Jrnygrl
11-18-2004, 01:24 AM
If you are a fan of The Beatles, here is a film that was made about Beatlemania, and the days leading to their American television debut on the Ed Sullivan Show.
The movie is called "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." This is one of the best movies I have ever seen about The Beatles, besides "A Hard Days Night," and "HELP." I highly recommend renting or in the case of Beatle fans buying this film on DVD. If you missed Beatlemania you will enjoy this movie, if you lived during Beatlemania you will enjoy reliving the experience.
Read below:
If you make a movie about Beatlemania, you'd better make it manic. Robert Zemeckis did just that in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Zemeckis may be the director of such "important" movies as Contact, Cast Away and The Polar Express over the last decade, but these serious, big-budget releases can't compare with the high-energy comedies he made at the start of his career.
Like Used Cars just after it, also made with writing partner Bob Gale, Zemeckis's 1978 directorial debut is a raucous, very physical ensemble comedy of desperation. What's the desperation in Zemeckis's comedy, now on DVD from Universal Home Video? It's the frantic attempt by the movie's New Jersey teens to get in to see The Beatles's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Set over the 30 hours leading up to that pop culture milestone, I Wanna Hold Your Hand is an amusing collision of heightened reality and slapstick gags.
Nearly all the characters are obsessed with the Beatles in one way or the other. Among them are Grace (Theresa Saldana), the aspiring photojournalist who sees them as her ticket to a career; Rosie (Wendie Jo Sperber), whose zealous efforts to win radio station ticket giveaways provide some of the funniest moments; Janis (Susan Kendall Newman, daughter of Paul), who thinks the Beatles are a plot to keep kids from listening to folk music, and wants to protest against them; and Tony (Bobby DiCicco), who, although he surely wouldn't put it this way himself, feels threatened by the Beatles's unconventional masculinity. Zemeckis and Gale's script sends its Jersey kids on several assaults on The Beatles's hotel and The Ed Sullivan Theater, alone and in groups, and they're almost always amusing journeys - including having the one girl indifferent to The Beatles, played by Nancy Allen, be the one who somehow gets into their hotel suite.
But the sheer highlight of I Wanna Hold Your Hand is the teaming of Sperber and gangly Eddie Deezen, who plays a know-it-all Beatles fanatic with whom she immediately bonds, and with whom she perpetually fights. Each performer's commitment to his or her character is amazing, with neither reluctant to look silly or take a fall at the other's hand. Much of the time these two are eluding the hotel security chief played with typical color by ace character actor Dick Miller. Miller and Deezen supply the movie's most memorable stand-off, when the security guard barges into a hotel room and announces "Now I got you, you little sh-thead," to which the gangly Beatles nut instantly retorts, "Who you calling little?"
Such moments give I Wanna Hold Your Hand a vaudeville spirit, combined with the sort of 1970s B-movie lack of pretension that was the hallmark of Roger Corman low-budget comedies like Hollywood Boulevard or Death Race 2000. Many of the best studio comedies of the time, including Animal House and Airplane!, picked up on that same sensibility, as did Steven Spielberg's flawed 1941, the Zemeckis-Gale-written absurdist comedy reuniting about half of the primary players in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, which Spielberg executive produced. At the same time, there's a more serious, American Graffiti sort of undercurrent to the comedy, with the Beatles weekend bringing turning points in many characters' vision of their life ahead.
The Zemeckis and Gale audio commentary on the DVD goes into many interesting details about the movie's production. For instance, it was all shot in Los Angeles, not New York (you may recognize one alley the movie shares as a location with Chinatown). Much of the commentary also touches on the legal wrangling affecting the movie's content. Universal first wouldn't allow Zemeckis to show the Beatles in any way, for fear of a lawsuit. A version of the Sullivan climax was even filmed with only reaction shots of the fictional characters, before Universal changed its mind, while Zemeckis and Gale's subsequent ploy of showing The Beatles's performance through control-room monitors and camera viewfinders became their homage to A Hard Day's Night. Fear of lawsuit also scrapped the working title Beatles 4-Ever and, while it's never mentioned in the commentary, is presumably why the title became I Wanna Hold Your Hand and not I Want to Hold Your Hand, the Beatles song's real title. Any actors seen representing The Beatles do so either in physical fragments (a leg here, the back of a head here) or at a great distance (in the Sullivan Theater), causing Gale to label I Wanna Hold Your Hand "a cross between American Graffiti and Ben-Hur," the latter because in that you only see Jesus from behind.
