I was listening to Abbey Road yesterday, and an amusing thought came to mind: if The Beatles hadn't existed, could a screenwriter make a successful elevator pitch to a film producer (let's call him Mr. Smith) to sell the unlikely story of the Beatles?
It's doubtful; the story of The Beatles defies plausibility. The countless layers (a glass onion's worth, at least!) that make up their deliciously complex story would leave audiences shaking their heads, That could never happen, they would say.
Wikipedia, the Internet's version of the elevator pitch gives us a concise definition of The Beatles: The Beatles were a rock group from Liverpool, England. Well that's not going to sell the film.
The reality is that the screenwriter would have to find Mr. Smith in a skyscraper elevator and, when Mr. Smith isn't looking, push all of the buttons for all of the floors in the skyscraper just to scratch the surface of the story of the Beatles ...sort of.
It might go like this:
Hold the door, Mr. Smith! I know you're a film producer and I wrote a screenplay about the greatest rock group in the world, an impossible story, really, John, Paul, George and Ringo are four young men from (elevator ding) Liverpool, England, each one of them is an amazing musician, three of them are fabulous songwriters, and together they make music that will change the (elevator ding) world. They hone their craft performing ten-hour sets at a (elevator ding) strip club in Hamburg, Germany. They have long hair and they make teenage girls faint and (elevator ding) scream (well, not in that order). Screaming girls make them stop playing concerts and then they make their best music in the studio, John declares they are more popular than, (elevator ding) Jesus. They experiment with world instruments and recording techniques, and drugs, lots of drugs., Bob Dylan gives them (elevator ding) pot and their dentist gives them LSD, they dress up as Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, they fight a lot about money and creative differences and a woman named (elevator ding) Yoko, but they keep making chart-busting cutting-edge music, including songs about a woman who leaves her face in a jar by the door, newspaper taxis, yellow submarines, a racoon named Rocky, and even an octopus who has his own (elevator ding) garden. They keep fighting. They break up and go their separate ways. Quite a story, don't you (elevator ding) think? Oh, are you getting off here? OK, we'll be in touch!
Maybe there's something to be said for the Wikipedia version.
Let's see if we can fix that with a different elevator pitch for a different story; a story that tells the tale of how The Beatles can build and sustain trans-generational love between siblings.
Paul is the youngest of seven kids. Laurie is the oldest. There's a 14-year age gap between them. When Laurie was starting college, Paul was starting preschool, so the two siblings shared the same roof for only four years. While Paul was learning how to read, how to tell time, how to add 1+1, Laurie was raising her children with her husband, Art, sixty miles away from her baby brother.
Their siblings often call them "bookends" because they are the oldest and youngest, and because they both enjoyed long careers as teachers. Bookends, of course, hold books, and they are both voracious readers. But the similarities between Laurie and Paul don't stop there. They also share a love of the Beatles that fills in the gaps left by time and geography. The Beatles have that power.
Laurie is obviously the one who lived Beatlemania; Paul was still in diapers when Revolver was released, and that, Mr. Smith is the crux of this screenplay: how does a teenage girl from the 60s end up finding common ground with her baby brother when she's the one who lived and loved the fab four in real time? The answer, Mr. Smith is the title of this screenplay, Tomorrow Never Knows. Growing up in the 70s, Paul heard The Beatles here, there, and everywhere. Paul grew to love their music and the story of The Beatles. And decades later, Paul, Laurie and Art make a pilgrimage to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for a special Beatles exhibit.
My favorite scene is where we see that Laurie is responsible for Paul's name. Their parents wanted to name him Phil, but Laurie was madly in love with Paul McCartney, so she insisted that their parents name him Paul. It's a good thing that Laurie wasn't in love with Ringo, or his life as Ringo McDowell would have been very different, indeed.
The story doesn't end there... in fact the story doesn't end. It's a long and winding road but the bookends keep growing in their love for each other and for The Beatles.
Music: “In My Life” by The Beatles
