the day The Beatles invented the reality show

Now is the winter of our discontent. The first sentence of William Shakespeare’s Richard III may have crossed the minds of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison or Ringo Starr on more than one occasion. miserable moment January 1969, while The Beatles were exposed in front of cameras for a television special.

The Bard could also have been cited by project manager Michael Lindsay-Hogg. The final result went straight to theaters: Let It Bean eighty-minute film released in May 1970, with the very fresh announcement of the group’s dissolution, has carried a stigma ever since.

Because having invented everything or almost, the Beatles also took the breakup of a Pop group to the level of a global cataclysm. and there it was Let It Beprecursor of reality show. Or better: how it would have been the original version of the series The Office (the English one) if the tedium had been exaggerated, the humor diminished, and Ricky Gervais was a great songwriter.

After decades out of legal circulation and internal disagreements, Let It Be reappears on May 8. It will be seen on the Disney+ signalthe same one for which The Beatles premiered in 2021: Get Backthe docuseries directed by Peter Jackson, who cut six hours from the almost sixty that Lindsay-Hogg had filmed in 1969.

Neither Paul McCartney nor, especially, Ringo Starr they have good memories of Let It Be. John Lennon denounced it as a film made by and for McCartney’s show. In addition to the iconic sequence of his last recital, on the terrace of his Apple company building, the other most famous (or infamous) scene of Let It Be it may be the short circuit between George Harrison and McCartney. George, tired of Paul telling him what to play on the guitar – something that had happened many times, but never in front of cameras – tells him: “I’m going to play whatever you want me to play, or if you don’t want me to play, I won’t play anything.” ”.

Very far from the message of empathy that McCartney preaches in the song of the same name, Let It Beparodied both in fake documentaries All You Need Is Cash y This is Spinal Tap As in an episode of The Simpsons (George Harrison has cameos in the latter and the first film), it is the paradigm of a rock group in full crisis. David Lebón said that the difficult recording sessions for Serú Girán’s reunion album in 1992 made it seem like Let It Be in Heidi version.

Inversely Get Back (original title of the project in 1969) left Ringo and Paul very happy, who declared that their perception of the period had changed after watching it. History is written by those who have control of the editing island. The truth is that, although Let It Be suffer from lack of humorgroup dynamics, context and, above all, a very brief cut, it is not the martyrdom that many (Beatles included) describe.

Didn’t help Let It Be just having been legally reissued during the ’80s, in those outdated home formats. Beyond screenings in cycles for fans, the last time it was broadcast on TV in our country may have been in the early ’90s, on América TV.

Hoy, Michael Lindsay-Hogg turns 84. Born and educated in New York, various data indicate that he is the biological son of Orson Wellessomething he continues to suspect, despite the fact that a DNA analysis did not yield conclusive results.

The two – “father and son” – worked together in theater. Lindsay-Hogg comes from television, and she also made a name for herself in theater, but she never made the big leap to film: most of his movies were filmed for TV, including a more than acceptable fictionalization of a meeting between John and Paul in 1976, Two of Us (2000).

The clips to promote Hey Jude y Revolution They were also directed by Lindsay-Hogg. For the first one, the Beatles were surrounded by a hundred people while singing. Some of them were bitten by the bug to play live in front of an audience again, something they had not done since 1966.

In December 1968, Lindsay-Hogg met Lennon again during the filming of another damn projectthe special of the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circuswhich remained unpublished until 1996.

After being summoned to film The Beatles, Lindsay-Hogg recalled in his 2011 memoir, Luck and Circumstance: A Coming of Age in Hollywood, New York, and Points Beyond: “It was clear to me that Paul was the one driving the bus, and one or two of the others could get off at the next stop.”

Lindsay-Hogg I had to compile half an hour of essays of new songs to be broadcast as an appetizer a week before the TV special, which would be a live recital in a location to be determined. From there a new album would come out.

Filming began on January 2 at Twickenham Studios. The Beatles had worked there several times, such as in their films A Hard Day’s Night (1964) y Help! (1965) and the clip Hey Jude. But It was very different to create musicat times to which they were unaccustomed, under the continuous gaze of two cameras and two recorders that captured all the dialogues.

Furthermore, they could not agree on where to hold the blessed recital. Among other ideas, Lindsay-Hogg proposed an amphitheater on the coast of Tunisia, or in Tripoli, Libya. McCartney added traveling by boat, taking a contingent of English audiences. more modest, Ringo proposed returning to the Liverpool Cavern.

But on the 10th, Harrison, the least enthusiastic from the beginning, he got fed up and left the group. “Where are the cameras?” was the main concern of Lindsay-Hogg, who had considered presenting the Beatles on a human level, off the pedestal.

A few days later, Harrison agreed to return, but on one condition: no Twickenham or live show. The project became a documentary of them recording a new album. On the 21st, they resumed work in the basement of the Apple building.

They were joined by keyboardist Billy Preston, and both the musical level and the spirits rose considerably.

“We need to have closure for all this stuff we’re filming,” Lindsay-Hogg reasoned. “A conclusion.” “Are the conclusions important?” Yoko responded.. On January 30, the group gave a mini-show on Apple’s rooftop. The next day, filming ended with them playing in the studio. For Let It Be, Lindsay-Hogg reversed the order of events.

On July 20, when they were finishing recording Abbey Road, which would be their last album as a band (although the album Let It Be would be published to coincide with the film’s release), the Beatles saw a work in progress that was at least an hour longer.

Lindsay-Hogg was instructed to write a shorter version, with less “John & Yoko” and without showing Harrison’s comings and goings.

Defined on its poster as “A bioscopic experience con The Beatles”, Let It Be It premiered on May 13 in New York. No Beatle was seen at the premiere, nor at those in Liverpool and London, a week later.

Argentina had to wait until Thursday, October 22, making itself known as Let it be. In March of the following year, Paul, accompanied by Linda Eastman, received the Grammy for Best Original Score from John Wayne.

A month later, the film won the Oscar in the same category. No Beatle attended the ceremony.

The film was remastered by Apple in 1992, as part of the production for Anthology. But during the next two decades, all reissue initiatives came to nothing due to lack of internal consensus.

In order to be reborn, Let It Be I need Get Back. Short story or novel. Ying and Yang. Myth against myth.