WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1289 - Peter Jackson

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

Despite multiple Oscars and billions of dollars in box office returns, Peter Jackson still has the same interests he had when he was 10 years old: First World War airplanes, monster movies, using his Super 8 camera, and The Beatles. Peter tells Marc what it was like to be entrusted with more than 60 hours of Beatles footage to make the new documentary Get Back, why he was filled with dread when he started the project, and why he was surprised by what he found when he went through the footage.  Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuck nicks? What's happening? How's it going? I'm Mark Maron. Mark, M-A-R-C, Maron, M-A-R-O-N, 92763.

That's when I was born. What am I doing? Just reeling off details? What's happening? I'm not trying to apply for something. I don't have to prove who I am to you. Do I? You want to see my ID, huh? Do you? Wow. How's it going? I know for some of you, we're coming down to the wire on this Christmas business, and there's a lot of panic and fear in

the world. The new strain is upon us, ripping through the population. I don't know. I don't know what to tell you. I did everything I could. I did everything I could. I called the people and I guess there was just no stopping it. There could have been, but there's a dummy problem. I don't need to rail about that. I'm boosted. I hope you're boosted. Hope you're getting your family to see the light a little bit.

Peter Jackson. Yes, he's on the show this show today peter jackson was on the show from new zealand he's the uh oscar-winning director of the lord of the rings and the hobbit king kong and now the beatles get back we talk a bit about his whole career but a lot of this talk is focused on the Beatles and Get Back and wrangling that project. Good interview. A lot of stuff. A lot of questions answered about the process of working with the Beatles in the way that he did.

All right? What else can I tell you? I had a dream. And, you know, I rarely remember them but this one i remember i was on a big fancy sort of like it seemed like a a luxury liner giant jet and that was the idea it was this huge plane but it didn't look like a plane it just looked like this huge you know kind of like beautifully decorated, dark, oaky situation. A lot of nice furniture around. Huge though. But in my dream, I was under the understanding that this was an aircraft. And somehow or another, I was seated with a fairly lofty bunch of artists. I don't remember

who was there, but I remember it was not quite my crowd crowd but I was sort of happy to be there to be accepted amongst the high-minded art crowd and then my ex-girlfriend Sarah showed up I saw her walk in and she was with some people and she saw me she's like I'm not dealing with this and you know she was gonna walk away she was clearly just not gonna engage with me but I was trying to be charming and sort of like can we put it behind us a bit and just be like people and talk? Can we do that? But it sort of wasn't happening. And then this giant vessel takes off and I can't feel it flying.

It's making me nervous. It seems too big to fly. So then I go out a door. Apparently there's a deck on this aircraft and then I find that it's a boat and I'm at the back of the boat outside on some sort of a, what do you call them on boats deck? There's a guy there smoking. It's a smoking deck.

And I'm like, this is a, this is a boat. He's like, yeah. And then like, I'm looking in the water at this giant propeller under the water that's not moving and i'm like how are we moving and then somehow or another almost intentionally i dropped my phone into the ocean and i had that moment where i'm like fuck that's that's done now i got to deal with reality i got to really be in the present like i had this feeling like there goes my phone. And then there was a minute like, well, what if somebody finds it?

And it's like, dude, it's at the bottom of the ocean. No one's going to find it till years and years from now. Perhaps if the ship sinks right then, they'll find it when they excavate. But either way, I'm like, man, now I've got to lock in. What the hell am I going to do? And then I had this realization in the dream that there's nothing that I have to do. There's the phone's not going to make my life that much different other than people can't get in touch with me. Then I started to wonder, like, did I bring my computer? Cause I could do the find your

phone thing. And then I realized like, what the hell is that going to give you? You just want to see if it works for the bottom of the ocean and uh that was the that was the extent of it i'll take any input uh i usually kind of break down my own dreams but i'm putting it out there i'm putting it out there wasn't a plane turns out giant boat i guess i could tell you about the comedy store the other night it seems that i've got to re re-groove you know get my uh the hour that i built heading into new york uh back up on its feet but like i keep doing these short sets at the store which is fine the other night i had a set in the main room and then a set in the original room and it was just one of these nights where the main room was great, a bunch of sweet people, and somehow or another,

that makes me kind of edgy. When all the comics walk into the dressing room after their set and say, like, God, what a great crowd, I'm like, oh, fuck. It's an odd response, but it's true. And I don't know why I think that. I guess I don't want to know that. I just want to know they're attentive people. I'm not sure what I'm looking for.

But my impulse inside of me when someone says it's a great crowd is that like i'll fuck it up i'll ruin it we'll see we'll see it's always like a a bad omen somehow in my brain when when comics say great crowd it was good though i did all right my shit's a little dark right now but that's the way it goes dark times so then i go down the way it goes. Dark times. So then I go down the hall of the original room and that audience was awful. Like awful. But I was kind of,

I've been doing so much comedy. If this is like an actual breakthrough in a way, where you realize that no matter how long you've been doing this or how good you've gotten at it, that on some level, it's going to come down to the material, number one. And also, it's going to come down to the audience. It just is. I'm not one of these people that's sort of like there are no bad audiences.

There's definitely bad audiences, no doubt. And I got up there with all the confidence of having just killed in the big room. And I got nothing. Like I did my first few things and I was like nothing, like just sort of like, nah. And it was a pretty full room. And just kind of like, nah, not nothing. You know, like maybe a polite guffaw from a couple of people. And I just, it was, I know what that's like.

It all comes back to you in that minute where you're like, oh my God, I've just grounded myself in fucking failure. I'm just like, this is what this is gonna be. I've done this a long time. I know exactly what's happening. They're not gonna give me fucking anything. Why?

I don't know. Sometimes audiences don't come together they just don't materialize as a group but the truth is it got going and i did find the people that were laughing in the room and it was enough and it was interesting to just cleanse myself baptize myself in the waters of tankage. In just the vacuum of the classic tank. And there's no sort of more present feeling than sitting up on a stage, having just told a joke that usually gets laughs to nothing. And just sort of like, wow.

And you feel your heart kind of cringe and crinkle around the edges. And the great thing was I realized like, yeah, this happens, man. Enjoy it. Lean into the tankage. This part of the job. And at the end of the show, I pointed out a guy in the middle of the room who sat there, who for some reason my gaze was upon because he was sort of in the center of the audience, in the center of my vision. He was just sitting there, middle-aged guy and his wife had his arms crossed and just looking at me, gave me nothing, nothing. I didn't feel like he was doing it on purpose or he's trying to fuck with me.

