Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 390] The Story Behind The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night with Samira Ahmed

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[EP 390] The Story Behind The Beatles' A Hard Day's Night with Samira Ahmed · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: This is the book I feel I have it in
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: me to write. And there's so much documented that's never
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: been pulled together, which is not just the making of
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the film, but the influence of the film. Why the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: film looks so unusual, Why it's an art house film
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: that was made to cash in on a band before
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: they split up, and actually it was the beginning of
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: something rather than the end of something.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: We're totally rock and roll.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'll leave you.
• 0:21
  Speaker 3: You're reading little Hands this, It's time to rock and roll,
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: rocking up, I totally booked.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to book do on Rock, the podcast for
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: those about to read and rock Americ Sanitch. If you'd
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: like to support the podcast, get episodes commercial free. Sign
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: up for the backstage Pass from Patreon. It's just five
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: dollars a month the link in the show notes, or
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: you can go to book down rock dot com now.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Our guest Samira Ahmed is the author of A Hard
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: Day's Night, part of the British Film Institute's Film Classics series.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: The book examines one of the most influential music films
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: ever made. A Hard Day's Night, released in July of
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: nineteen sixty four at the height of Beatlemania. The film
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: was directed by Richard Lester and followed John, Paul, George
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: and Ringo through a fictionalized thirty six hours in their
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: lives as they traveled to London for a television appearance.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: What could have been a simple pop star vehicle became
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: a groundbreaking film that helped redefine music movies, influence the
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: modern music video, and captured a rapidly changing Britain in
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: the mid nineteen sixties. Samira's book explores not only how
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: the film was made, but Wyatt's reputation has continued to
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: grow more than sixty years later. Samira, Welcome to the podcast.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you for such a beautiful description of
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: what I was trying to do in that book. So
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: thank you sounds like maybe I pulled it off.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Oh you did a fascinating read. A fascinating read, and
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: for you is there's so much that we can get
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: into from your aspect here. You've watched A Hard Day's
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Night as an eleven year old discovering the Beatles, as
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: a broadcaster, as a film critic, and as someone fighting
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: a landmark equal pay case. So talk about this film's
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: importance to you and what convinced you that you had
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: something new to say about this film.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Well, like you hinted, I mean I first discovered the
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: film as an eleven year old. The BBC broadcast all
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: six of the Beatles films, the feature films, and the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Shay Stadium documentary and the Less It Be film, all
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: of those at Christmas nineteen seventy nine. And my family
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: were early adopters, and we had a Betamax video recorder
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: and my elder brother taped all the films off TV,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: and I discovered the Beatles through those films, particularly A
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Hard Day's Night and Help I Think and to some extent,
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Yellow Submarine. And I used to come home from school
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: every day I used to put one of these films on.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So I probably watched A Hard Day's Night once a
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: week for a really long time, so it's possible I
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: may have watched it more than most people on the planet.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: And as I grew older, I'd always loved the Beatles,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: and about three years ago I discovered the earliest complete
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: concert recording they've made in the UK, the so called
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Stow tape, where they played a boy's private school and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: a student recorded the whole concert. So it's in really
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: good quality, there's not screaming all over it. And he
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: shared the tape with me three years ago and that
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: story went around the world, and it was about the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: social history. It wasn't just about the music being brilliant
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: or the band. It was about why did the Beatles
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: resonate what was going on in Britain at that time,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: And people got in touch to say, even though they
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: didn't particularly regard themselves the Beatles' fans, they really connected
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: with that story. So I thought, I thought a lot
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: about A Hard Day's Night. And I had been on
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: there's a great podcast called I'm the Egg pod here,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: which I had been on talking about the album and
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the film, and I realized I had more to say.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: When I've discovered the BFI series hadn't covered this book
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: because iont. I was surprised, but I was also relieved
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: because I thought, this is the book I feel I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: have it in me to write. And I actually pitched
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: it and wrote it really quickly because I did lots
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: of research. But there's so much documented that's never been
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: pulled together, which is not just what you know the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: making of the film, but as you say, the influence
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of the film why the film looks so unusual, why
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: it's an art house film that was made to cash
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: in on a band before they split up, and actually
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: was the beginning of something rather than the end of something.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: So all that's gone into it, And I've had lovely
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: feedback from a lot of people who knew the Beatles
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: in the sixties actually and said that they felt they'd
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: learned stuff from it, which is all you could ask for,
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  Speaker 1: isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: Oh? Sure, yeah. You describe A Hard Day's Night as
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: a snapshot of Britain in nineteen sixty four. What aspects
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: of British society does it capture better than most history books.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Well, for the first thing, I think it just gives
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  Speaker 1: you a sense of how weird it was with Beatlemania.
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  Speaker 1: There had been you know, like Sinatra in America. There
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: had been pop stars that had fanatic followings in the
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: UK before, but there was something but beatle The Beatles
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: and the way they connected with all generations. There wasn't
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  Speaker 1: a lot of pop music television, so they weren't on
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: mainstream light entertainment variety shows like more common wise with
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  Speaker 1: comedians and things. It's equipment to them going on on
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  Speaker 1: the ed Sullivan Show, and the hysteria just continued to
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: grow around them. So what you see in this film
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: is it captures the way that they couldn't go anywhere
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  Speaker 1: without screaming fans just appearing from anywhere. It captures that
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  Speaker 1: sense of them on television as a medium which kind
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: of transmitted them to the world. I mean, the cover
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of the book is a spoof of the it's a
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: play on the film posters that have been contact sheet.
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  Speaker 1: It's the Beatles split into four TV sets and I
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  Speaker 1: like their there are kind of contagion being transmitted to
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  Speaker 1: the world. So the world of television and how powerful
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: a force it was in people's lives were captured in
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: this film. And of course the changing social picture of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Britain we had, although it's you know, you glimpse it
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: rather than it's made a big point of it's a
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: multi racial audience. There are teenage girls of color and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: teenage boys of color in that audience. Because the so
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: called Windrush generation of Commonwealth immigrants like my parents came
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: to Britain in nineteen sixty from Indian Pakistan. They were,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: you know, very much changing the picture of Britain. And
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the other thing about Britain at the time is the
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: changing economic picture of work. So there are a lot
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: of interesting career women in this film, and I know
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: a lot of women who became makeup artists. In the sixties, television,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the screen world is a big growing place and women
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: were starting to make their impact in all kinds of ways.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: So all of that is captured incidentally in the background
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: to a film which looks document entry style. Even though
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: it's a scripted film, there is a mixture of I've
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: described it as a fantasy documentary.
