New Documentary on the Beatles' First US Visit Out on 29 November!

[PaulsBrokenaGlass]

Some of these reactions are so bitter lol. The doc was fine.

[afabman]

I enjoyed it. Not nearly as much as Get Back, but I thought it was fun, given the limitations of the non-performing material. I thought the interviews were much better than 8 days a week because there was no celeb angle. And i thought they were interesting stories. They guy who got deported from the UK and later worked as an engineer was a fantastic story.

But the best bit was the restored live performances. Just great.

[TheAntManBee]

Some of these reactions are so bitter lol. The doc was fine.

It's not bitter, people wanted something more imaginative or the very least a new version of the Maysles brothers doc rather than a clichè and self centered movie. We are all tired of the same Beatles narratives and stories being repeated. Apple releases used to be unusual at least, not catching those "nostalgia vs. appealing to a new audience" trends.

I think PJ's Get Back set a bar too high for new Beatles releases.

[fabwill]

There is a great movie to be made from this footage, but this film isn’t it.

Is that maybe the problem here? The Maysles have already made at least 4 films from the footage, all of them excellent and highly watchable. Unlike Get Back, where Jackson constructed a completely different story to the one MLH told in Let It Be, a re-edit of Maysles footage is surely always going to tell the same story (4 boys go to America, America goes mad). So, as a filmmaker, why would you try to tell a story that has already been done so many times?

I still say I loved '64, it's just that it was all over the place, not least in the amount of footage that was not from 1964.

[fabwill]

Some of these reactions are so bitter lol. The doc was fine.

It's not bitter, people wanted something more imaginative or the very least a new version of the Maysles brothers doc rather than a clichè and self centered movie. We are all tired of the same Beatles narratives and stories being repeated. Apple releases used to be unusual at least, not catching those "nostalgia vs. appealing to a new audience" trends.

I think PJ's Get Back set a bar too high for new Beatles releases.

Perhaps we have to accept that Get Back only exists the way it does because of covid. Disney and a mass market audience would otherwise never have gone for an 8 hour documentary.

[PaulsBrokenaGlass]

Some of these reactions are so bitter lol. The doc was fine.

It's not bitter, people wanted something more imaginative or the very least a new version of the Maysles brothers doc rather than a clichè and self centered movie. We are all tired of the same Beatles narratives and stories being repeated. Apple releases used to be unusual at least, not catching those "nostalgia vs. appealing to a new audience" trends.

I think PJ's Get Back set a bar too high for new Beatles releases.

Yeah, bitter. Sorry.

[silvercup67]

There is a great movie to be made from this footage, but this film isn’t it.

Is that maybe the problem here? The Maysles have already made at least 4 films from the footage, all of them excellent and highly watchable. Unlike Get Back, where Jackson constructed a completely different story to the one MLH told in Let It Be, a re-edit of Maysles footage is surely always going to tell the same story (4 boys go to America, America goes mad). So, as a filmmaker, why would you try to tell a story that has already been done so many times?

I still say I loved '64, it's just that it was all over the place, not least in the amount of footage that was not from 1964.

Apparently, MLH's original cut was over 2 hours. That might have been a much better version of Let it Be, which is terrible as a story at it's final edited length.

[Lord Reith]

They guy who got deported from the UK and later worked as an engineer was a fantastic story.

I agree, it was a great story. But it just didn't belong in this documentary, because it had absolutely nothing to do with the February 64 US visit. If it had tied back to it in some way that'd work, but it instead tied forward to an event in the distant future.

I didn't hate this documentary, I just thought it was sprawling and incoherent. The Beatles stuff was great. The rest of it was totally unecessary imo.

[Ziggy C]

I don't think there's so much a bitterness about this; more like an accumulated frustration. Most of us here would have liked to see an extended version of the Maysles film. That would have plunked us right into the scene in early '64 America as The Beatles arrived. There would be no need for a history lesson. No need for many-years-after-interviews. Just let the tapes play as they went down. Maybe clean up the footage and improve the sound. That would have hit the spot just fine.

The frustration is due to the apparent and ironic lack of love put in by those minding the store at Apple. They have lost their way. Instead of putting out an awesome commemorative piece that does not presuppose or condescend to the intelligence of the audience (in any generation), they put out something akin to the myriad "unauthorized story" DVD's we could pick up in the bargain section of the DVD store.

I don't necessarily equate that to bitterness. Looking at the posts, though, I can see how that can be perceived as such. But I don't think that's what it is.

-Z

[Lord Reith]

I don't think there's so much a bitterness about this; more like an accumulated frustration. Most of us here would have liked to see an extended version of the Maysles film. That would have plunked us right into the scene in early '64 America as The Beatles arrived. There would be no need for a history lesson. No need for many-years-after-interviews. Just let the tapes play as they went down. Maybe clean up the footage and improve the sound. That would have hit the spot just fine.

Yes, exactly. Frustration. In retrospect it was wrong footed of us to assume that there was enough footage to create a 1964 version of Get Back. When I first heard about this thing nearly three years ago, I knew about PJ's involvement and assumed he was going to create another miniseries, especially when I read there was between 10 and 30 hours of footage. Looking at the footage we have though and thinking it through more clearly, it seems highly likely that there just isn't that much of The Beatles. Possibly most of that 10 hours apple has is shot from a distance: fans, airports, press conferences and concerts. You couldn't really make a three part series out of that without it becoming very repetitive.

So what would you have without all that? Basically First US Visit in HD. So maybe they had no option to go about it the way they did. But I still think they could have come up with something a lot better than that. Something that conveyed the full joy and optimism of the tour, without all the over-explaining and soul searching. Somebody needed to tell these interviewees that the show was about The Beatles, not them.