I don't even think that he knew that I could see him. But I did tell him at the end of my set, I said, you, sir, you in the middle of the room are the worst audience member I've ever had in my entire career. Right up there. Just fucking awful. You. Everybody laughed at that. But in that moment, I was kind of serious but the question

is was he really do you ever know what they're thinking about no could it have had something not to do with me yes did it feel good to say that to him him being a representative of a pretty fucking lame audience it did was it worth it absolutely absolutely Peter Jackson man now you guys know how I felt about this Beatles thing I I I'll say it again I say I feel like I've known them all my life they they were exactly like I thought they would be and this was just the first time I got to hang out with him. I really was immersed. It changed my entire sort of bearings, I think, in part of my deep self. Pretty deep. And I enjoyed it. I should mention that the Beatles Get Back is now streaming on Disney Plus. And this was sort of like, you know, turn him on and he goes kind of thing. We were on Zoom,

but I do want to tell you that there was a notification sound happening during the thing and it was driving me nuts. Like I was, I tried to turn it off on my phone, on my computer, on my other computer. I could not figure out which one of my machines was making noise until uh until the interview ended and i realized it was coming from peter it was him and we just didn't want to bother him with trying to make the adjustment because he was on a roll but it was a pleasure to talk to him it was interesting to hear some of the process of being with the Beatles as long as he was on film and why he made some of the choices he did. So this is me talking to Peter Jackson. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats.

Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats. But meatballs and mozzarella balls, Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you.

That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. What a nice framing you've got there. Are you in your castle? I'm in just a house on the New Zealand.

Just right out your window makes me want to live there. Yeah, I know. It's all green and nice. Yeah. Yeah. And there's boats. It's all green and nice. Yeah. Yeah. And there's boats. You probably can't see this.

There's a harbor with yachts and boats. Oh, yeah. It's all very, very peaceful and nice. Did you grow up by there? I grew up about 20 miles away. Yeah. Yeah. Just up the coast.

So you're no stranger to boats. I hate boats. You do? Oh, yeah. I know. You grew up stranger to boats. I hate boats. You do? Oh, yeah. I know. You grew up on an island. I used to be in the Boy Scouts. And then our Boy Scout unit in this little town I was in,

they decided to, they voted. Somebody voted. I didn't vote. They wanted to become a Sea Scout unit. So they became Sea Scouts. And I was sort of dragged along. Had one day where I was in a boat and I threw up all over the boat and I was in front of all the other scouts and then I never went back.

That was the end of my scouting. No more boats? I get terribly seasick. But the water's nice if you see it from a distance. It's really nice. But you have no problem with planes? I don't really like planes too much either i'm a nervous flyer but really old planes but do you fly yourself no no no oh god no

oh you just you just you have no i i've never i've always wanted to fly i've always had a romantic notion and i've got some world war one airplanes and i've had this sort of you know this romantic notion of being able to fly in these first of all planes but I just think that if an emergency happens which I think is what you have to make your decisions based on you know what happens if something goes wrong yeah and the engine stops or something and I think I just panic I don't understand engines I don't understand oil pressure I don't know any of that stuff so So I think when the emergency happens, I'd freeze, panic, and go straight into the ground. So I've never really, I just don't have a natural affinity with that sort of thing. So I fly in planes, but I don't actually, I don't fly them.

But you like the machines. You have some sort of, you have a passion for the planes themselves. I have a passion for history and the First world war in particular i guess i mean i mean other parts of history and for some reason i grew up well when i was young i saw a movie called the blue max oh yeah what's that mike was it max von seidel or somebody no who is george the part right yeah yeah yeah and uh andres of course which which when you're when you're 12 years old she's a goddess. Yeah. And so between Ursula Andress and the planes, it made a huge impression on me, and I did end up building some First World War planes, and I've got a little collection of those.

So what, do you just have a guy when you want to go look at him, you've got a friend who'd go fly him around for you? Yeah, well, I've got a little kind of a team who look look after them you know i've got some uh some engineers because they all have to pass inspections and things and then when they fly into the air shows we uh we've got a little group of volunteer pilots that fly them but i actually the the plane that george papad flies in the blue max i uh about 10 years ago i found that in a barn in the States you know it was in a it was in a very bad condition so and I've restored it so I've actually got the the exact plane that he flew that he flew in that movie so well that's exciting yeah oh yeah it is yeah do you like model planes

as well well I mean it began with models it began with the little 172nd yeah uh Revell and Airbus models, and then it sort of expanded into full-size planes, yeah. Do you know the comic Jonathan Winters? He was kind of an improvisational wizard. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. The guy.

Mad, mad, mad world. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I interviewed him when he was near death, and I went to his house in Santa Barbara. And after we talked, he goes, let me show you the planes. And he walks me down the hallway to his bedroom, and he's got this four-poster bed.

But on the ceiling, he had about 100 model planes hanging. And it was like he was like seven years old. He was so proud of them. He loved them. And the planes that he'd built, he'd built and painted them. I don't know if I got that far. I just know that they were hanging there and he loved them. And it's very weird what people remember when you talk about nostalgia, which is sort of, you know, what we're going to be talking about in a way is that, you know, I walked him down that hallway, that old guy who'd had a life in show business.

And there was a hallway just filled with pictures with him and everybody you could think of from the history of show business all along this wall. And he stops and he points at a picture and it's of a little kid. It's a black and white picture that was barely, it was very grainy, a little kid and a dog. And he just said, I miss that dog. Out of all the pictures of his entire life, the thing that he held onto were these planes and that little dog it was so touching you know what we hold on to yeah yeah it was probably a childhood dog

right right but after you know after the walking down that that hall of everybody it was just so such a beautiful moment the things that make an impact on us when we're young and i guess that's sort of what's driven a lot of your you know what drove the beginning of your film career too was a sort of nostalgia for something you saw when you were a kid, right? Well, my partner, Fran, reminds me whenever I need a little telling off or something, she's quick to remind me that I'm still 10, that I have no interests or hobbies that I didn't have at the age of 10 or 12. Well, I have Fran, which I guess doesn't,

because I didn't know her when I was 10 or 12. Well, that's not a hobby. That's a person. No, but everything I'm interested in, all my passions, are the same ones that I had when I was 10 or 12. I haven't actually developed at all as a human being since then. Well, is that something that bothers you or you're okay with it i'm very very happy i'm i i love being 12 no it's no it's so great

great no no i i mean i seriously i i can i can um you know in in the lockdown that we had we had in new zealand last year you know we were locked down for like seven weeks yeah and we couldn't work last year, you know, we were locked down for like seven weeks and we couldn't work. And I thought, well, what am I going to do, you know, in a house? And so I remembered when I was 16 or 17, I tried to build Ray Harry Housen stop motion models. And I kind of, you know, back then I tried it and I wasn't very happy. And then I got busy and I got school and work and everything else took over. So I thought, well, I i mean here i am 2020 i could spend my seven weeks trying trying to build them again

so i'll show you i've got them here actually um so i built i built a couple of skeletons oh wow yeah like those are those like the voyager simbad yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they've all got armatures in them. Yeah. Oh, look at that with the shields. That was my lockdown project. So I went back to finishing off a project that I abandoned when I was about 16. So, you know.

Are you going to use them? Are you going to shoot them? Well, yeah, because I also, when I was 16, I shot film of me as Sinbad. Yeah. Super 8. So I had a shirt and pants and a wooden sword, and I was fighting.