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  Speaker 3: Eric.
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  Speaker 1: There are moments that are real. There's fans screaming on
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  Speaker 1: the street. Some of them were paid to turn up,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: but a lot of them turned up just because they
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: heard the Beatles were filming. So everything feels you're not
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: quite sure where the reality stops and the surreality of
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: Richard Lester's comedy style begins.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: You know Richard Less and let's talk about him, because
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: he's often described as a film secret weapon. What did
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  Speaker 2: he bring to the project that maybe another director might
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  Speaker 2: not have.
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  Speaker 1: Well, it start with he's kind of an outsider. He's
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  Speaker 1: an American who had made his head in Britain and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: loved British humor and he had a very strong anti
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: deaferential sense. So when the sewers crisis happened, he's one
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: of those people who thought, who are these idiots who
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: are ruling us? He goes on to make a film
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: like How I Won the War, which is scathingly anti
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: war and anti the kind of political forces that send
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: young men to die. And his sense of humor just
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: gelled with the Beatles, who watched a lot of television,
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  Speaker 1: knew the comedy of particular couple of actors, Piece of
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Cellars who's known very much in America, Spike Millier, and
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: he's less well known. The two of them were in
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: a comedy troupe called The Goons, which began on radio.
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  Speaker 1: People like King Charles grew up a huge fan of it.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: The Beatles used to listen to that, and it transposed television.
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  Speaker 1: Some of these actors wrote TV series and films, and
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: which Leicester had worked with them on a lot of
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: these projects. So they had a shared sense of humor,
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  Speaker 1: I think, and he bought that surreality. And also it
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: wasn't that he knew the Beatles, but he had a
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  Speaker 1: strong sense. I read some lovely interviews with Richard Leicester
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: of his heart being in sync with a young audience.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: He was about ten years older than them, but he
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: kind of came up with lots of creative ideas about
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: how to film them, how to capture them, how to
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  Speaker 1: turn the surreality of some of those crazy press conferences,
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  Speaker 1: like the one at JFK when they first arrived in
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  Speaker 1: the US, when they're being asked about their haircuts and stuff,
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: and they just bat back these inane questions from journalists,
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  Speaker 1: and he found a way of turning that into surreal
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  Speaker 1: moments where if you watch the press conference scene in
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  Speaker 1: a hard day's night, they're giving answers that don't quite
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  Speaker 1: make sense because he kind of mixes.
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  Speaker 3: Up the answers and the questions.
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  Speaker 1: At one point, Paul's being asked, you know, how how
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: do you feel about your father? And he goes, oh,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: not really, We're just good friends, which makes no sense
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: at all. Yeah. He he films things that could have
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: just been done dead straight as a kind of pop
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: art collage, and that sense of a comedy surrealism, which
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: isn't about big laughs, but it's about playfulness. That's what
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: really makes this film stand out.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I think Richard Lesser had other writers in mind, including
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: some of Britain's biggest sitcom talents. What did Alan Owen
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: bring that those writers might not have.
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: It's a great question.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: So Richard lest did know a lot of the comedy
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: writers at the time, and Alan Owen, well, he was
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: from Liverpool. He's originally Welsh, but you know, Liverpool was
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: his home. And I think one of the things this
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: film captures very well is the sense of the way
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: that Liverpudlians talk. They have their own code, they have
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: They're very, very witty, and it's something George Harrison has
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: gone on to say that, you know, everyone in Liverpool
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: is very well I mean, in his view, is very
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: sharp tongued and sharp witted. And so if you watch
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: that film, even I as an English speaking person and
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: get all the lines and all the jokes because it
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: moves so fast and they're speaking in their own idiom.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: But alan On makes it feel authentic as a result,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: and he's writing dialogue for them that's obviously not necessarily
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: what they would have said, but he kind of plays
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: with what the real persona I were like. So John
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Lennon is the kind of you know, sharp mouthed, kind
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: of quip quip stuff you know, Ringo's a bit more laconic,
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: you know, Paul is a bit more eager to please.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: And while subsequently the Beatles in real life might have
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: felt that they were slightly stereotyped by the version of
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: themselves in this film, I like their there being a
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: version of the Beatles that's a fictional version of themselves.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: And Alan know and did a great job at capturing that.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Some of the situations he puts them in, you know,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I just thought were really like the press conference scene
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: he wrote. He wrote scenes during the filming, so they
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: they saw how the Beatles responded, So the film was shot
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: more or less in ordin. As they've gained in confidence,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: they realized George was actually a really good acting at
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: a real presence. He was very laid back, and they
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: wrote that extra scene for him in the ad agency.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: They wrote the scene for him where he's giving their
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: roadie a shave in the using the mirror in the bathroom,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: you know, just little moments like that. So there's a
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: sense of the film is responding in real time to
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: what the Beatles are offering up as they go along.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: One of the great Beatles stories Ringo accidentally inventing the
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: phrase A Hard Day's Night. The film's producer, Walter Shenson,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: needed a title song almost overnight, and by the next morning,
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: John and Paul had delivered A Hard Day's Night. And
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: the detail that the lyrics were written on a birthday
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: card for Julian Lennon. That's another great one. Did you
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: uncover any other small human moments like that which made
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: these larger than my figures feel more relatable? Yeah?
