Attention Beatles fans! - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

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.

Steve M. · 11-18-2004, 01:02 PM

Way ahead of you, Jrnygrl, this is one of my favorite Beatles-related movies of all time! Murray the K makes a cameo in it as himself!

It came out in 1978 and, perhaps because it was released in the shadow of the universally hated Sgt. Pepper film, didn't get the attention it deserved. But Robert Zemeckis went on to a great moviemaking career with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Back To the Future trilogy, and Forrest Gump.

Another worthy Beatles-related movie from 1978 was The Rutles, a hilarious spoof of the Beatles's story conceived by Monty Python's Eric Idle and docuemting the band that created "a legend that will last a lunchtime."

Idle plays Dirk McQuickly, the Paul McCartney parody. Look for George Harrison as a reporter.

Jrnygrl · 11-18-2004, 01:18 PM

Steve M, I think we are the only two who have ever seen this movie. It is just so good and funny. I love Amy Sperber and the way she flips out about Paul. The Ed Sullivan Show scene is so funny. "Okay Ed."LOL!

I have seen the Rutles (check out the pictures of musicians thread), and think it is such a great parody, and it was really great of George Harrison to have a sense of humor and appear in the film.

Steve M. · 11-18-2004, 03:26 PM

Fun Fact: Wendie Jo Sperber appeard in the first Back to the Future movie, another Robert Zemeckis film, as well as the old TV show "Bosom Buddies," which starred Tom Hanks, who has made Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express with. . . Robert Zemeckis.

Full circle!

Jrnygrl · 11-18-2004, 03:28 PM

Wendi Jo, not Amy Sperber, Amy was her character on Bossom Buddies.

Your right full circle.

Don Corleone · 11-18-2004, 05:27 PM

Hey Jrnygrl-Sorry to change the topic but seeing how you are Jrnygrl I thought maybe you could give me an update as to what Steve Perry is doing these days. I was a big Journey fan back in the 80's and last I had heard the band cut him loose because he was needing hip surgery?? Is that right??

Jrnygrl · 11-18-2004, 06:50 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Don Corleone
Hey Jrnygrl-Sorry to change the topic but seeing how you are Jrnygrl I thought maybe you could give me an update as to what Steve Perry is doing these days. I was a big Journey fan back in the 80's and last I had heard the band cut him loose because he was needing hip surgery?? Is that right??

Hi Don Corleone!

Steve Perry and Journey are my favorite subjects, and I could go on and on about them.

Last year he was the musical consultant on the movie "Monster" and produced the Journey Greatest Hits DVD last year. He was supposed to do a second DVD, that was supposed to be out for Christmas, but has been delayed for next year. He also did some background vocals on a song titled "Can't Let You Go" for Jeff Golub's Soul Sessions CD last year, and is supposed to have done some background vocals on a new CD for David Pack. If your like me I'm hoping all these background vocals will lead Steve to do some singing of his own on a new CD. There's always hope.

Neal Schon has a new band he is working with, the band is called Soul Sirkus, and their CD is due out Dec. 7th. Journey is also working on a new CD for next.

Here is a photo of Steve Perry at the "Monster" premier last year.

Penny Lane · 11-18-2004, 08:46 PM

I have seen the movie. But.............. I was actually alive during Beatlemania! How obsessed I was!

I saw them on that first Ed Sullivan Show. I was in orgasmic heaven!(At 14 years old!)

Penny Lane · 11-18-2004, 08:50 PM

I cannot attempt to explain how I felt then! OMG! It was soooooooooooooooo exciting!

Penny Lane · 11-18-2004, 08:57 PM

Here they are/were in all their glory!

Jrnygrl · 11-18-2004, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Penny Lane
I cannot attempt to explain how I felt then! OMG! It was soooooooooooooooo exciting!

I can only imagine. How lucky you are to have been apart of what I consider to be such a cool decade!

Don Corleone · 11-19-2004, 11:31 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jrnygrl
Hi Don Corleone!

Steve Perry and Journey are my favorite subjects, and I could go on and on about them.

Last year he was the musical consultant on the movie "Monster" and produced the Journey Greatest Hits DVD last year. He was supposed to do a second DVD, that was supposed to be out for Christmas, but has been delayed for next year. He also did some background vocals on a song titled "Can't Let You Go" for Jeff Golub's Soul Sessions CD last year, and is supposed to have done some background vocals on a new CD for David Pack. If your like me I'm hoping all these background vocals will lead Steve to do some singing of his own on a new CD. There's always hope.

Neal Schon has a new band he is working with, the band is called Soul Sirkus, and their CD is due out Dec. 7th. Journey is also working on a new CD for next.

Here is a photo of Steve Perry at the "Monster" premier last year.

Thanks for the info. So Neal is not with the band anymore?? I always thought he never got enough respect as a guitar player. Where he was the best was pre-Jonathan Cain. The bands music was a little more rock than when Steve and Jonathan started with the ballads(?). Still, they had some great music all around. I saw them 3 or 4 times and they always put on a great show.

Jrnygrl · 11-19-2004, 05:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Don Corleone
Thanks for the info. So Neal is not with the band anymore?? I always thought he never got enough respect as a guitar player. Where he was the best was pre-Jonathan Cain. The bands music was a little more rock than when Steve and Jonathan started with the ballads(?). Still, they had some great music all around. I saw them 3 or 4 times and they always put on a great show.

Neal is still in the band. Soul Sirkus is his side project. He had another band, Planet Us, that was supposed to include Sammy Haggar and Slash, but Sammy couldn't do it I guess because he started back with Van Halen.