Yeah. I'm invisible thing because I was always intending to animate the skeleton and superimpose it in. But at that point in time, it was all far too hard. So I've still got that film of the 16 year old me oh good um fighting an invisible an invisible skeleton so the idea is to um probably probably over christmas when i've got some time i'll uh animate those into into my old film which is so easy easy to do with green screen and all that sort of stuff now so yeah

this is finally finish off a movie that I began when I was 16. So it'll be good. Wow. That's the longest production schedule ever right there. Yeah, probably. But I just have no interest in, I mean, everything I love really is from that period of time. You know, it's First World War, planes, Ray Harryhausen, monsters,

movies, Super 8 films and making movies. It's just Beatles, Beatles too. Is that about the time? I mean, how old are you? Are you my age? How old are you? I'm 60. I've just turned 60.

I'm 58. So we caught the Beatles. We were very young. I remember my experience in watching that thing is very interesting. And I imagine everybody's having some sort of experience. But my parents had Let It Be, had the album. And, you know, the Beatles second album and Let It Be were the two albums that were in the house when I was, you know, five or six. And, you know, I remember there's something I talked about it on the show the other day that

if you love the beatles you don't you don't even think about it it's just in your genetic structure it's in your soul your relationship with the beatles is something you can't really even understand if you have it but you if you have it you have it it's a it's an odd thing and yes it is my experience in watching the movie and it's so weird because two weeks before I started watching your show or the movie, the documentary, I saw the Rolling Stones live. So I had these two interesting experiences with these heroes of mine. One of them I can still see. But the feeling of sadness and humanization of these idols of mine happened in both cases. With the Stones, it's sort of like people are like, were they amazing?

I'm like, no, they're old and they're still doing what they do. And it's nice, but it's sad, you know, and they're painfully human. Whereas with your thing, you know, you watch that thing. It's like there is a sadness to it. But the thing I couldn't get past was that like it was almost like I've already known them my whole life. And there was part of me that wasn't surprised at all by anything that was happening. It was sort of like, yep, this is exactly how it should be. This is what it was.

Finally, I get to hang out with them. I know. Yeah. I felt the same way. You did? I was listening to a podcast the other day, some Beatle fan thing, and they'd seen Get Back, and one of the guys made a comment which made me laugh because he was the same sort of thing.

I felt that I'd gone back and spent time with them and all that, and he said, God, I have to get used now that I'm living in a world where a 27-year-old McCartney and a 79-year-old McCartney exist in the same world. Yeah. Which is kind of, it does play games with your head in that way, really. Well, it's weird. For me, like, I find it hard. Like, I tend to develop some sort of, I guess it's probably my own fear of mortality.

Because I've interviewed Paul and I've interviewed Keith Richards at different times, but I start to get, you know, not so much with Keith, but weirdly, I'm a John guy. I mean, when I went to interview Paul, which is a big deal, he's a Beatle, but in my mind, I'm like, I'm still a John guy. I'm still, I'm happy I'm going to interview Paul, but'm still a John guy. I'm still, I'm happy I'm going to interview Paul, but like, he's not my guy. And what was it like?

How much interaction did you have with him for the process? Oh, well, I mean, I could have as much as I needed. I mean, I didn't need a huge amount, apart from just asking him questions. Like there's that little sequence where he appears to concoct, get back out of thin air, he just strums his bass and the song comes. So I saw that clip and I sent it to him and I said, is this what I think it is?

I said, did you have any idea about the song beforehand? Did you have a snippet of the song in your head to come in? And he saw the clip because he couldn't remember the exact moment. So he looked at the clip that I sent him and he said, no, no, that's me making it up. Pulling it out of the air. Yeah, so he could recognize what he was doing. So, I mean, he was always available for those sorts of things.

So I knew that I had my facts straight. But why are you a John guy? What's the reason for that? Well, I mean, I think, you know, as I grow up with it and I think about it, because when I was in high school, I remember I spent hours drawing a picture of his face. I think it was from the Sgt. Pepper period, and I won an award for it. I mean, I spent hours and hours, you know, on this John face. And I think because I, I, I relate to his sensitivity and to the, to his emotional volatility. I think I relate to it without really knowing it. I think that,

you know, whatever we're attracted to when we're younger in terms of Beatles, they probably represent some of us. I liked his wit i i knew i think i knew innately he was you know an angry guy and probably a sad guy and you know uh and i and i just i have to backload that because i assume that's what it is i mean paul's great and i understand paul's great but he always seemed um so uh you know i just he always seemed to seem like the showbiz beetle yeah but also like you know his the type of music he liked was kind of like, you know, marching band stuff. But the one thing I loved about watching the documentary is, like, they love rock and roll, those guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, they, you know, and they're only, like, you know, you've got to figure you're only 10, 11 years away from the beginning of rock and roll in earnest. So, you know, them sitting around playing Wilbur Harrison or whoever, Blue Suede Shoes or whatever it is, I mean, you know, that's only like 10 years ago. Those are songs that they, you know, that's how they got their, they learned their chops and they just love it. I mean, they had this strange experience of loving rock and roll and then before they became famous, their rock and roll heroes all kind of they all kind of imploded. You know, Elvis went into the army.

Little Richard had issues. Chuck Berry had issues. Buddy Holly was killed. Yeah. So by the time they were playing in Hamburg and in the cabin club, their rock and roll heroes had kind of gone. Oh, that's brutal. I never thought of that.

They had a strange experience. had kind of gone. Oh, that's brutal. I never thought of that. They had a strange experience. And I heard an interview that was done with John after they met Elvis because they went to L.A. in 64, 65, and they had their famous night with Elvis. And I found an interview with John the day after,

and the guy said to John, so what did you and Elvis talk about? And John says, well, I just told him that I preferred his records before the Army, day after and the guy said to john so so what did you and elvis talk about and john says well i just told him that that i preferred his uh his records before the army and and and can he please do some more of those yeah so that was that was john's chat with elvis yeah wild yeah so now what like just like walk me through the you know what what compelled you to do this i mean you know what where did that i where did it come from? Did you, I mean, because I remember, like, it was weird when I watched the,

I first, when I was going to talk to you the first time, I'd only seen what the press set out, that one hour thing that you, like the hour-long trailer. And I realized I had seen that footage of John and Yoko dancing because I had seen the original documentary when I was in high school. So what made you decide to do this? Well, I, I mean, I, look, I, I've been a Beatles fan since I was about 12. Right.

So, so I just like living my life as an adult, as I said, but I'm just, you know, still following my passions as a kid. So I don't have any interest sort of doing sort of grown up stuff really. And, uh, but I never really dreamt that I'd be doing any interest in doing grown-up stuff, really. But I never really dreamt that I'd be doing anything with The Beatles because you sort of think at this point in time, what is there to do? But it was weird because I was working on this World War I

film, They Should Not Grow Old. I saw that. And normally I'm New Zealand-based, but that made me take several trips to London to go into the archives and look for film and stuff. So I was also – I mean, I'm just piecing it together. I can't quite remember how or why.