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, that is such a great one, isn't it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Because I one of the things I felt quite moved
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: by was the fact that the real life that John
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: was married, that he had a one year old son.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: These facts were of kind of kept out of the script,
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: even though it wasn't an official secret that he was married.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I thought it was a shame that the reality of
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: the women's lives around the Beatles was sort of kept
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: out of it. One of the stories that I, I mean,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize, but it was out there if you
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: went looking for it, was that John Lennon's real father
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: had turned up during the shooting of this film. This
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: is the father who had abandoned the family, disappeared off
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: to America, and suddenly it turns up after years at
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: the theater where they're filming, you know, the concert sequences
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: and there's crowds of people trying to get in, and
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: if you remember the film, of course, there's a scene
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: in which the grandfather is trying to get back into
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the theater and tried to send you know, I'm Paul's grandfather,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and the real guy who say I'm John's dad turns
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: up and you know, the message got through to John
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: that your father's turned up, and he said, you know,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: in no polite terms, to get lost. They did subsequently
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: arrange for him to have a meeting with him. But
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: I just just what a strange and just you know,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: upsetting things to happen in the middle of all that chaos.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I thought there were moments like that, and then things
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: like some of the people who were just on the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: periphery of this. So there's a photographer called David Hern
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: who had covered the Hungarian uprising. It'd been in places
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: a real danger, and he said he was freaked out
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: by the hysteria that the fans created around the Beatles.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: He'd never seen anything like it. Needs to ply monopoly
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: with them on the train while they were filming, I
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: was fascinated by even a war photographer was deeply disturbed
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: about the scale of Beetle Banya.
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: I thought that was quite interesting.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard some Beatle experts talk about that PTSD
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: that all four members must have had in the years
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: following the breakup or the end of the Beatles, because
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: it was it took a while for them to get
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: out of that phase and be comfortable in their own
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: skin and in their own careers. That Can't Buy Me
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Love sequence is classic. It's such a great representation of
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: youth breaking free from authority and tradition. It's still there
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: when you watch it, probably the most iconic of all
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: the scenes from the film. You call it the most
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: complex in the entire film. What makes it so much
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: more sophisticated than it first appears.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: Well, I love that it's actually shot in three different
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: locations weeks apart, because you know, you just assume that
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: it's just all in the editing. But the scene where
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: they come out on the far escape and they go
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: we're out, that's one location. That's the Hammersmith Odie in
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the West London as it was in ald Cinema, and
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: then they run down that fire escape and then when
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: they're running across the field. That was shot in Eiseleworth
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: near he Through Airport. In fact, a community group got
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: in touch with it and they did a screening of the
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: film in those same playing fields just the other weekend
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to mark, you know, Paul McCartney's birthday, which was lovely
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: because the playing field is still a place you can visit.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: I've been there. But the other location is Gatwick Airport, Britain,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: London second airport and they basically had a helicopter and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: if you think about it, when they first seemed to
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: run into the field, the suddenly you're very aware that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: it's a judgery shot. It's the helicopter going up and
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: that's where they were shot from a distance, running around
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: larking in the field. And what's interesting is that that
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: was in a way the first part of the sequence
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that was shot. But the cameraman was an experienced ex
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: military cameraman had shot a lot of planes, had shot
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: to air raids over Germany and stuff for Winston Churchill
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: and they footage ascent to number ten Downing Street for
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: him to monitor what was going on. So he'd gone
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: up with a helicopter and when he got up, he
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: realized that the battery in the.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: Camera was run down. The footage was.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Running through at low speeds. When he played it back
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: a normal speed, it had that speeded up silent movie
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: slapstick effect. So they shot the rest of the stuff
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: kind of to match it. So Richard Lester was very
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: good at responding to an accident and saying, well, let's
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: make this a feature, because he loved Buster Keaton. There's
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: a whole sequencer chase sequence later with the Policeman, which
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: is based on Cops nineteen twenty two. Bus to keep
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: the film, so they shoot the stuff in the playing
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: field later, and they mock up a version of the
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: helipad so it looks like it's the same location and
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: they speed up the footage, but those are three different
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: locations shot weeks apart, and at one point John Lennon
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: isn't even there because they used to film, despite the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: fact that they all had other commitments and John Lennon
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: went off to a literary luncheon for his first book,
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And so there's moments when they seem to be doing
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: like a dosey dough on the helipad and the camera
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: is being held, but what you assume is John and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: he points the camera down at his feet and his
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: beetle boots. That's Richard Lester, you know. So sometimes they substitute.
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: He substitutes himself for the missing beetle. So you wouldn't
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: know any of this, and literally unless you went looking
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: for the information. And I read a lot of interviews
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: that he had done with people at steven Soderberg Accounts,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: had given at previous screenings. Because the Richard Lester is
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: very much still alive, but just very frail, and he
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: still lives in England. And I think, more than anything,
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: I wanted this book to be homage to him as
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: an American who made Britain it's his home. And together
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: with the American producers of this film, I love that
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: it took a true of Americans to give the Beatles
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: back to Britain and the world as the most exciting
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: new British phenomenon.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: How much of Hard Day's Night, Oh, is it's magic
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: to accidents like you mentioned, like the sped up film
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: effect only because the camera batteries running low, and that
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: Richard Lester was smart enough to keep I mean, how
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: much of the movie has those moments?
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: A lot has it, and I think one of the
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: best of those moments is that within the first two
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to three seconds of the opening film, when you suddenly
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: start with that cord of the opening track and you
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: see through the Beatles are running down that alley next
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: to Maribone station and George trips over and falls flat
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: hard on his face, Ringo lands on top of him.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: They get up and they keep running, you know, And
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: that happens a couple of times things like that. I mean,
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: in that whole sequence, there's a lot of fans falling
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: over quite badly in the crush, so you have that
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: sense there's real peril, there's real jeopardy. If they hadn't
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: got up and run again, you know, would they be
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: able to shoot that sequence? Everything shot as fast as
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: it can be because they never know when the police
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: are going to shut down shooting, as they sometimes did
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: this if the crowds are too big, or the crowd
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: might get out of control. And you know, they had
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: a moment after the first day of shooting on the
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: train where the young technician was carrying the cans of
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: film looked a bit like a Beatle and he starts
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: to being chased by girls and he tried to outrun them,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: and he dropped a load of the film and they
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: had to, you know, abandon some of the tape that
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: got lost, So the whole film has a sense of
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: urgency about it. And there's another moment when they're rehearsing
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a number in the studio when George leans on his
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: amp and it kind of starts to always fall off
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: its stand and you actually hear the.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Thump of it. So I think all that adds to
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: a sense.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Of authenticity, doesn't it that he left all these accidents in.
