When I was about 13 years old, I went to an art movie theater to see the film Let It Be, a documentary by and about the Beatles. It was a packed house: This was before one could call up just about anything online whenever one wanted, so that night’s showing might well be the only chance for years that the Beatles faithful of Phoenix would have to see the movie.
At long last, fans of the band will be able to see a fully restored version of the film whenever they like. And by fully restored, I don’t mean just that the original movie has been cleaned up with all the magic of modern digital mastering. Rather, some five hours of film have been restored from the 50 hours of footage that had been left on the cutting room floor. Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson has turned the film into a 6-hour documentary series airing over the Thanksgiving weekend on the Disney+ streaming service. Called The Beatles: Get Back, the title represents a promise that Jackson is getting the film back to where it once belonged.
Jackson promises fun and hijinks by the erstwhile mop-tops as opposed to the original director’s grim three-chorded death march of bickering beardos. This is the real story, says Jackson, a tale of how four pals kept their friendship going in spite of relentless pressures threatening to tear their creative partnership apart.
McCartney had conceived of the original film as a way to burnish the image of the band (and meet a contractual obligation) by getting back to the band’s rock ’n’ roll roots. Except instead of jamming on the repertoire they had cut their teeth on and knew forwards and backward, somehow, the documentary came to be about the band’s creative process, as exhibited by the Beatles working out a dozen new songs.
Getting back to the band’s roots might have meant playing the sort of venue they used to play — George Harrison said at the time, “I’d like to be resident in a club, with the amps there all the time so you could just walk onstage and plug in.” But instead of shooting in the cozy confines of a Cavern-like club, the musicians found themselves set up in a cavernous movie stage set, Twickenham Film Studios. The universal judgment of the atmosphere was that it was dank, dark, and dismal.
Soon, the mood would suit the atmosphere.
The crowd I first saw the original film with weren’t interested in a happier spin on the Beatles. They were there to render judgment, to be the choric voice of the Beatles’ community declaring their disapproval. In other words, they were there to boo. They were there to boo Yoko Ono. If I remember the film correctly, the opening credits were barely done when we see John Lennon, and there is Yoko, sitting right beside him.
“Boooo.”
Then, there is Yoko, knitting right beside him.
“Boooo.”
For the length of the movie, every time Yoko was on camera, the crowd booed, as if to say, “Take that, Yoko, for breaking up the Beatles.”
There are two things generally remembered about the film now: the euphoric rooftop concert that closes the movie and the horrible, miserable dust-up between bossy-pants Paul and passive-aggressive George. McCartney has been trying to get Harrison to play a less-busy strumming, and does so with cringe-making condescension: “I’m trying to help, but I always hear myself annoying you,” says an exasperated Paul.
“No, you’re not annoying me,” says George in a flat you’re-dead-to-me tone. “You don’t annoy me anymore.” It is the scene that best captures the unhappiness and mutual dislike that was destroying the band.
But Peter Jackson says that such scenes did not accurately represent what was going on between the Beatles, and he has the footage to prove it.
Either way, the Jackson remake of Let It Be is a reminder that documentarians are not in the unambiguous truth business. Take the same pile of reels, and one can tell diametrically opposed stories. It’s a phenomenon worth remembering when watching someone get skewered on 60 Minutes.
That said, one thing is constant: I still expect to hear Yoko booed.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