But I was also doing interviews, I guess, at the time where I was expressing an interest in the technology VR and AR, you know, with the glasses and you put them on and you see things, which I'm still interested in, but it hasn't kind of taken off yet. But anyway, the guys at Apple, Apple Corps, the Beatles, Apple, not the other Apple. Yeah. They must have seen that, they must have heard an interview

because I'd never met them before, and they must have heard that I was in London for some reason. I don't know how. So anyway, I get an invitation to, or I get a request, could I pop into Apple and meet with Jeff Jones and Jonathan Clyde? Because at that point they had a Beatles exhibition, a live sort of exhibition that they were thinking about doing. From what I could understand, and it never got very far,

I mean, it's not going to happen, but from what I could understand, it was like you walk into an exhibition hall and you see original costumes and guitars, and you see a replica of the Kevin Club. It was sort of like a walk-through thing. And so they were interested in using VR or AR technology so that at the doorway you'd be given some glasses and you'd go through and you'd see Beatles doing things.

So they just wanted to pick my brains about where the technology was at. So it was just really a meet and a chat. So anyway, I show up at Apple and it's, you know, I mean, it's very small. The company's very

small as are we down here. So, you know, it felt nice. It's like a sort of homely place but there's beetle there's beetle posters everywhere and just photographs everywhere and I was thinking don't act like a fan don't act like a fan yeah you're here to talk about AR and VR so for god's sake just be just be a pro so anyway I sat in the room and I chatted with them about the AR VR thing sort of gave them a brief description of what you could do with it. And then I had one question, one fan question that I had for years and years and years

that I wanted to ask. And so I just sort of, I just slipped it in and said, oh, by the way, if you're needing some footage of the Beatles that no one's ever seen before, whatever happened to the outtakes from Let It Be? But I had no idea how much survived if it was if it had all been junked if it you know i just didn't didn't know um so they said oh no um we've got we've got it all we've got 60 hours of film we've got about 140 hours of audio and then they said oh it's strange that you should mention this because we we had a

meeting the other day and we're thinking about but we should do a film that uses the outtakes. And they were just finishing up eight days a week at that time. And I was sort of in the last year or so of they shall not grow old. And so I did the one thing that I've never, ever done in my life. I stuck up my hand and I said, if you're looking for a filmmaker, if you haven't got somebody attached yet, just please think of me. And so that was really weird. They disappeared into another room and they came back and they said, if you want to do it, do it. You can. It's all yours. Oh, my God. So I kind of walked into the meetings to sort of to give them some thoughts about AR and VR, and I walked out with Get Back.

But even then, I didn't want to commit to it because I knew the reputation of the project, of the misery and the squabbles and all the books that I read said that they couldn't stand each other's company and all the really bad stuff. So at that point, I said, well, how can I look at this stuff? And they said, well, we've got it on a server. You know, it was all very, the security was all very, I mean, they weren't going to give it to me to take home.

And so at that point, I extended my trip in London. I was supposed to be working on They Shall Not Grow Old, but I took a leave of absence for a week. Extended my trip, and when I went into Apple every single day, and they had an office for me. And so I'd arrive at 8 in the morning, and I'd sit there till 6. Oh, my God. And they'd go fetch me burgers and stuff for lunch. What was the first feeling, man?

I mean, like when you first turned it on. It was dread. It was dread because I totally bought into the reputation of the Let It Be period. And I kept thinking, what the hell am I going to see? Because I kept thinking if Let It Be, which I had seen and was pretty familiar with, if Let It Be was what they allowed Michael Lindsay Hogue to show, what the hell did they not want him to show? What horrors am I going to see?

Because people you admire, I mean, I could call them heroes, but, you know, when I was younger they were heroes, but as I got older they were just people that I, you know, whose skill and talent I admired, their story was great. I didn't want to see the real people because I was terribly worried that the real, you know, whenever you meet your heroes, they're not what you hoped they'd be. Look, I was excited because this film had never been seen by anybody for 50 years.

So, I mean, I was immensely curious, but I was also dreading it. And I said to the guys, look, if this film is as bad as what it's supposed to be in terms of the mood and the atmosphere, I'm probably not going to do it. I said, I can't believe I'm saying this because doing a Beatles film is a lifelong dream of mine. But I really don't want to do a Beatles film with full of argument and misery and depressed Beatles. I really that's not the film I wanted to do. How long did it take you before you realized that wasn't the case? Well, it was a slow unveiling because I didn't have any script. I mean, there's no actual script. Right.

And there's no paperwork. They had the film organized day by day. So it starts on the first day, you know, and it was 60 hours of film at that point. The audio, they didn't sort audio, I wasn't hearing that. It was just the film with the audio with the film. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was 60 hours to go through.

And so it was a slow process where each day I'd sit there for seven or eight hours and watch for seven or eight hours, get through day one. You know, I'd come in the next day, I'd be on day two. The next day day day three has got the argument or the the thing with the with Paul and George you know so I watched that and I thought well this isn't actually as bad you know the I'll play anything you want or I won't play at all you just tell me what you want me to do you know I watched the whole thing and in our movie it's about we've extended it to about eight eight or nine minutes but the actual thing is about an

hour and a half long, that sequence. I just watched it. I thought, okay, well, this is building up to that little exchange that I've seen in Let It Be, and this is not feeling too bad. And then the famous words happen, and then it carries on, and I'm thinking, well, that's actually kind of not as bad as I thought it was. But I was still waiting for the stuff that Michael wasn't allowed to,

you know, the stuff where they're swearing at each other or they're shouting or they're throwing things or great or god knows what and it just never happened and it got funnier and funnier yeah it just got funny and I was laughing and um and I so I got through about I think I got through up to about when George left the band in that first week and um and And so I didn't get into Savile Row. I got the first seven days, and I said to them, look, I have to fly home, but I'm really keen to do it, and you're going to have to send it to me. You're going to have to break all your security protocols.

You're going to have to trust me, and you're going to have to send me the whole thing because I've only seen, you know, the first seven hours. I need to keep on watching it. But it looks great. And I knew that from what I'd read in the books that the several-row stuff was going to get better. So I thought, well, this is actually pretty funny,

and if several-row is better, it's great. So they sent it to me. I had it on an iPad, and I watched it, and it took me a few weeks to get through it all. And then I watched it again twice. Yeah. Because, you know, you watch it once and you don't pick up all the little clues about stuff that's going to happen later on. So I had to go back and watch it again. And then, you know, I slowly built up this picture in my head of what I assumed was more like the truth of that month.

head of this this this of what I assumed was more like the truth of that month and that coincided about that moment in time when I'd seen it a couple of times um uh Paul Paul comes down to New Zealand to do a concert um December 2017 it was so they arranged for me to go meet Paul so so he was the first um he was the first Beatle that I met for the project. And I go to the meeting before his show, and he looks at me, and I say, well, Paul, I've seen all the outtakes. Yeah. And, I mean, he hadn't seen them. He had a memory of whatever his memory of, which was pretty grim.

Emotional. It's an emotional memory. Different, right? Well, it's a memory of May 1970. It's a memory of the breaking up and let it be coming out. And it's not a memory of January 69. So as I discovered with quite a few of the people. But so I said to Paul, look, I've seen the whole lot.

I've seen every single frame of film. And he looked nervous. He really looked. He had a really sort of almost childlike frightening frightening look on his face and i just and i just said to him look whatever you think it is and i know what you think think it is the same as what i thought it is it's not bad it's actually really really great it's really funny it's it's you know and there's friendship and everything else and i had my ipad which i had the footage on so i showed him him some bits, and he was so relieved.