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe that's why it stands up so well over time
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: as well, because there are those real moments. You suggest
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: that A Hard Day's Night helped create the modern music video.
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: When people talk about the birth of MTV modern music video,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: does the camp Binmen Love sequence deserve to be at
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: that center of the conversation.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: I think it does.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: And in fact, even before that, the very first pop
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: video I'd argue is when they're on the train and
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: they go into that guard's character they're playing cards and
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: the music starts up of I should have known better?
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: I think think it is, isn't it?
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: And if you watch that sequence, it's the first time
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: in cinema that you start to hear the song before
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: you see them singing or performing it, and then it's
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: suddenly jump cuts to them in the same seats, but
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: they're playing instruments. We take it for granted that pop
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: videos work this way. No one had ever done this before.
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: It's all in the editing. The way that Paul even
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: looks like he's miming along or jiggling his head to
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: hearing the song on the radio, the next moment singing
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: it out loud, and then the can'tbine we love sequence
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: is the kind of you know, it's arguably the inspiration
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: for The Monkeys. I mean, the whole TV show spins
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: out of these running zany foursome of guys playing around
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: in a field in a slapstick way. There's a huge
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: amount of slapstick in sixties pop music cinema, even before
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: the MTV comes along. And I find it quite ironic,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Eric that MTV has basically been shutting down across Europe.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: It's you know, very much in retreat, and that this
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: film has outlived the art film that had invented. I mean,
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: they famously gave him a Vanguard Award in nineteen eighty
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: four as the father of the the pop video and
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: he jokingly demanded a paternity test, but you know he's
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: outlived his child again. And the other one i'd point
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: out looking ahead a bit because I look at the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: other films that they made, and including Help, which is
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: their follow up with Richard Leicester. Those films all shot
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: the pop music treatments in that film in the studio
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: with a cigarette smoke sort of filtered through blue lights.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Or they're in the Bahamas with these beautiful girls, all
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: again shot through beautiful sunlight. I mean that interspitual the
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: jurand Geran exotic videos of the ninety six eighties like Rio,
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: doesn't it?
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: Absolutely? Samira I met as the author of A Hard
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Day's Night, part of the British Film Institute's Film Classics series.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: David Jansen plays the young truant who meets Ringo during
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: one of the film's most memorable sequences. What insights did
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: he share about working with the Beatles and Richard Lester.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was such a joy to talk to David Jansen,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: who he realized is one of the few members of
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the original Casters still around because he was ten years
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: old at the time and now he's in his seventies,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: and one of the things is he was quite an
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: o experienced actor. He had been in the stage production
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: of Oliver for about a year and he'd done a
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: lot of television, so he turned up with his own
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: clothes on the shoot. He hadn't realized that Ringo was
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: incredibly hungover. It comes straight from an all nighter. I
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: love the way the Beatles. We talk about burning the
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: candle at both ends, and they did that a lot.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: So they cut back a lot of the dialogue that
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: they had scripted for Ringo, and the dialogue was written
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to be learned in short bursts. They didn't expect the
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: Beatles to be learning pages and pages. They would learn
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: it on the day. Do the scene, move on to
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: the next scene. So they cut that right back, and
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: he described beat you to me the way that they
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: improvised with the fiddling with the camera. They're walking alongside
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: each other, which wasn't the original plan, riginal plan where
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: they stood and looked at each other and talked to
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: each other. But the reason that suit still works is
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: something very modern. Isn't there about two men who can't
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: quite communicate, and so it's like driving along next door
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: to each other in a car, isn't it, And you
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: talk to your son without looking at him, and you
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: can share things if you're not looking at each other
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: in the eye. I also love the fact that there's
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: something very poetic about Ringo essentially encountering his childhood's self,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: because he had in real life played Truant as a
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: child on the shores of the River Mersey, as captured
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: in the lyrics of the Glass Onion. So all there
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: are all these echoes underneath, whether you know or didn't
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: know this stuff that comes into that. And though I
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it because I won't be able
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: to read the book, I was shocked to realis David
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: Jensen that he was supposed to be in another scene
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: later on in the film, And that's one of the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: possibly the only era of judgment I would argue that
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: Richard Lester made, which is failing to have that return
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: of his character, which would have had a lovely symmetry
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: to it when he was sposed to turn up again,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: and David explained how and why it was that he
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: wasn't included in that scene.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: You suggest that Victor Spinetti's frantic TV director was inspired
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: by the BBC producer that Lester observed that day. Talk
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: about that and how much of a hard day's night
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: is rooted in those real moments that he witnessed firsthand.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so there's such a lovely role an rich
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: fix Spietti who plays this very uptight, concerned director who
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't really understand pop music but is very very anxious
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: about it all going horribly wrong and.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Then the band not turning up. Richard Lester said two things.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: One was that it was supposed to be a sort
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: of exaggerated version of himself because Richard Lester spent ten
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: years in television. He directed hundreds and hundreds of light
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: TV shows, a lot of the mistakes like Grandfather coming
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: up through the trapdoor with stuff that he'd witnessed, so
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: he's working in all these jokes about how television works.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: When Richard Lester got the job and was just definitively
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: going to be working on the film, he went along
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: see the Beatles in action and meet them. And it
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: was at a theater in London where they were supposed
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: to be for a show, and there was complete chaos
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: and the Beatles turned up late. They were very good
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: humored through it all the way that they always were.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: But the director of this TV special was the BBC
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: director was absolutely frantic and tearing his hair out with
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the kind of anxiety. So when Richard left a witness
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: doll that he thought, this is all part of the story,
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: isn't it that everyone around them is kind of caught
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: up in the anxiety of it. And one of the
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: things I subsequently found, which I quoted the book, is
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: you know, there were a lot of other TV shows
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: that they did, and there was a great TV appearance
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: they've done in nineteen sixty three. Again it was a
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: live show, which is what the scene in this is
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: supposed to be, supposed to be a live broadcast concert
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: on television, and the director of it had had to
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: write a big explanation to the head of his department
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: about why it have been such a disaster because no
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: one could hear anybody else. The Beatles were seeing out
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: of tune because they couldn't hear themselves over the screaming.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: The cameras were always on the wrong shot because they
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: didn't have any direction because they couldn't hehar the director.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: And so I love the fact that this film in
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: a sense is an artifice because when the content happens
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: like spoilering, like the concert goes beautifully. But of course
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: when they shot these sequences for the feature film, the
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Beatles were actually miming in a theater full of screaming
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: fans rather than playing live. So there is an artifice
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: in conveying the controlled chaos of it.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: And I like that.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: You know, in the end, the film looks good because
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Richard Lesson, you went to fake stuff and went to
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: do stuff for real. And I did interview two of
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: the girls who are in that constant sequence. He was
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: screaming along, so that was quite insightful as well.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: He's the most valuable player I think here of all
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: the decisions he's made and the things that he did
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: to make this movie stand up so well over time.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean I particularly appreciate it. I think
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that I learned was how
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: he had made this one of a successful by using
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: television techniques. So in live TV, you have multiple cameras
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: on the act and you cut between them live from
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: the director's booth. In cinema usually you have maybe one
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: or two cameras and those is probably just one and
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: you shoot the same sequence repeatedly, and instead he just
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: got all the best camera when he could the time
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: there was a lull in the British film and it's
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: just they got the top camera operators in the UK
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: and they just because they knew they wouldn't be able
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: to hear anything of the screaming, they said, just shoot
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: and shoot and shoot when the Beatles are playing whatever
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: you like, and then they compose the whole film in
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the edit. So part of the frenzy of that concert
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: sequence is sometimes you see a camera and it starts
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: like it's on ringos face and it's only zooms at
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: high speed across the theater to catch and it jiggles
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: around looking for a place to land. And those were
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: not moves that were shot to be included in the edit.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: They were shot just to find the next good thing.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: And then the idea is that you know you could then,
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: but Richard Lester thought, no, I can use some of
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: that that gives. So you know, he uses the stuff
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: that you're not supposed to see to help convey the energy.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: And again we take it for granted.
