The fabbest pop movie ever? Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! A stunning new book spills the secrets of A Hard Day’s Night
No adjective can adequately convey how huge The Beatles already were on October 16, 1963, when director Richard Lester watched them arrive at London’s Playhouse Theatre and struggle good-naturedly through a fever-pitch crowd of teenage boys, screaming girls, reporters, photographers and news crews.
Inside, he saw them deal with a put-upon BBC radio producer and other clamorous claims on their attention with humour, command and a straightforward lack of pretension. These boys, he thought to himself, were naturals.
Film always interested The Beatles, and Lester was there at the audition to direct their first. ‘We were asked to sniff around each other, like dogs, to see whether we would get on,’ Lester recalls. ‘What came out was that we each knew the kind of film we didn’t want to make.’
A Hard Day’s Night was their first film for one reason: they said no to at least five others. Invitations started arriving in February or March 1963, and each was batted away. As Lennon explained in Melody Maker in June 1963, ‘We prefer to wait until we find a film with a good plot that will hold the interest. Otherwise it might do us more harm than good.’
In Liverpool, two years before, The Beatles had loved Lester’s surreal The Running, Jumping And Standing Still Film, starring Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan, among other comedy oddballs, watching it on a loop at the Tatler news cinema, still in their black leather suits after lunchtime shows at the Cavern. It was Beatles humour from first to last.
Lester’s vision was that the film should be an exaggerated day in the life of The Beatles – them functioning at the centre of a perpetual hurricane, crowds everywhere they went. Lester also knew the film should show how exceptionally bonded the band were, like close brothers – a foursome with distinct personalities who kept tight together and repelled outsiders.
By: Mark Lewishon
Source: The Daily Mail