He was so happy. I mean, he was so happy. I mean, this was not to do with a movie or anything at this point. He was just so happy to hear that the film that was shot didn't show fighting, squabbling, swearing at each other, arguments, which I guess in his head over the period of time, he'd built that picture in his head because I think everybody had taken the movie,

let it be, at its release in May 1970. The headlines are saying the Beatles are breaking up and they've taken that as a core and they've extrapolated that, you know, time has passed, it's gotten worse over time, the outtakes must be really, really bad. The whole thing is sort of built from that May 1970 moment in time when the film came out after they'd broken up. And it has no relation with the January 69 filming at all.

Well, I think what's amazing to me in watching it is I don't know why I didn't bring any of that baggage to it. Like I didn't, I didn't really put it in my head. I didn't frame it historically. I just sort of entered it. I knew that they were going to break up soon. So I didn't, I didn't go in with any of the dread that you had. I just, like I took it at face value and I thought all the friendships were intact.

And I thought maybe they were, you know, probably, I wonder if they ever really yelled and screamed because they're pretty british all of them uh well on this on the 150 hours of audio because the real story is actually in the nagra tapes and the audio yeah you know which you get which they rolled audio most it almost all day long and and i've certainly you know i mean i don't know what happened you know in the evenings or weekends or anything else but certainly during those 22 days listening to the audio, which is pretty much starting in the beginning of the day and going through to the end. And they had an AB machine. So if one had to change the tape to see how the other one was going,

there was not one moment where a beetle had an angry word to another beetle. Not one moment where one of them swore at each other. I mean, they swear a lot, but they swear in a sort of funny scouse way they don't they don't actually swear in a in a um in an aggressive way so but they but they there's no there's no shouting yeah i didn't feel it at all i mean i i felt i felt sad i didn't i felt sad you know because i knew that as you probably knew you know john was struggling with his addiction problems and you know george was unhappy creatively but i didn't bring any of that to i i kind of noticed that during it and i i didn't realize that john was in the throes of the addiction that he was in until after i watched it and and paul and it was paul and even yoko like

from the get-go like i was able to sort of not pay attention to her at all, which I think a lot of them did. And it seemed like that this idea that she was hanging over this band, she almost like became furniture. I mean, is it very. She does. She does for sure. But you see up until now, up until this film has come out, what you've seen of Yoko has been either little tiny, you know,

10 second film clips where the band and there's her and you immediately go, oh my God, oh little tiny, you know, 10-second film clips where there's a band and there's her, and you immediately go, oh, my God, oh, my God, she's sitting right there, or still photos, you know, and for 50 years it's been little clips or still photos. And you're right, it's only when you see the enormity of the, you know, the length, which is eight hours, it's just like you just realize, well, so what? She's quiet. She doesn't interfere.

She doesn't tell Paul how to play his bass. It's just what the hell is the issue? But it's a very different story to the 50 years of these photos that you see in books. Yeah, you thought this was going to be it you know and and also there's moments with her and linda that were kind of genuine and and you know uh you know just you know wives of the band kind of moments and it didn't stifle any of the creativity now when okay so so when you see all this footage and you start going through it tell me why you know what did you

do to it peter what was the magic you did to it that made me feel like I was hanging out there, that made – there was no – the emotional interface was so immediate. Is there some way that you treated the film? Did you take out any – like I don't know – like I know there's the magic of the Beatles, but it's a lot to sit through eight hours of guys doing bits and pieces of songs, even if it is the Beatles. But there was points where I picked up my guitar on my couch and I'd go get something to eat.

And I'm just sort of like, well, they're just doing that now. What did you do? How did you how did you visualize? I can hear how you were starting to put the story together. But how did you visualize the effect of the film itself? Well, I think the effect of the film itself is Well, I think the effect of the film itself is related, is tied to the story. I mean, you can restore the film,

but you've still got to have the story. Because I think, you know, the sense that you're with them and you're sort of going on this journey with them is also story related. But in terms of the technical stuff, well, we'd done this first World War movie where we'd restored this old hundred-year-old footage, you know, which was pretty hard because black and white scratchy.

And you did this at your, you did this at your magic lab? Which is about a mile, a mile down the road here in Wellington. Yeah. Very small team, but a really, really talented team. Very, very clever. And we're sort of just down the other end of the world. So we don't, we don't care what anyone else does. We just develop our own code, our own software, and our own team, and we just go for it. So anyway, we'd done the World War I film,

and what had happened after, as we were going towards the end of the first World War film, I had my first three movies, which I made when I was younger. The horror movies? Splatter movies were all shot on a 16mm. They've never come out in any sort of a restored form. Yeah.

They got released on VHS, basically, in the 1980s, early 90s. So I said to the guys, I said, God, while we're on a roll here, I'd love to get my old 16 mil films. Well, like Meet the Feebles? And Bad Taste and Braindead, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so I said, I'll get the original neg for the 16 mil stuff. It's not the World War I.

It's, you know, it's colour. It's 16 mil neg. And it'd be great if you guys could start to work on that. So we'd just begun that when the Beatles thing arrived. So we'd already switched our sort of pipeline from the World War I 35 mil sort of nitrate sort of thing to 16 mil colour based on my old horror movies. And I was shooting on pretty much the same sort of film that the Beatles

shot it on. So it's a case of just, you know, the concept was removing the grain and trying to make it look as sharp as I can. It was actually a deliberate one. You know, people sort of, you know, have opinions about it and stuff, and there's film grain enthusiasts that hate the idea that all the film grain is gone and everything else. But I had a very definite goal in mind because what I wanted,

you know, as I was looking at the film before we got started, because Apple kept saying, what's the story? What's the story you're going to tell? And I was saying, well, hang on, let me see it first. Let me see it and have a think. But, you know, I always, as a kid, fantasized, you know, as I was a young Beatles fan, fantasized that surely, you know surely as a 16-year-old, 12-year-old, 16-year-old Beatles fan, I assumed that by the time I got to be

an old bastard like I am now, a time machine will have been invented and maybe we all get to pick a day to go back. And I thought, the day I'm going to pick, I don't know exactly what day, but I'm going to go back to Abbey Road and I'm going to sit in the corner of the studio and spend a day watching the Beatles at work. That was my, if we could all pick a time machine trip, just one, that would have been mine. You know, I'd have to figure out what album exactly to do it on.

So I just looked at the stuff and I thought, God, this is like a time machine, God, this is like a time machine, but it's not like a time machine when it's grainy and scratchy because it's like there's a film of film. It's sort of like that. Then the film becomes something unto itself, not what's on the film. Well, it becomes that, look, we found 50-year-old film of the Beatles and look, it's old and it's got grain, but it's them and isn't that cool?