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: Now we have all those reality style comedy shows like
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: The Office, where you know it's there's a camera crew
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and that pulls the focus or it zooms around to
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: catch someone just off the edge. I mean, Richard left
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: arkadly invented all those formats. There's a sitcom feel to
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: this that is fifty years ahead of its time.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: Wow. Never even thought about that as well. Yeah, so
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: you argue that the story of women in a hard
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: day's night is much richer than the stereotype of just
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: screaming girls. What do modern audiences miss when they reduce
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: speedlemania to that single image.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Well, for a start, they're patronizing, and I think it's
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: very interesting that whenever pop bands or pop stars have
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: big female fan followings, they always dismissed. So David Bowie's
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: teenage girls often excluded from the story of his fame,
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: and they're a huge part of his story, And in fact,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I made a documentary about them called I Dressed Siggy Stardust,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: which pointed out that, you know a lot of his
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: early fans were the teenage girls who influenced his dress
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: and so on, and the Beatles as well. Everything was
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: just produced to all those streaming girls. Now, they're obviously
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: a big part of it. But one thing, and the photographs.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: What book is full of photographs. There are a lot
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: of boys in the audience screaming along too, which I
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: think is interesting. But if you look at the world
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that the Beatles moved through, you know, through the TV
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: studio and through the news conference, and in the hotels
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and so on, in the nightclubs where they try to escape,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: they're encountering adult women of their own generation are a
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: little bit older, sophisticated city women who are in nightclubs
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: with their boyfriends or working in an advertising agency or
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: assistant directors. And I like the idea of it capturing
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: this changing world of work where women's opportunities were opening
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: up in a big way. And of course it started
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: to be reflected in the Beatles songwriting, where they're encountering,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you know, rather than just writing the songs which were
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: written to a kind of fifties formula, a bit brill
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: building style about you know, I want to hold your
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: hand and she loves you. It's not to write songs
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: like you won't see Me or Norwegian Wood I once
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: had a girl, or should I say she once had me?
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: You know, songs that you are more about women who
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: aren't at the beck and call of their men, and
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I feel all that transition is going on in this film.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: And I love that I was able to identify one
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: of the girls in the nightclub who's a really famous
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: fashion design in Britain called Adina Ronne. And she's in
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: the scene where she's got a long blonde hair and
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: she's drinking glass of wine. John Lennon's talking to her,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and she's sitting with what's presumably her boyfriend, and if
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: you look carefully, her lovely leather booted leg is erotically
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: cupped by her boyfriend's holding her foot in his hand.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: A chat.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: It's such a love little and that's one of the
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: photograph that put in the book. And I loved just
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: taking them time to revel in actually what interesting women
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: characters are in this film. They're not in it for
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: very long. And there's Anna Quail, the theatrical figure that
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: John Lena bumps into in the theater goes. I think
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: she knows him, but she can't quite place him. You know,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: these lovely little cameos. They're so rich, aren't they, And
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: they just they give you a sense of there's so
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: much more to it. The one thing that I think
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: is a shame and it is and it's not you know,
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: Richard Lester was deliberately being sexist. But I think it's
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: a shame that the school girls on the train were
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: a little bit you know, finger in mouth like Toddler's
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: and I know that, you know George Mett's wife, Patty Boyd,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: you know, and so there's a lovely meat cute there.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: But I thought it was a shame that that's the
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: that's kind of image that I think is dated a
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: little bit. And similarly, there's a woman in the nightclub
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: who incidentally is the bond girl that you see in
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: the title sequets to Goldfinger, with all the title sequence
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: is projected onto her bikini clad body, Margaret Nolan. But
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: she plays a kind of comedy big busted because you know,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: woman in the casino who has no lines of dialogue.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: And I think some of those that's to do with
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the script. I mean, there was a whole scene that
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: was cut Eric which was quite sexist, and you know,
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: I think on the whole they had a good eye
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: for not they, but the producers around them had a
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: good eye for what would and wouldn't work the film.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: That's no, it's not mean spirited. And the other thing
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted to mention is that there was a whole
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: scene that was written for Ringo which is quite racist.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: It would have had him going into a shop and
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I've got the original scripts and talked about a quote
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: typical Jewish proprietor and trying to make a sale that
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: would fool a load of black sailors. And the Beatles
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: ever got to see that scene. I mean, the producer
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: bad Nstein just saw it and just said, no way,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: that's racist. And so you know, there were some really
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: good instincts and the decision makers around the Beatles as
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: well as they themselves be of course, very passionately anti racist,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: which meant this film has not dated in the ways
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: that a lot of other films have.
