Peter Jackson Reveals How He Convinced Beatles Paul and Ringo To Let Him Make 'Get Back'

when i was looking at the the outtakes for the first time if they lived up to their notorious reputation of being of the beatles breaking up and it being a horrible time for them and they were depressing i i don't think i would have made the film i would have said you know sorry i um get someone else to do it [Music] okay i'm going one two three get back from inception the final cut was basically a four years longest time i've ever spent in the cutting room on one project the first cup was 18 hours long the get back project is not just archival footage it's also archival audio because they were filming with two 16mm cameras and had two niagara recorders so there's about you know all up there's 150 hours of audio and about 60 hours of footage in terms of restoring the footage we use a lot of equipment um that we have down here in park road post in new zealand i couldn't even tell you what the names of all the equipment is because unfortunately we have clever people to restore it not not me we're talking about 14 songs we hope to get i've got a feeling how many have we already recorded good enough now i'm wondering if in the back of your mind you ever thought yeah i'd like to sneak some documentaries in between these fictional theatrical blockbusters or whether it's just coincidence that these two things came up i tend to just do projects that interest me that i have a passion for because what's the point of doing anything if you don't feel passionate about it so you know everything i've done 33 king kong was my favorite movie so i you know i did a remake of that lord of the rings you know came out of a love of ray harryhausen films when i was growing up and my grandfather was in the first world war i've always had a long-term interest in the first world war and the beatles i've loved the beatles ever since i was a kid so there's no plan it just happens to be that i got invited to do this and not in a million years what i've ever said and said no the fact that i loved the footage so much and fell in love with it when i saw it and fell in love with the humor and just the historical rarity of it and the fact that it was entertaining it wasn't miserable you know it shows drama it shows a plan that goes that derails and it shows how they're reacting to a crisis it has you know it's not all planned sailing but it's incredibly entertaining to watch the rushes i thought well if these outtakes are entertaining i should be able to somehow knock together a a reasonably good movie for from these outtakes now we're going to take the beatles and i'll be quiet oh you've enjoyed in our conversation [Music] what's doing an easter egg partly a way of hinting broadly that we need to uh make a mini series it's hard to figure out how to approach this huge bulk of material we had 130 140 hours of audio and then all this 60 odd hours of footage it's so massive amount of stuff and so we thought well the first thing we have to do is just get it down to a shorter length it'll be way too long but let's at least just get it down to something that we can manage and so that was when the 18 hour cut happened and that was still the plan was to keep going and make it two and a half hours we did that and then we sort of kept putting it in and trimming it down putting more stuff putting new stuff in there wasn't any now cut trimming that is now cut down finding new stuff putting it in and we ended up with six hours and so then the moment came which we we just thought how on earth do we get it any shorter than this because this is this in our view you're at that point you're starting to commit a crime against um rock and roll history if you start trimming anymore out because there's stuff there that people have to see it they haven't seen it in 50 years and anything that we weren't going to put in this film i was painfully aware it's likely to go back in the vault for another 50 years so we had to then own up to disney into the beatles um so applecall that we had that we that we thought the film should be six hours not two and a half hours that was the most nervous time i've had in this whole project was then waiting for their verdict on the six hours and the beatles were the ones everyone was waiting for them to look at it you know ringo and paul and olivia and and they verdict came back from them saying six hours is great six hours uh we understand why it's six hours we're happy with six hours less so once the beatles signed off on the six hours everyone else was okay with it yes yes i mean we never got a chance to do it again [Music] people have focused basically over the years on what they know about the material that's kind of in the first part where they're still trying to get it together and not and then you know joy comes later after things ease up well even tweaking them isn't that bad when i look at it i mean twickenham is obviously notorious because in later interviews all the beatles said how much they hated tweaking them and that was at the lowest of the low moments and just when george leaves and stuff but looking at twickenham there are some really great stuff into it like really funny stuff it's not um it's not all bad as a person that likes stories i'm glad it all went wrong because the most boring film would have been the beatles arrive at twickenham do two or three weeks of rehearsing it all goes great they build the set they shoot the tv special it's fantastic it's all great and they're finished and the album's released i mean that would be interesting you know because michael lindsey hogg would still be filming it all but if it went smoothly it wouldn't be anywhere near as interesting as the story is because it all goes wrong for them it derails for various reasons and they're constantly trying to stay the tracks in front of the train to sort of get some sort of a good result out of this rather chaotic sort of project that they're on and also from the point of view of the four beatles i think we learn more about their personalities and who they were as human beings because they're reacting to things going wrong than they are is reacting to things things all working out well it's when you're dealing with a crisis that you actually learn a bit more about the people um you know that you're watching how they deal with the crisis is what's really interesting none of us has had the idea of what the show is going a feeling i would dig to play on the stage you know nobody else wants to do a show i think we've got a bit shy were there any scenes that was especially important you to get in there that you felt like kind of oh this is really correct the narrative one of the narratives that gets repeated quite a bit in the books is that on the day that george walked out in the day that george quit the band he and john had an enormous argument that resulted in the fistfight they actually punched each other and that sort of always upset me because the idea of john and george having a fistfight