So I thought if I really want to pull off this time machine thing, I've got to remove as much between us and them. Yeah. And that involves removing all any scratches, any imperfections, any hairs in the gate, in the grain. Try to make it look as crisp and clean as I can. And if I can do that, then hopefully we'll feel like we're in the room with them. And that was also the reason why I made a decision early on not to do any modern day interviews, not to interview Ringo or Paul or Glyn Johns or anyone else, because that immediately

is the 50-year gap again. I just wanted to get in the time machine, take any interested parties along with me, any Disney Plus subscribers, I guess, at this point in time, and we'll all go and watch them at work. And so I wanted to, you know, look, it's all weird headspace stuff, but that was the thought behind doing yeah doing all the you know to to restore it to the level that we did well and also i think that the decision not to engage with any the uh survivors i mean you would you would run into the liability of the emotional liability

of that that 50-year gap again that like obviously most of these guys have have have you know reframed that memory you know based on events that happened afterwards so like why bought why why screw with the purity of what you already had and there's there's there's so much space there well well you see that then went on to the narrative then to the storyline because of course taking on this project there's no script you know normally when i make a movie you've got you know when I make a movie, you go and you cut the movie. You finally get into the cutting room to cut it. And at that point, you've written the script. Every scene has got a number.

There's a story. There's a three-act structure. You've shot it each day. You know every frame of film that you've shot, the best takes. And so the cutting is like a pretty sort of you know it's fun it's my favorite part of it but it's there's no mysterious thing thing to it it's like you know there's surprises but it is you you're following your script and then you're following what you what you shot and then that's but here I here I had um you know 130

hours of audio really and the camera just switches on on and off during it so there was like 130 hours no script and the thing that I realized as soon as I saw it yeah I realized that all all the books that I read were very unreliable so it wasn't like I could turn to some expert beetle guy who's written the book and you know use that as as my guide because I I realized just how how wrong the books have been. I mean, some of the books, they couldn't bear to be in each other's company. John was off his head all the time. They were phoning it in.

They were coming in with finished songs, and the others were just acting. I mean, every negative spin that you could imagine was put on this. So I couldn't rely on books. So I had to, I wrote J.B. Zolson, who I cut it with, just the two of us. We sat in a room for, well, it was months really, and we listened to the 130, 40 hours and we listened to it again. And we had to build up our own storyline from what they were saying. So we were eavesdropping on 50-year-old conversations that they had no idea were going to be heard by us in 50 years' time.

And we were trying to figure out what's the truth. What is actually happening? Why are they there? What are they doing? What's going wrong? Why does George leave? Why did they go to several you know why why why why why and and the answers were all coming from things things that they were saying so it wasn't until we went through the audio like twice that we pieced together what we thought was the actual you know more or less the um a much more accurate narrative And then we decided we'll just tell the story day by day.

So for you, like an example of that would be George leaves and you track it back to them not listening to their songs, his songs in a serious way. Well, George leaving is interesting because we, you know, there's a day where he has his little sort of tetchy exchange with Paul. That's day three. I mean, I don't know the dates. I just say day one, two, three, four, five.

So that's day three. George didn't leave until day seven. So, like, I spoke to Ringo and I said, why did George leave? And he said, well, you've seen it in the film, in the Let It Be movie. You know, he and Paul had, George and Paul had these angry words and he got up and left. And I said to Ringo, no, no, that happened on day three, Ringo, and he didn't leave till day seven.

And Ringo said, no, no, no, no. He had those, and I just thought, I'm not going to argue with Ringo. Because he's actually, I mean, again, it's just his memory had muddled up the movie with the facts. And that's fine. It's a long, long time ago. So anyway, George has a little exchange on day three. Day four, he's, you know, George is reasonably happy.

Day five, he's very, very happy because they do I Mean Mine and they have some fun. Yeah. Day six, he's having a great day. They're doing Commonwealth and they're clowning around and doing bathroom window and George is having a good time. So Jay and I are looking at this stuff and say, well, he's going to leave tomorrow because he's watching

all the day six stuff. He's going to leave tomorrow because we're watching all the Day 6 stuff. He's going to leave tomorrow. Why is he, you know, where are the clues? There's no arguments. So we get on to Day 7, and Day 7 starts with Dick James, the publisher, the Northern Songs guy, being there for a meeting. George comes in a bit late and thanks him for the glasses that he gave him over Christmas.

And then they get working on two songs. They start with Get Back, and they go into Two of Us. And we did a really forensic examination because we could tell from the Nagras where their – if our time was cut. We could tell if the tape machines had been turned off because of the coding on the tapes and stuff. Yeah. I mean, the film – the actual film that was shot just turns on

and off all the time. But for the sound, you can actually track the actual time of the day that the tapes run. And I had our guys examine it, and I said, okay, so we're starting with their – they're doing Get Back. They spend about three hours after Dick James leaves. Yeah. And then they break for lunch, and George says, I'm leaving now.

And I said, is there any break? Is there anything where they could have had an argument where the tapes didn't roll? And they said, no, no, this sound is continuous. There's no stoppages in the audio. And so Jabez and I looked at it over and over again i mean we i mean the audio is there and there's a fair bit of film shot and it just looked like well to us it looked like george was in a very depressed state yeah right at the beginning of the day he

he arrived and and and from what we can understand and we didn't want to actually get into this and maybe he was having some some domestic issues at home with Patty. I think Patty had just walked out on him. Wasn't that involving Eric Clapton, too? That was a little bit later. I think that was another year. I think this was some other thing. But that's not what I'm... I've never been interested in the middle of private life. And I certainly didn't want to make a movie that – because there's obviously none of that's on film,

and I wanted just to stick with what we had filmed. So we don't cover it and get back. But from what I've understood, he was having some pretty serious domestic trouble. Right. And then you add on to that, you know, you can add on to that as much of the disrespect from the other two, and they're not interested in the songs.

Which is not really true because they, I mean, all things must pass. They do like 67 takes of it. I know. I mean, we have one, we show one take. Oh, so they really tried. And get back. They spend at least the best part of two entire days working on it,

or at least, you know. Well, you could definitely feel the uh the the love like when i watched above us only sky you know the imagine uh documentary there was a moment that goes unspoken between john and george where you're like they were so deeply connected in in such in a way that you know i can't even fathom or understand musically and emotionally that you know and you felt that you know i i you like i felt that through the entire thing that you know they all knew each other pretty well and they all had their roles i guess but emotionally they were very fluid and very connected and you never i never felt

once that you know there there was you know real hostility uh on behalf of any of them towards the others no so so we were so we studied george that in the morning and we studied him so carefully. And we, and we looked at the film we had, it was no trigger. There's no moment where they, you know, Paul's says a bit,

he's a little bit blunt. We talked about something about how, you know, how to play the bass, how to play the guitar. Yeah. I think it's get back. I mean,

but it's not rude or anything. It's just a little bit. And George, George doesn't take it very, very well. He guitar. Yeah. I think it's get back. I mean, but it's not rude or anything. It's just a little bit. And George doesn't take it very well. He thinks, he says, oh, you need Eric Clapton for that. You know, and John says, no, no, no. That was just insecure, though. Yeah, it is. You see, because everybody's a human, and I think everyone looks for black

or white, and it's never black or white. It's always shades of gray. So I think you've got George being a bit insecure, and you've certainly got him maybe feeling that he's only ever going to get two songs on an album, no matter how great his songs are, and he's now writing a lot. So you've got sort of things behind the scenes. You've got a sense that they're not respecting his songs,

perhaps to some degree. And then if you've got stuff at home, if you've got a domestic crisis, you're going to sit there thinking i could i could i can i could sit here all day with these guys and you know doing get back doing doing doing their their songs because they're not going to do do all things must pass or i could just leave and leave and go sort of sort out my home home life right because i've got some issues i need i need to sort out so i i mean you know, I just kind of think that George sits there that morning looking exactly like he does in the film.

