zed wrote:I'm a real Beatles fanatic...
Um---- er ya, now? That's a BIG qualification for what is to follow....
zed wrote:
, but this movie drives me crazy. I love all the scenes with the Beatles in them, and that house they live in is a riot... but the story is so friggin' cheesy and tedious to watch...
Dude. You're a youngster. I can tell. You're firmly and still my dear friend and Beatle-Bro for life, and no mistake!!
There's a charm about this film-- and the cracks at 60's society were so blatant that the film plays right into the hands of the mainstream while thumbing its nose at them at the same time. John's entire discourse at Scotland Yard is brilliant-- and the detective who thinks he's all "fab" and such isn't fab at all. That was the point! The "establishment" wasn't intended to get the tongue-in-cheek side of it.
zed wrote:
I haven't even made it all the way through disc one yet, and I've already made arrangements to sell the DVD to my Uncle (another avid Beatles fan). I just can't imagine myself sitting through that movie a second time at any point while DVD is still a common consumer format.
Oh, Zed. This is serious, dude. I will send you the funds for the DVD myself. (even though the Canadian dollar is 9% higher than the US dollar now.
zed wrote:
I agree that the sound is fantastic, and those shots with the Beatles are heavenly and fun to watch,
Mm-hmm-- and...?
zed wrote:
but the rest ain't. I'm also disappointed that it wasn't presented in the original widescreen format (trimming it down to 16 x 9 was a definite compromise).
Sorry to be so,
Opinionated Zed
Incidentally, I got 16 x 9 for $18 USD. I also have a 4 x 9 from a few years ago, but this one is full screen and an extremely admirable remastering on my letterbox HDTV.
You're a youngster, you are (and a good thing for it). Wasn't it Lennon himself who said that he was really crying for help at this time? The fact that we can retrospectively see what makes this film priceless.
John Lennon wrote: "The whole Beatle thing was just beyond comprehension. When 'Help' came out, I was actually crying out for help. Most people think it's just a fast rock 'n roll song. I didn't realize it at the time; I just wrote the song because I was commissioned to write it for the movie. But later, I knew I really was crying out for help.
This film was a spoof on the spoof of all spoofs-- James Bond (which people foolishly take seriously even today!). It mocked everything associated with society and showed how every aspect of establishment was stupid and pointless. And its brilliance is that it did it in a way in which establishment was none the wiser. The Beatles themselves spoke of how the whole Buckingham Palace scene was so far out of place that they were all running out to some ante-room to get stoned just to film that sequence.
But you know-- the music is brilliant. And did you notice that only the title cut has anything to do with the film at all? Even there, that was put together in less than a day and look at what a masterpiece it is! It says a whole lot more about whom the Beatles REALLY were than what the film was literally or figuratively about.
I just happen to think that the figurative significance of this film is such that it changed and influenced the "reality" in reality programming even today. It forced artists to put out the hardcore poetry-- yes, rappers, who got sick of having to veil their messages in some superficial cynical context for the sake of mere marketing. Verismo is what Verdi and Puccini called it-- "realism". Opera, ironically, went through the exact same condundrum back in the late 1800's. Isn't that strange? Before that, in order to get the message across it was all about riddles and cynicism. History repeats itself.
That was the irony of Brian Epstein. The lads wore suits-- but they were still the same working class heroes in denim an leather from the Hamburg days, even from the pre-Eppie Liverpool days-- despite how Epstein set out to clean them up. That was the Beatles' appeal-- beneath the Pierre Cardin there was a naughty honesty that could not be hidden. It burned through and bled through every note they put out. That's why the Stones and Animals couldn't figure them out-- they were the same, just dressed differently.
And even in Help! it could not be hidden-- between the old Monty Python bitties waving from across the street to "You've Got To Hide Your Love Away", it's all there! Everything you love and hate about society is all represented.
The film is riddled with inside jokes of its time and had to fit into a "corny" scheme to work. Otherwise, the Lads would have been the drug-fried disasters so many celebrities have become, including Kurt Cobain who couldn't deal with it as neatly. You start out as a poor, starving working-class guitarist in a tee-shirt and one day you find yourself a rich working-class guitarist in a tee-shirt trying to reason how it happened that you became everything you opposed in your youth. You become the walking antithesis of yourself.
So, what did the Beatles do next? They willfully set aside their identities in Sgt Pepper and then totally lost themselves in Magical Mystery Tour. That movie flopped at the time for the same resons that The Monkees' film "Head" flopped. By the time both groups got to the place where they could express their own perspectives of reality, that reality ceased to be the creative entertainment it was intended to be and more a peripheral expression of "recreational pharmaceuticals".
For most Americans, the British could quite thorougly defame one verbally and make them smile about it. That's what "Help!" was. It said "look at this. Doesn't it suck?" Its brilliance was in the fact that it was veiled in the tradition and mock expectation of the day.
I was maybe 7 when I saw the film for the first time, but as older depraved sould shunned it-- all I could say then-- as I say now-- was : "but the music was SO amazing".
Sell the DVD? Zed-- I'd be HONORED to relieve you of it-- but it *is* an important historical document that fits profoundly in a historically specific context.
I'm totally serious, dude. I'm not even asking your opinion or permission. I'll even FED-EX you the price in CAN$ even where CAN$ is now 8% ahead of the USD, mind!! And I ain't "ax-in' " for permission to do so, either.
Look for a Fed-Ex that says "To Zed from Frodo" on it.
