4/19/23
Newsletter #311
The Crack of Dawn
When Peter Jackson and Netflix came out with Get Back (2021), a big part of their ad campaign was impugning the film, Let It Be (1970). Both films are different cuts of the same footage of The Beatles writing and rehearsing the album Let It Be, culminating with their rooftop performance of the material. Back in 1970 when the movie came out, The Beatles had just broken up and the film was nothing but a sad reminder of that, so everybody turned on the film. It was a bummer; it was a bad film; it didn’t fairly represent its subject. Even still, it won the Oscar for Best Music Score of 1970.
I remember seeing the film at a matinee in a nearly empty theater. I was only 12, but I was really impressed with the film, in a sad way, but impressed nevertheless. Apparently, The Beatles hated the film, and since their company, Apple Corp, owned it, they buried it. The film was not only never shown anywhere, but it wasn’t even available on video tape. So, searching for a copy of the film became a tiny obsession (among many) of mine. About ten years ago I tracked down a real, licensed, decently-packaged DVD from Russia and bought it, then subsequently watched it any number of times.
I watched a hunk of the film last night, and was immediately surprised that I had completely misremembered what was a crucial fact in my life upon initially seeing the film. In 1970 when I saw Let It Be, I went right out and bought a pair of green, high-top sneakers like George is wearing on the rooftop. Nobody but me had green high-top sneakers, and my popularity stock in junior high rose immeasurably. If I wasn’t exactly hip, I was at least unique, in the green high-top sneakers that George is wearing.
Except it’s John who is wearing them. George is wearing green pants, and black high-top Converse sneakers. Oh. Well, John’s cooler than George, so I’m cooler than I thought I was.
In any case, a thing that struck me last night was that all four of The Beatles each looks timelessly cool, with their long hair, mustaches, big sideburns, green sneakers, Ringo is in a red slicker, Paul has a big, untrimmed beard and a black suit (his brown leather shoes look old and well-worn). However, every other person in the movie is stuck like an insect in amber in the year 1969 (when the film was shot), particularly the women and the cops, or bobbies. Because women are far more fashion conscious than men, their appearance establishes the time period much more clearly than the men. Tall hair, mini-skirts, dresses of varying lengths, but no pants on any of the women. Men predominately still wore hats, specifically bowlers there in England.
So, I was on an Air New Zealand flight from L.A. to Auckland, up front in 1st Class (it’s part of the Director’s Guild contract), with a big seat that fully reclined. I certainly could check my journal to pinpoint the year, but that smells like work. It was like 1999-2000, so we were in season four or five of Xena. I got myself all settled into my luxurious seat, and they served Macadamia nuts and champagne, preparing us for the 12-hour flight. Then this chubby bearded guy schlepping three leather bags with stacks of magazines under both arms took the seat behind me. It was Peter Jackson.
Peter had not yet released the first Lord of the Rings movie, but he was busy as hell making it. And interestingly, I think, when Hercules finished its five-year run in 1999, Peter hired the whole crew – and lucky for him, too, because there aren’t three film crews in New Zealand, and we had the cream of the crop on Xena. Peter would eventually absorb all of those people, too.
Peter owns a special effects company, WETA FX, and I worked with those guys on Hercules back at the beginning of the series in 1993-94. But Peter and I had never met. So I turned around and introduced myself. I blush now here in my anonymous dotage, but Peter was impressed – I had worked on the first Evil Dead movie, which was his “fuckin’ favorite movie in the whole fuckin’ world, mate!” A movie he ripped off shamelessly in his film, Dead Alive (or Braindead,1992), but I didn’t bring that up.
He kindly invited me to join him in his messy hobbit’s lair there in 1st class, where he must have flown back and forth between L.A. and Auckland a thousand times setting up the Lord of the Rings deal. He had every movie magazine, he had scripts, storyboards, snacks, sodas, and 12-hours flew by. Peter is an extremely nice guy and a total film geek. I’m at least a film geek. If I lived in Wellington, New Zealand, we’d probably be friends. I just Googled him, and he’s clearly now considered one of the elder, gray-bearded, old-guard masters of the movies. His net worth is 1.5 billion dollars. But when we met there on the plane, he treated me like I was Mick-Fucking-Jagger because I had worked on Evil Dead. I am his elder (by three years), and he accorded me that deference. That was 25 years ago, and I felt old then.
And now, Evil Dead Rise. I think Evil Dead is now the longest-running horror franchise. From 1983 to 2023. 40 years of Evil Dead movies, TV shows, video games, and now the remake of the remake.
As I live and breathe, by gum, I sure didn’t see it coming.