I mean, those shots that we did where Paul and John are clowning around and they're in each other's faces and George is just sitting there separate, looking pretty depressed. That is the real footage from that day. I mean, you know, because we couldn't cheat shots from one day to the next because their clothes are changing all the time. So, you know, that morning, George was sitting there exactly as you see him, separate from the others.

He just feels, and it just so happens that they're working on two songs. John and Paul are working on two songs right up in there, you know, close. Get Back and Two of Us are songs that don't really, you know, they're not really interested in George's input at this point. So he, you know, he looks like he's on, he's sort of on the outer, but I think he's also feeling the feeling about himself. He's sort of adding to it as well. So it's the most George-like, it's the most George-like thing when he leaves.

I think I'm leaving the band now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the way he leaves. I think I'm leaving the band now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love the way he says, I think I'm leaving the band now. Was he your favorite Beatle? No, I didn't really have a favorite Beatle, although I like George. Well, I mean, I like them all after the footage, but I understand George a lot more from now that I've seen his footage.

George reminds me of a Kiwi, a New Zealand male, a very, very pragmatic, no romantic sort of flights of fancy. Yeah. You know, when John and Paul are saying, oh, we'll get the, we'll go into the amphitheater, we'll get the Kiwi too and we'll take all the fans. George decides it's a bloody stupid idea. Who's going to pay for it?

You know, George is always the guy. And in a film set or any, you know, that guy is a really important guy to have. The one that stops all the visionary kind of talk and just cuts it and says, that's never going to happen. That's going to be far too expensive. Those people are very, very important people to have. And so you've got the sort of John and Paul doing the, you know,

the sort of the visionary kind of stuff, the spacing out on all the amazing things that could be. And George is just a pragmatic one. Who's going to pay for that? That's never going to happen. You know, which, which makes him grumpy,

but he's not grumpy. He's just, you know, he's just saying what needs to be said. So I actually love George. I love George a lot more now, now that, now that I understand him,

because he was always, he was always a quiet beetle. Yeah. The guitarist, but now I sort of, and I can see he's very insecure too. Yeah. It's interesting when,

when, when, when his own songs are, are up, he's very, very nervous and insecure. But if it's Get Back or Dig a Pony, he's got all sorts of ideas. He's incredibly confident. He can improve the songs, and he suggests things. And John and Paul are really happy to get his own notes. But when it's his own song he's very very insecure

and nervous you know you just have to feel feel for him he's just he's just a human being they're not even 30 years old i mean of course he's insecure they let me ask you a question about these um about the credits like you know the you had all these fragments of songs that seemed to be that needed to be attributed what was that why was that i mean that was me it wasn't anybody telling me to do it i just thought that i mean if it was me watching it because i'm not a huge musical guy i mean i like the beatles i don't really know much much else about anybody else i'm a yeah i'm a single band guy i'm a musical moron basically so so i just thought if i'm watching this and i hear a fragment of a song that I don't recognize, I'd be thinking, is that an unknown Leland McCartney song or is it a Chuck Berry song or is it a Little Richard song?

I just know that I'd be immediately wondering. So I didn't want anyone to do the same as that. I just wanted to answer. fragment of a song and it's quite good and the Beatles only do a lot do a lot a line or two if you've got the name then you can go by by the um by the Chuck Berry album or right right Little Richard and hear the whole thing so it was just really a sort of sort of informational thing it wasn't a legal thing okay it was just done and how excited were you when uh when like I it was very it was beautiful I mean you must have been excited too where you know they mentioned you know you're working with Little Richard and seeing Billy Preston early on and you know yeah that Billy Preston's gonna show we know we know what's gonna happen

yeah how great was that yeah I know it's incredible I know and he every changed everything he changed everything Billy yeah I know Billy is fantastic I, again, I didn't really have an appreciation of Billy separate to the Beatles. I knew his work because I heard the songs for 40 years and I read the books, but I haven't seen Billy in any other way. I haven't got any of his albums or anything. So I knew that he was always credited as really uplifting their spirits and stuff.

I knew that from the books I'd read. But it wasn't until I saw it on film that I just thought, holy shit. And it's not that, because I don't like, a lot of the books say that he came in and they began to behave themselves. You know, a lot of the books sort of say that when Billy arrived, they stopped sniping at each other and they stopped doing

and they had to go to the neighbors because there was a fifth person in the room. But that's just not true because they were getting on fine before Billy came in. But what Billy gave them is this rush of excitement. He just gave them their songs just lift up. They go from being what they've been rehearsing, and then suddenly Billy's playing,

and it's their songs getting improved by his playing. And so John and Paul are just so thrilled. Yeah. And it's just this rush of excitement. And Billy's such a good, he's an incredible guy. I mean, I don't really understand any music, but he just seems to sit there and nail it yeah nail it and it filled out the songs like they they he said that i don't remember who said it was was it john or paul said that they wanted piano in all the songs they wanted it there and i had no idea how much

bass john played it took me a while to realize that that Fender six string, that was a Fender six string bass. He plays a lot of bass on that record. They played bass if Paul was on the blues on the grand piano. Yeah. Yeah. But you see, I was very careful in the film. Like I said to Jabez, okay, well, when Billy arrives and they say hi, and then they say sit there and he sits there and he's playing.

I said, we've got to make sure that the first time in the movie that we see him play has got to be the actual first time he plays. You know, because I didn't want to, I was very aware that I could, you know, because he comes at lunchtime, so there's about four or five hours of him playing. I said, I don't want to, you know, I don't want him to sit there and then we suddenly cut to a take he does at 4.30 in the afternoon, you know, to give a, I said, we've got to make sure that the first time we see him play

is the real first time he plays. I was pretty careful at being responsible because I said, it's important from a historical perspective that we're not playing games here. And he sits there and he starts playing and their faces light up and they get so excited, so excited. It's great. And he just doesn't, he's got no music. He's got no guide.

I mean, they don't give him a practice run. They don't play it to him first. They just play the song and he just makes it up as he goes for the first time. You know, what's interesting is by the time, you know, we go through all this stuff and all this, you know the the story of heading towards the roof is that yeah what i found shocking what you know after that i'm having the experience that you were having you know watching

the beatles and and and and feeling the chemistry and and and having everything that you believed about this period you know kind of you know you know, proven false and having a great warm feeling but nostalgic. And then when they get to the roof and you see the onlookers and you see people on other roofs and you see the cops and you have this weird moment, you're like, wait, doesn't everyone love the Beatles? How can these people? It was a very weird thing.