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: That's what I was about to ask, is a lot
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: of nineteen sixties films of age poorly in terms of
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: race and gender. But maybe those decisions are why it's
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: largely of did that fee?
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: I think there's two factors. I think one factor is
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: that Brian Epstein, like a lot of managers at the time,
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: wanted to keep romance plots out of the film, and
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: so it means that you don't have female characters doing,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's such a big role that they
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: might be then written in a stereotypical way, which I
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: think helps. But the other factor is that I think
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Richard Lester's background in comedy means that the women in
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: the film are there sometimes little comedy moments, you know.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: So the secretary in the advertising agency who's appraising George
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: Harrison for an advertising gig, not quite realizing he's the
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: real thing, you know. It's quite a sophisticated form of comedy,
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: you know, and it's I think that's what he brought.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: And if you look at I mean it's a great
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: show that Richard Lester made with Spike Milligan, called a
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: show called Fred, and there was a sequel that called
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Son of Fred. Made us far back as the nineteen
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: fifty six, so only a year or so after independent
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: television began in the UK, offering some competition with the BBC.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: And it's astounding how many interesting female characters there are,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: how surreal it is. Piece Sellers is in it as well.
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: It breaks the fourth wall. It's that sense of, you know,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: women can be just interesting comedy character types rather than stereotypes.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And I think that's why this film works in that sense,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: it doesn't have just doesn't have the dated opinions that
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: we're still at large.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Then you know, find the bookdown Rock website at booked
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: on Rock dot com. There you can find all the
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: back episodes of the show, the latest episode in video
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: and audio, links to all of the platforms where you
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: can listen to the podcast, plus all the social media
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: platforms were on Blue Sky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and x.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: Also check out the Booked on Rock blog, find your
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: local independent bookstore, find out all the latest hot rock
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: book releases, and before you go, check out the Booked
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: on Rock online store, pick up some Booked on Rock merch.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: It's all at booked on Rock dot com. Reading the
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: letter by BBC TV director Barney Colehan, I think that's
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: pronunciation cole hand. It sounds as though Beatlemania created technical
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: problems television simply wasn't prepared for at that time. How
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: did Richard Lester overcome those challenges in a hard day's night.
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: Well, that's the director I was thinking of when I
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: talked earlier about how they shot the constant sequences very practically.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Richard Lester knew that although he was trying to create
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: the idea that they're doing a live TV broadcast.
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: He was very practical.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: About how he shot it, so the Beatles mind those
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: songs repeatedly in that theater. They shot over the course
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: of the whole day with that crowd. Richard Lester moved
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: that audience around. So although there's the stalls and there
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: are two circles and balconies, he either filled the stalls
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: or he filled the upper circles. And if you watch
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: the film carefully, you can see moments where one section
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: is actually black.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: It gets blacked out and it's not lit, so the
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: emphasis is somewhere else.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: So he took the time over the course of a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: day to capture what looked like of a live gig,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: but shot it really carefully, and I think that's the key.
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: A young Phil Collins one of the children in the
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: audience during the concert filming. Did you uncover any interesting
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: stories of out Phil's day on a Hard Day's Night
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: that maybe didn't make it into the book?
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: No, I mean Phil Collins had narrated some of the
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: DVD extras for A Hard Days Night at its fiftieth
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: anniversary release, I think, or even earlier. So I'd watched
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: that back and he actually had. I don't think it has
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: many memories of the other and they're just being overwhelmed.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: The other future pop star, of course, was in the
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: audience was Linda Lewis, who did a singer a lot
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: with the likes of David Bowie and stuff as well.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: So I love that there are two future pop stars
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: in that audience, and then a different kind of musical
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: style you could argue is someone I met through social media.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Her mother was in the opera scene. There's a scene
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: where they're rehearsing for a clip from Deflator Mouse by
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: Strauss and the grandfather suddenly comes up through the trap
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: door in it, and they recruited these singers from the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Royal College of Music at Central London, and someone had
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: just gone around the canteen and said, you want to
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: be in this film for shooting it twicken in studios,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: it's ten pounds, it's quite a lot of money. And
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: they all had to learn a few bars of Deflator
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Bus and they came delivered it. And that was one
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: of the lovely stories because this woman said she didn't
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: want to give her name for some reason. She wanted to
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: not be named in the book. I don't know why,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: but she talked about going to the canteen. They filmed this,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: took them studios with a couple of the other singers,
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: and they were still in their kind of durandal, you know,
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: sort of German rustic peasant costumes, and they went out
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: to Paul McCartney's for an autograph. Of course, Paul McCartney
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: had studied, you know, English literature at a level which
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: is the kind of senior school qualification, and he started
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: to quote Tennison at them, do you come from Haunts
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: of Coot and Hern which is quite a famous poem
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: that was widely taught in schools at the time. And
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: she remembered that, and I love these little insights into
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: you know.
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: There was all.
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, the thing that really comes across about the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Beatles is they were all really smart. And Ringo probably
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: had the least schooling of them all, but the other
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: three were all grammar school boys. They were all quick witted.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: As you discussed, you know, Ringo came up with this
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: ringoism of a hard day's night, and you came up
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: with eight days a week and all these kinds of phrases,
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: so you know, they were all quick verbally, and they
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: had a huge range of interest in kind of they
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: were interested in classical music and pop music and and
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: anything that was going in poetry and all of that,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: and television and film and all of those references are
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: kind of the present, aren't they. In the way that
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: the Beatles interact with each other and their fans.
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: That's how they were able to handle the press too
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: quick questions because they had a bunch of questions getting
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: thrown at him, and so they were able to be
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: witty and not be able to say anything that's going
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: to get him in hot water. Were the exception of
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: you know that Lenin famous Lenin moment, you know, the
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: bigger than Jesus moment. But otherwise they had those funny comebacks.
