remains a pivotal cultural memory of mine. I dove in all the way, too, including my golden, gleaming Yellow Submarine lunchbox, 1968's de rigeur fashion accessory.
(That one's not mine. I wish. I've watched ebay, Beatlebay, Christie's, and others, and have never seen one for sale in even GOOD condition. Most are pretty well banged up and rusted, and still run in the $700 range...if you can find one at all.)
So maybe I'm too close to it to be objective, but I'm not sure I'm ready for Robert Zemeckis to apply the same 3D motion capture technique he used for "The Polar Express" the upcoming "A Christmas Carol" (starring Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey, respectively, in multiple roles), and "Beowulf," to be applied to a new stereoscopic 3D version of Yellow Submarine.
I'll be honest, the Carrey picture looks wonderful, but I found the other two a little disturbing. In fairness, I (stupidly) didn't see them in IMAX 3D, so I'm not exactly giving them a fair shake. The 2D version is the equivalent of foreign language dubbing...but still.
On one hand, whenever I hear about somebody revisiting The Beatles, I think of Robert Stigwood's "Sgt. Pepper Lonely Hearts Club Band," starring Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees. (What's that? You thought The Bee Gees had top billing? No way, man. Frampton. Look it up.)
That was 1978. I LIKE Peter Frampton and The Bee Gees, and there were some genuinely good performances in it that stand the test of time, notably Earth Wind & Fire's "Got To Get You Into My Life" and Aerosmith's "Come Together." Despite the best efforts of these and many other talented people, 1978 was an AWFUL year to be a Beatle fan. I felt like I had to hide.
Until 1978 became a WONDERFUL year to be a Beatles fan. one the kindest, sweetest, most generous and humane movies ever made, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand," told the tale of a handful of teens doing their best to see The Beatles live in the Ed Sullivan Theater on Feb. 9, 1964. The movie isn't about that show, or about Beatlemania. The fact is that no movie can adequately capture how big The Beatles were, and this one doesn't try. "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" shows how The Beatles reached beyond the hype, and touched the lives and hearts of these particular people.
Instead of running to hide from an awful movie, I now felt like I had to run to tell everyone what a wonderful movie this is.
And, as you can see there at the bottom, co-written by, and directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Hmmm, all of a sudden, I'm not quite so worried about him redoing "Yellow Submarine."
"I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was groundbreaking in one small way, and two big ones. The small one is that it was the first movie to show the intimate side of fandom -- including the competition among fans to prove oneself "the BIGGEST fan." It showed in a compassionate and empathetic way the way that identifying with a performer changes your own identity, and in this case, for the better. I certainly feel that way about my own Beatles fandom, and I'm certain Mr. Zemeckis does too.
More broadly, "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" was the first movie to mingle historical events and footage with narrative storytelling on this scale. (He certainly did a bit of it in "Forrest Gump" a bit later.)
It was also the first movie to entirely immerse itself in music. You can take music out of virtually any picture where music played a pivotal role or strongly underscored the cinematic experience -- "Singin' In The Rain," "Blackboard Jungle," "Apocalypse Now" -- and they wouldn't be all that different as movies. You wouldn't even have to swap out the songs for something else. Just take 'em out, and reflow the edit. No biggie.
Without these particular songs, there is no "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." It could possibly be done, but only as a stunt. To tell this real story, you need these real songs -- all 17 of 'em -- by these real performers.
So anyway, if anybody is going to do anything with The Beatles in a movie, I can't think of anybody better than Robert Zemeckis. I'm also not going to be an idiot: I'm going to see this one in IMAX 3D. I encourage you, likewise, to accept no substitutes.
+++
Gratuitous multimedia:
1) The Yellow Submarine 6-sheet. Found this in a UK poster collection. Sorry they didn't have an image any bigger than this to show it, but this bad boy is 81 inches by 81 inches!
The Beatles as "The Forces of Good." Check. Screenplay by Erich Segal, author of "Love Story." Check.
2) The original Yellow Submarine trailer
3) The Robert Stigwood Sgt. Pepper Trailer
Notes: Trailers used to be a lot longer than they are today, eh? The good news is that this covers a whole lot of my favorite imagery from the movie. Bad news for anybody who thought that The Beatles were actually in the movie!
See? I told you it was bad. And that Peter Frampton had top billing.
4) Although this last clip is from December 1967, Jimi Hendrix added "Sgt. Pepper" to his show the week the album was released on June 1 of that year. (Yes, I remembered that off the top of my head. I can allllmost remember my own birthday, but I'll never forget this date.) This was much to the amazement of The Beatles, and to the consternation of the rest of the English music scene, who had yet another aspect of Jimi's talent to humble them.
Seriously, if you're going to don Sgt. Pepper garb and sing a Beatles tune, watch and learn. As the man says, "Watch out for your ears."
Posted by: Tim Wilson on Sep 4, 2009 at 11:39:02 am