Then you start to realize, like, well, rock stars got in trouble all the time. And then you start to realize, like, well, rock stars got in trouble all the time. And then you start to realize, like, you know, how far they had drifted from their beginnings as, you know, the pop group, the Beatles. But just the reception around, just on people's faces, you know, I would have been going crazy. But most people were like, what is it? It's a couple of things because you've got to realize, and you just don't think about this unless you actually stop and think about it. You've got to realize that those people on the street, when they hear the music, they're hearing Get Back

for the first time in their lives. Right. I mean, they've never ever heard it before. They're hearing all those Beatles songs. They're hearing for the very first time. So it's not like they're hearing I Want to Hold Your Hand or Sgt. Pepper. They're not hearing the oldies and goldies.

They're hearing these songs that they've never heard before, but they are the Beatles. So they're not able to sort of groove with the actual songs themselves because it's the first time that they've heard them. But even the people on the roof, you know, you would think like they would have just been amazed, you know, but I guess it's a different time. I think they're amazed in a very British way.

I mean, they do gather. They do flock, and they do sort of stand there with very straight faces. But you've got to imagine inside, they're really excited. But because they're British, they're not going to say. And the other thing I was going to say is that the Savile Row Police Station, because the police station that these guys come from is about 100 yards up the road or 75 yards up the road that was a police station where sergeant pilcher was was was a base and he was the drug um obsessed rock star planting drugs guy who had already busted john

um the year before you know i think he'd who had he done donovan, a couple of others, and he was going to bust George a month or two later. This guy was leading some British police drug pop star task force. He was based in the same police station as these two cops come from. It was a several-row police station was his base. And so there's a lot of whatever these cops have been hearing back there about the rock stars and the drugs and they're bringing a really bad influence to modern youth.

I'm sure that in the cafe in the police station, Pilcher and his other drug squad guys would have been blabbing all that stuff. So these guys are coming down with not necessarily the best impression of a pop group in the world. So the guy got busted, Pilcher, who arrested all these rock stars in 68, 69. He spent about two and a half years in jail. He got nailed for it. For what?

Well, for perverting the course of justice. George swears that he planted the drugs in his house. John swears that he planted the drugs in his house. these fairly dense and epic bits of the past and thoroughly were able to extract something very humanizing out of them. How do you see that affecting your filmmaking going forward? Because when I think about you, even going back to the Splatter, the horror movies,

and then on through The the lord of the rings and the hobbit movies that it seems like there's two films like there's the um heavenly creatures which was really kind of a a a mix but it was a human story and the lovely bones as well there was fantasy elements but it seems like you'd rather create worlds that like you know right um well i just do i just don't have a plan i i don't know how to answer that i mean i i grew up i mean the reason why you make horror movies when you're a young filmmaker is because you can you haven't got any money i mean the first film i made bad taste i financed myself it cost me 17 grand and i shot it over four years in the weekends

you you but you make horror movies with a lot of splatter and blood because you don't need very good actors you don't splatter and blood because you don't need very good actors, you don't need a very good script, you don't need very good production design, and you can get a maximum impact by going to the butcher and getting some brains and livers and kidneys and some fake blood. And so I think young filmmakers tend to,

and I also love horror, don't get me wrong. I mean, I grew up on Hammer Horror Movies and The Evil Dead and all that stuff, so I was completely into it. But certainly horror movies are a great way to bust into the film industry because you can get big effect for little production value. Right, okay. But then you get into the phase where you're writing something that's a bit more sophisticated.

You're now realizing, well, God, the script has to be good, which means we're going to need to cast it really well because we're now going to have to have actors who can really deliver. And so everything just gets, you know, the stakes go up. I mean, Heavenly Creatures was done because I met my partner, Fran Walsh, who's my co-conspirator and all this. She and I met around the feebles time. So, well, actually, I showed a bad taste.

I got some advice from the first kind of bad taste, so 1987. So anyway, so we were together and we wrote Braindead together and we did that. And then she was very interested in in this um in this New Zealand murder case uh the Parker Hume murder where these two two girls murder one of their mothers I hadn't really heard of it but she she was really really really really really interested in it and had been for a long time so she pitched me the story which I never heard of we went down to Christchurch where it happened um just just Fran and I, and we met a lot of the people

who were involved. Obviously, the majority of them have passed away since we went to a lot of the locations, and she sort of helped immerse me in the true story, and we interviewed a lot of people who were involved, and we just thought, wow, this will be a great film. So that was just, you know, that was how that happened. And then, and then, and then Bob Zemeckis wanted us to do a, a, um,

episode of tales from the crypt, his little, uh, well, he was, he was doing a series of movies. He did a TV series, but he was doing a series of movies. This is 1995 or something. Um, and he was going to, they were going to be labeled Tales from the Crypt, you know, films. That was the branding. And so he contacted. I think he's seen How Many Creatures Will Brain Do or something. Yeah.

So we got our first Hollywood experience with Bob Zemeckis getting in touch and saying, do you want you guys interested in doing a Tales from the Crypt film for me? And so we just thought, wow. You know, it's Bob who we loved we loved, who did a very good film called I Want to Hold Your Hand, by the way. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

You know, and obviously all the other ones he'd done. And so we were excited. I mean, it wasn't, you know, it wasn't something we had in our minds. So we walked around for a bit. We came up with a storyline about this psychic investigator guy who, you know, he's a guy who looks fake and says he can see ghosts and it looks like he's a con man, but then he really can.

And anyway, it was a whole little story. We went to LA, we pitched that to Bob, and he says, great, we should do it. And then he said, but I don't think it fits the Tales from the Crypt sort of brand particularly. It's not, I don't see it as a Tales from the Crypt movie, but let's do it as a standalone film. So that one was done, and then, yeah, and then it went on to Rings and stuff.

So that's how it just works. That's how it works. You just dribble, you trip and stagger from one film to the next. There's no grand plan, really. I mean, right now, now they haven't done, they shall not grow old straight into the beatles i've got no no idea what what i'm doing next i mean i want to go back and restore and and because we started to restore my my old films in the beetle showed up and that's been on

hold now for four years so the so the immediate um work for the new year is to try to finish off restoring my old films finish off off shooting my 8mm skeleton fight that I did when I was 16. So those ones I do know about, and from there on we'll just see what happens. Well, I really appreciate you talking to me today, and I love all the stuff, and I love the Beatles stuff, and I really wish you success

in making those skeletons walk and dance. Yeah, I'm a bit concerned. The idea of animating them, I mean, I built them, which was fun to learn how to build them, and now I've got to learn how to animate, which does concern me. But at least it's just me and a camera and them, so all the mistakes I make can be just kept quiet.

And I don't have to show it to anybody. I want someone to do a doc of you doing that. Well, take care of yourself, Peter. Great talking to you. Thanks, Mac. Thank you very much. Wow. What a ride. I hope he gets to,

I hope he finishes his stop action work. What's interesting is you know, what he wants to do over the holidays with the skeletons. It's odd. I talked to Guillermo del Toro on Thursday, and he too is looking forward to spending some time with some models. I think a Lon Chaney model that he needs to paint over the holidays. There's a little similarity.

A little bit. a little bit. You can watch the Beatles get back on Disney Plus. Let's rock out, man. Let's rock out, man. Rock, man. Thank you. ¶¶ Boomer lives. Monkey and La Fonda. Cat angels everywhere. Cat angels everywhere. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence.

Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under

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