i always hated reading that i didn't like it and when i started to get involved in this project i met up with olivia harrison olivia said george did say that when they were in hamburg there was some altercation in the group over dinner and they threw food at each other they kind of had some physical alteration and then i kept looking at the outtakes some newspaper guy has written an article saying there was rumored that at a tv rehearsal some nights ago beatles john and george had a fist fight with each other and john and george the two men who can no longer speak to this current day they are really angry to see this and george says he says he says there was a fist fight john said that didn't happen that's sue them sue them and then john says the only time it's ever got close to that was they play food at hamburg exactly the story of the liberty is in so you've got the two men who were so caught involved in this fight that's right absolutely angry as anything that this even got talked about because it's never happened and so i was so pleased to see that because as a fan i never had to think about john and george having a fight ever again because it never never ever happened so when you've got paul durango still alive who maybe have think they have these bad memories and then you're saying no actually you guys were having a good time they're really getting along well and collaborate amazingly is that hard to like talk them into that like yes you were having a good time you just don't remember december 2017 paul mccartney came to new zealand for a concert and i'd seen it all i had an ipad and so i went into the dressing room and and i sort of you know shook hand i said so paul i've seen all the updates from from let it be able to take and i could see the nervousness on his face because he hasn't seen that i mean he was there in 1969 but he hasn't sitting here and seen the footage tonight and he said ah yeah and he was sort of i could see there was a trepidation or a dread on his face and i just said look it's it's whatever you think it is it's not what you think it is because i thought it was going to be miserable but i'm amazed at how funny and happy it is it's completely different to what i imagined i could sort of see just me saying that he he said yeah what really and then i started showing him things on an ipad and you know they were only little bits and pieces but he was starting to look at stuff and then i i went to l.a a couple of times at that point and saw pre-pandemic and um visited ringo and showed ringo things and and so they that i think i started to ease them into the idea of the fact that the let it be experienced was not what they remember because they remember the movie in may 1970 as you say which is they were in the midst of breaking up and it must have been such a miserable stressful time for them that they've somehow imposed all their memories of the get back sessions from january 69 on the may 1970 release of the film so let it be for them it's sort of as a symbol of a very unhappy time that they were personally you know experiencing when the band was breaking up so what's our next move let me split george's but it's instruments to be such a comical thing like in 50 years time they broke up because yoko sat on an m did you find yourself relating to any beetle in particular as you watch the footage because i was imagining that as a director you'd relate to paul because he's actually trying to direct and get things going there's the famous um altercation between george and paul which is in it which we've got as well you know i'll play anything you want right at all and both of them are right you know george is trying to get the song as good as he can and he feels he's being rushed and pushed along he's being rushed and pushed along because paul's realizing he's committed to like 14 new songs and he's in less than two weeks so paul's like like a director like i mean i've been on a film set and it's two o'clock in the afternoon and we're only a third of the way through the day and we've got to shoot the rest of it like and i might start to behave pretty badly on set come on guys hurry up don't do that don't do that and so i'm looking at pointing yeah but george on the other hand is perfectly right too he's saying well i can only play it like like i want to you know you can push me along all you like but you're not going to get a better result you just understand that these two guys are just perfectly normal reasonable opinions but it's the project itself which has imposed this deadline on them which is bringing this to the surface what could it be something in the way what attracted me just say whatever comes into ed each time attracts me like a cauliflower until you get the word george is great because he's he's so pragmatic he's the one where they're talking about going to libya to do the um show in the amphitheater but they realize that they that if they have a a an audience in libya full of the local arabs that they're not going to understand the word that they're singing they won't you know they're just going to sit there looking dead and bored so they realize that they need an english-speaking audience in the amphitheater in libya so they're going to have to hire a ship and transport the entire audience for the show to libya and georgia said well how much is that going to cost it's going to be crazy and paul says well we can get the qe2 which is a brand new ship at that point in john's saying well you know they'll give it to us for free because imagine the publicity they'll get and george says he says he says i think you're bloody mad peter don't even give us a free amp you know so george is this wonderful pragmatic guy who takes all the romance out of the other guys who sort of go supernova into these flights of fantasy and he just says yeah that's never never going to happen so i really relate to george as a filmmaker ultimately just have to get down to the basic bare bones of it and get a reality check happening george is the guy you want in the group you want john and paul in your group because you want that genius to be sort of going into these crazy directions but you always want to george in your group as well to say that's a bloody stupid idea that's never going to happen and so i really appreciate george for that he would be great on a film set because he's a sort of you know let's just cuddle the crap out guys that's it yeah we have to get it done let's just do it that's what i think people will take away from this it's not that john was a genius thing or the paul was a genius singer george was underrated i mean all the sort of the stories that you read i mean sure you can spin it like that but the beatles were and always have been just the unit before guys all supporting each other all liking each other and having each other's backs they've got each other's backs every every step of the way [Applause] said that he thought we ought to just tell it like it is [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Variety