The movie is called "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." This is one of the best movies I have ever seen about The Beatles, besides "A Hard Days Night," and "HELP." I highly recommend renting or in the case of Beatle fans buying this film on DVD. If you missed Beatlemania you will enjoy this movie, if you lived during Beatlemania you will enjoy reliving the experience.
Read below:
If you make a movie about Beatlemania, you'd better make it manic. Robert Zemeckis did just that in I Wanna Hold Your Hand. Zemeckis may be the director of such "important" movies as Contact, Cast Away and The Polar Express over the last decade, but these serious, big-budget releases can't compare with the high-energy comedies he made at the start of his career.
Like Used Cars just after it, also made with writing partner Bob Gale, Zemeckis's 1978 directorial debut is a raucous, very physical ensemble comedy of desperation. What's the desperation in Zemeckis's comedy, now on DVD from Universal Home Video? It's the frantic attempt by the movie's New Jersey teens to get in to see The Beatles's first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Set over the 30 hours leading up to that pop culture milestone, I Wanna Hold Your Hand is an amusing collision of heightened reality and slapstick gags.
Nearly all the characters are obsessed with the Beatles in one way or the other. Among them are Grace (Theresa Saldana), the aspiring photojournalist who sees them as her ticket to a career; Rosie (Wendie Jo Sperber), whose zealous efforts to win radio station ticket giveaways provide some of the funniest moments; Janis (Susan Kendall Newman, daughter of Paul), who thinks the Beatles are a plot to keep kids from listening to folk music, and wants to protest against them; and Tony (Bobby DiCicco), who, although he surely wouldn't put it this way himself, feels threatened by the Beatles's unconventional masculinity. Zemeckis and Gale's script sends its Jersey kids on several assaults on The Beatles's hotel and The Ed Sullivan Theater, alone and in groups, and they're almost always amusing journeys - including having the one girl indifferent to The Beatles, played by Nancy Allen, be the one who somehow gets into their hotel suite.
But the sheer highlight of I Wanna Hold Your Hand is the teaming of Sperber and gangly Eddie Deezen, who plays a know-it-all Beatles fanatic with whom she immediately bonds, and with whom she perpetually fights. Each performer's commitment to his or her character is amazing, with neither reluctant to look silly or take a fall at the other's hand. Much of the time these two are eluding the hotel security chief played with typical color by ace character actor Dick Miller. Miller and Deezen supply the movie's most memorable stand-off, when the security guard barges into a hotel room and announces "Now I got you, you little sh-thead," to which the gangly Beatles nut instantly retorts, "Who you calling little?"
Such moments give I Wanna Hold Your Hand a vaudeville spirit, combined with the sort of 1970s B-movie lack of pretension that was the hallmark of Roger Corman low-budget comedies like Hollywood Boulevard or Death Race 2000. Many of the best studio comedies of the time, including Animal House and Airplane!, picked up on that same sensibility, as did Steven Spielberg's flawed 1941, the Zemeckis-Gale-written absurdist comedy reuniting about half of the primary players in I Wanna Hold Your Hand, which Spielberg executive produced. At the same time, there's a more serious, American Graffiti sort of undercurrent to the comedy, with the Beatles weekend bringing turning points in many characters' vision of their life ahead.
The Zemeckis and Gale audio commentary on the DVD goes into many interesting details about the movie's production. For instance, it was all shot in Los Angeles, not New York (you may recognize one alley the movie shares as a location with Chinatown). Much of the commentary also touches on the legal wrangling affecting the movie's content. Universal first wouldn't allow Zemeckis to show the Beatles in any way, for fear of a lawsuit. A version of the Sullivan climax was even filmed with only reaction shots of the fictional characters, before Universal changed its mind, while Zemeckis and Gale's subsequent ploy of showing The Beatles's performance through control-room monitors and camera viewfinders became their homage to A Hard Day's Night. Fear of lawsuit also scrapped the working title Beatles 4-Ever and, while it's never mentioned in the commentary, is presumably why the title became I Wanna Hold Your Hand and not I Want to Hold Your Hand, the Beatles song's real title. Any actors seen representing The Beatles do so either in physical fragments (a leg here, the back of a head here) or at a great distance (in the Sullivan Theater), causing Gale to label I Wanna Hold Your Hand "a cross between American Graffiti and Ben-Hur," the latter because in that you only see Jesus from behind.