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: Can I just say about that? I mean, I don't
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: know how you feel watching it back. And British journals
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: could be just as inane, But there was something about
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: the way those America that American press call didn't seem
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: to get the Beetles at all and asked such inane questions.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: And I thought the Beatles were really smart. They didn't
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: just say that's a stupid question. They just batted it
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: back with, you know, with their quick wit, and they
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: made I think they made the press fall in love
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: with them, because they didn't mock the press exactly, but
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: they laughed.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: They laughed at them.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, at first they just thought, who are these
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: these kids with the strange haircuts from the UK? You know,
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: they didn't know what to think at the time, And yeah,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: they just they fell in love with them.
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: Okay, what's one other thing?
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: Just was an American insight. So the future Olivia Harrison,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: of course, was a teenager in California at the time
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: this film came out. I had interviewed her at at
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the launcher of the Beatles sixty four documentary, which came
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: out a couple of years ago on Disney Plus, and
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: she talked about the importance of the Beatles hair, which
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: is of course captured in such glory in this film
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: up closed a lot of the time. But she said,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: how you know, being a high school teenager and you
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: never saw her like that, you know, everyone had the
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: preppy look or they were sporty jocks, and that it
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: was a real shocking thing to see young men with
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: such lovely hair, and that it freaked out a lot
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: of American men, both teenage boys themselves and their dads.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: I don't know what your memories are.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean your father has told me. Right,
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, it's before my time, but sure,
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: I remember. No, that's okay. My mom and dad talked
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: about that. How Yeah, they that was kind of it
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: was a culture show. It wasn't something anybody had been
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: prepared for. But what's interesting here about in the States
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: is during that time, it was like this welcomed relief
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: or outlet for teenagers here in the States after the
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: John F. Kennedy assassination. You know, That's what you know,
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: my parents have talked about, and other people from that generation,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: like man, they just kids needed somewhere to release that
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: all that pent up sadness and frustrations over the changing times,
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: and it was like they just came along at just
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: the right time, you know.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: And I'm fascinated by the fact that the Beatles had
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: signed the contract to make this film in October sixty three,
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: but by the time they start shooting it in March
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: sixty four, they've already been on Ed Sullivan and they
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: have become the biggest band in the world. And somehow
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: they're still shooting on the streets of London without any
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: big security or anything, you know, And as I mentioned
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: once or twice in the place, we turn up and
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: saying I'm sorry, you're not alatitude on the streets day
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: because it's dangerous. They would improvise it, go inside the theater,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: and they shot the press conference sequence a couple of
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: days earlier than planned, just improvising, and they managed to
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: bring up people to come play it being the journalists
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: and wrote and journalists had turned out to watch the shoot.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: But the fact that the Beatles are already the biggest
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: thing in the world and they're shooting a film just
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: on the streets, and also crucially, they're still enjoying it.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: They're not, even though they are trapped by the fame,
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the joy they have when they're performing for each other,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: you're right, and even when they're running from crowds, the
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: way that they laugh and they look at each other,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: you can tell it's still joyful for them. And I
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: think within a year that's all changed, hasn't it.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: But within a couple of years, yeah, then it just
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: becomes just unbearable. They stopped touring because they know they
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: didn't feel anybody was taking their music seriously, just screaming
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: fans wherever they played, and that's why they stopped touring.
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: But John later admitted that he was the band was
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: worried that their old friends from Liverpool might think they
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: sold out. But despite all those worries, two hundred thousand
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: people turned out for the Liverpool reception. Was that the
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: more that the Beatles realized they hadn't lost Liverpool after all.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's something that's a really astute observation.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: They were more worried about going to Liverpool for the
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Northern premiere than they were about the original world premiere
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: in front of Princess Margaret in London because being from
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: Liverpool going back home and being you know, they were worried,
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: as I quote John in the book, are saying that
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: you know that they had somehow they had become too clean,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: they'd kind of sold out in a way, and he's
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: argues that we sort of had. And there's great news footage,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: The original newsual footage that were shot by Grenada Television
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: is available at the BFI Archives. I went and watched
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: a lot of this footage, and you know, you can
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: tell they just they're just so touched by the crowd.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: There's two great stories, one of which is of course
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: John doing one of his notorious Hitler salutes. Not because
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: I think he was, you know, thinking of himself as
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: Hitler any more than he thought of himself as Usus Christ.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: But I mean, partly it was just a trope at
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: the time all British school boys were obsessed with World
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: War Two. But also there's something about these adulation, the
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: adulation of these crowds, and I think he's got a
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: kind of ironic distance from it, like why these so
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: many hundreds of thousands of people turning up to waive
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: at me? You know, it's seen madness. But the other
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: story that I've learned since writing the books, it might
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: go to second edition is Michael Palin, of course, was
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: a very good friend.
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: Of George Harrison.
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: George Harrison's big supporter of the Python, and that's part
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: of the subsequent story of A Hard Day's Night is
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: you know how they all went on to pursue film
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: in different ways. And I didn't realize that George Harrison
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: had stolen the trun should belonging to the Chief Police
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Constable of Merseyside Police on that Northern premiere in Liverpool
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and he kept it all those years, And at some
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: point in the nineteen eighty I was reading Michael Palin's
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: diaries from that decade quite recently, and one day for
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: his birthday, George Harrison just gave him the truncheon that
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: he had stolen from the premier.
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: He was quite a rule breaker with George.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: People think it was John, but I think George is
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: the one who's really the most anti authority, and I
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: love that he just lifted the truncheon and kept it
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: as a souvenir.
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: We know they captured the minds and hearts of the
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: youth in the UK and the States. But what's interesting
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: is that many older critics were pleasantly surprised by the film.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Why did A Hard Day's Night win over so many
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: reviewers who might have been expected to dismiss a Beatles movie.
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that really surprised me.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I went through all the old press cuttings, and almost universally,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: with the exception of the Financial Times reviewer and ironically
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: Sight and Sound, which is the kind of siniesques magazine,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: people loved them. And I think it was partly a
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: lot of these reviewers were relatively speaking Middle Ages and
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: were probably in their late thirties or forties. They hadn't
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: known what to expect, and they were charmed by the
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: fact the Beatles were really interesting, charismatic people.