Never got to see Journey perform. I do have the Capture CD, and the early Journey stuff. I have heard from those who have seen Neal play live, say he is awesome.

There is a website for his new band, its SoulSirkus.com, and you can hear a sample of the music. You can also go to the Journey website and there is a chatroom there.

crystals · 11-19-2004, 11:17 PM

I saw "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" on Bravo once. It was okay, but I thought it was kind of stupid. Just these kids going to a Beatles concert and some of them try to get into the Beatle's hotel room. I think Theresa Saldana's character wanted to get pictures of the Beatles or something. I liked the "A Hard Day's Night" film better because it showed the Beatles more. I haven't seen "Help" yet. I'd like to see that film sometime. The Beatles are so cool.

Steve M. · 11-20-2004, 05:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by crystals
I liked the "A Hard Day's Night" film better because it showed the Beatles more. I haven't seen "Help" yet. I'd like to see that film sometime.

"Help!" - You'll love it!

11-18-2004, 01:24 AM	#1
Jrnygrl Member Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Nov 03, 2003 Location: wheel in the sky Posts: 4,540	Attention Beatles fans! 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.

11-18-2004, 01:02 PM	#2
Steve M. Back on the road to reality Forum Superstar Join Date: Nov 07, 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 33,307	Way ahead of you, Jrnygrl, this is one of my favorite Beatles-related movies of all time! Murray the K makes a cameo in it as himself! It came out in 1978 and, perhaps because it was released in the shadow of the universally hated Sgt. Pepper film, didn't get the attention it deserved. But Robert Zemeckis went on to a great moviemaking career with Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the Back To the Future trilogy, and Forrest Gump. Another worthy Beatles-related movie from 1978 was The Rutles, a hilarious spoof of the Beatles's story conceived by Monty Python's Eric Idle and docuemting the band that created "a legend that will last a lunchtime." Idle plays Dirk McQuickly, the Paul McCartney parody. Look for George Harrison as a reporter.
	__________________ I don't really get out a lot. When I do go out, I couldn't be happier. I love being in a nice milieu. I'm as happy as a clam. Just as long as I'm not in some club playing hip-hop. You hear that sort of thing in a lot of places. That's not my milieu. Rock and roll is good-time music. I love rock. So did my parents.

11-18-2004, 08:46 PM	#8
Penny Lane Butter Pie Forum Icon Join Date: Jul 03, 2001 Location: Beneath the blue suburban skies Posts: 51,269	I have seen the movie. But.............. I was actually alive during Beatlemania! How obsessed I was! I saw them on that first Ed Sullivan Show. I was in orgasmic heaven!(At 14 years old!)
	__________________ Vulgarity is no substitute for wit- Lady Violet Crawley

11-18-2004, 08:57 PM	#10
Penny Lane Butter Pie Forum Icon Join Date: Jul 03, 2001 Location: Beneath the blue suburban skies Posts: 51,269	Here they are/were in all their glory! Attached Images

11-19-2004, 11:17 PM	#14
crystals Member Senior Member Join Date: Feb 02, 2004 Location: Canada Posts: 1,829	I saw "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" on Bravo once. It was okay, but I thought it was kind of stupid. Just these kids going to a Beatles concert and some of them try to get into the Beatle's hotel room. I think Theresa Saldana's character wanted to get pictures of the Beatles or something. I liked the "A Hard Day's Night" film better because it showed the Beatles more. I haven't seen "Help" yet. I'd like to see that film sometime. The Beatles are so cool. Attached Images
	__________________ The man who lends a helping hand is the true hero.

11-18-2004, 01:18 PM	#3
Jrnygrl Member Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Nov 03, 2003 Location: wheel in the sky Posts: 4,540	Steve M, I think we are the only two who have ever seen this movie. It is just so good and funny. I love Amy Sperber and the way she flips out about Paul. The Ed Sullivan Show scene is so funny. "Okay Ed."LOL! I have seen the Rutles (check out the pictures of musicians thread), and think it is such a great parody, and it was really great of George Harrison to have a sense of humor and appear in the film.

11-18-2004, 03:26 PM	#4
Steve M. Back on the road to reality Forum Superstar Join Date: Nov 07, 2003 Location: New Jersey Posts: 33,307	Fun Fact: Wendie Jo Sperber appeard in the first Back to the Future movie, another Robert Zemeckis film, as well as the old TV show "Bosom Buddies," which starred Tom Hanks, who has made Forrest Gump, Cast Away, and The Polar Express with. . . Robert Zemeckis. Full circle!

11-18-2004, 03:28 PM	#5
Jrnygrl Member Forum 4000 Club Member Join Date: Nov 03, 2003 Location: wheel in the sky Posts: 4,540	Wendi Jo, not Amy Sperber, Amy was her character on Bossom Buddies. Your right full circle.

11-18-2004, 05:27 PM	#6
Don Corleone Banned Banned!! Frequent Poster Join Date: Nov 17, 2004 Posts: 104	Hey Jrnygrl-Sorry to change the topic but seeing how you are Jrnygrl I thought maybe you could give me an update as to what Steve Perry is doing these days. I was a big Journey fan back in the 80's and last I had heard the band cut him loose because he was needing hip surgery?? Is that right??

11-18-2004, 08:50 PM	#9
Penny Lane Butter Pie Forum Icon Join Date: Jul 03, 2001 Location: Beneath the blue suburban skies Posts: 51,269	I cannot attempt to explain how I felt then! OMG! It was soooooooooooooooo exciting!