Views: 1,526,257

Keywords: Variety, Variety Studio, the beatles: get back, the beatles, let it be, peter jackson, doc dreams nat geo, ringo, Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, Get Back

Id: K95MIzDth_A

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/quietly41]

Am I missing something in this clip? It seems like, he made a 6 hour doc, showed it to Ringo, and Paul, and they're like "ya looks great."

[u/UncleLazer]

$$$

+

Hobbits

[u/AlterdCarbon]

Is his head very heavy or something? Does he have neck problems? Why is he constantly tilting his head over to one side or the other like that when he talks?

[u/MrHeavySilence]

I love it when filmmakers feel an immense sense of responsibility about the project. Thanks to Peter Jackson we get to see six hours of footage instead of some other director cutting it down to two and then this footage going back into the vault forever.

[u/n00bvin]

I love this doc so much. The Beatles are a soundtrack to my life, because I have literally listened to them my entire life. My mom played The Beatles to me while I was still in the womb. She said they were the only ones who would calm my kicking.

Growing up they were always being played at home on the 8-Track. I would dance with my mom around the room, and the coffee table would magically become a piano with song like Hey Jude. I would tickle the ivories on a made up piano and belt out the song as loudly as I could. We grew up poor, so an imagined piano was all we were going to have.

When I was around 12 I got my first guitar. I got a book of The Beatles songs to learn along with it. The songs it didn't have, I learned by ear. Now, the love of The Beatles is certainly not unique, just the opposite, so I found others with my passion. They were my inspiration to make music and be in a band, and I found that I was far from alone. This is the point around 15/16 that I made my best friends that I'd ever haver, and still have today. We bonded over The Beatles, but made our own stuff. I never put the time and effort I should have to be successful, so we weren't. Now that 30 years has passed, my regrets have only grown.

Now, at 50, The Beatles are still in my life. This doc has renewed my active listening, and I'm going to dust off a guitar and see what I remember. I've talked to my best friend about reforming the band. I think we will, and I'm pretty sure some of the first things we'll play are The Beatles.

[u/stevebuscemi248]

I hate when they put in loud clips from the content they are talking about in these interviews. Just ruins the interview and any attempt to focus on what is being said.

[u/lodge28]

Watched some of this last night. It’s converted me to loving the Beatles. I admit I never liked their music much but this doc just blew my mind, the way they create some of the most iconic songs in a matter of moments was mesmerising.