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: I mean, like Elvis.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: This is one of the biggest things that emerges from
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: watching the Beatles on film. They have a natural charisma
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: and charm. And I know Elvis's films weren't all that good,
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: but he's always watchable and he's always wonderful in everything.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: As far as I'm concerned, the Beatles were like that.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: They were themselves, and they had a warmth that just
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: came through the camera. And these critics got to work out,
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: like they would say in the reviews, oh I can
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: tell them apart now they noticed how much came naturally
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: to them. They can made comparisons to the Marx Brothers
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: or Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin. You know, this was
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: high praise at a time when those filmmakers were being
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: were highly regarded, and and even in Germany where you
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: know the spiel magazine, which you know you thought how
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: to cope with the translation, they talked about that it's
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: a treat for sinyasts, so I think they surprised everyone,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: and they also particularly their their magnetism, and there's an
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: animal sexuality, even though it's slightly diluted by the comedy
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: that surrounds them in this film. Some of the critics
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: comparing them to other British pop stars as a pop
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: starck called Cliff Richard who whose music whose musicality was
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: quite an influence on them, and Hank Marvin and the
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: guitar playing in this band, the Shadows was a big
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: influence on on the guitar playing of the Beatles, and
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: he'd been considered a big heart drop up until this point,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: but he suddenly looks like nothing compared to the energy
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: of the Beatles, and.
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: That the next thing.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: I know, And I don't know how what you made
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of that section in the book, because it's he never
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: made it in America, although he made a couple of
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: big films that had very much an American audience in mind,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: particularly Summer Holiday, which was the second film that came
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: out a year before Hard Day's Night. But it was
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: ironic that those films were made to an American formula
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: to try and break through in America, and they don't work.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Whereas the film that The beatlesmaker Hard Day's Night is
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: deliberately a black and white. It's an art house film.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: It looks like the French nouvelle varg you know, it
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: doesn't quite make sense. There's no love interest. It breaks
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: all the rules. They don't even speak in you know,
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: recognizable Southern English and posh English. You know, the American
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the Americans is all. The first screening of it at
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Billy Wilder's house said you're going to redub this, surely
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: And they didn't.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: You know if you didn't understand it while you just
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: got carried on on by their charm. I mean that's
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: These are all reasons why the film has endured, because
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: it dared to be completely original, and originality is always
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: what endures, isn't it.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that's why did joined the book by observing
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: that while we grow older, the Beatles, you know, A
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: Hard Day's Night never do. Why do you think those
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: four young men still have What do you think they
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: have to say to audiences in twenty twenty six.
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: I think they speak of the joy of camaraderie and friendship,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: of sticking up for each other, about living in the moment,
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: and about celebrating doing what you do really well. They
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: were great musicians and they that songwriting, that sense of
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: the performance of doing their music to the best their abilities.
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: That's hugely inspiring for us all, isn't it?
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: Final question? If you could sit down with John, Paul,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: George and Ringo today, ask them one question about a
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: hard day's night, what would it be.
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: It's tricky because I have sat down with Paul mccartner.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I interviewed him for a couple of hours for his
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: book Lauge, and the thing is, I don't know how
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: much they would remember because it was just one It
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: was a period a few weeks in the whorld of
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: their life. I suppose, I would argue, is if they
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: watched the film again, you know, are they how do
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: they feel about it now? Because I think at the
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: time they liked it, they wanted to make more films.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: But over the time, I think they're worried that it
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: caught them in an aspect in a way, the cliche
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: of the sort of the mop tops, and of course
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: they moved on so quickly from that. So I'd like
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: them to watch it afresh and then tell me, now,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: can you see why this will listen Jed.
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for checking out the Booked on Rock podcast.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: If you've just found the podcast, welcome. If you've been listening,
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for your support, and make sure
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: you tell a friend, a family member, share on social
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: media and let people know about Booked on Rock. And
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: if you do like the podcast, make sure you subscribe
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: give a five star review. Wherever you listen to the
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: bookd on Rock podcast, We're on Amazon, Apple, iHeart, Spotify, Spreaker,
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: tune in in on YouTube music. You can check out
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: the full episodes on video, along with video highlights from
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: episodes on the bookdown Rock YouTube channel. Find it at
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back to
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: the show. The book is titled The Hard Day's Night.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: It's part of the British Film Institute's Film Classics series.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: It's out now. Find out where her books are sold.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: Look for at your nearest bookstore. Go to book down
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Rock dot com to find your nearest independent bookstore. Where
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: can people find you online?
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: Samarra, I've got a blog called Samera Armored dot Blog.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I should say I am not the same Samera Armored
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: as a great Chicago based writer Samra Armed who's a
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: young adult writer. But she's a friend of mine, you know,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: I like and I have interview that she's brilliant, but
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: she wrote books like this book Won't Burn and Hollow Fires.
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: But she's a different smera armored to me. We often
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: get each other's emails, which is quite entertaining, but that's
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm also on on Blue Sky and X at
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: Samira Armored UK. And I should say there's also an
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: audiobook of this which you might enjoy all.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Right, well, as usually I always put the links to
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: all of those in the show notes so people can
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: find you and reach out to you.
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And can I mention one other thing, which is I
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: have a podcast called Through the Square Window where every
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: month me and my co host we look at vintage
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: TV shows from a month of a year, so we
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: did nineteen eighty seven.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Recently we looked at Moonlighting, for example.
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I have to subscribe a bit like with this book,
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: you look through something from the path through the prism
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: of what was going on at the time, what's the
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: social history moment, but also how does it look today?
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Can we see the start of something or do we
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: see something that has dated and is obsolete, like an.
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm literally subscribing right now before I let you go.
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: What's the name.
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: Of it again? Through the square window.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Through the square window. I am a TV fanatic. Are
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: we talking about? Is it Moonlighting with Bruce Willis?
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: Are we talking about?
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: And simple Shepherd.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Watch it every week with my dad. That was a
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: must watch.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: We looked at the first episode of Twin Peaks for example.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: My god that that show holds up.
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, fantastic. Okay, I'm subscribing. Always looking for new podcasts. Okay, great, Samira,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: thank you, fantastic book. I hope you do a sequel.
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: If you do, come back on we'll talk about it.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: I will I would love to and thank you so
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: much for having me on. It's a reel through.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: It's in the books.