BEFORE: All four Beatles again carry over from "The Beatles: In the Life". I really was sort of dead-set against watching this one, but as I'll explain tomorrow, I'm trying to accomplish something here that's synched up with the calendar - there's one particular film I want to watch on a specific date, and also I have to think about what movie is going to be watched at the next century mark, Movie #5,100. My actions this week will determine that - and plus I have this film, I put it on a DVD with "The Beatles: In the LIfe" and "John and Yoko: Above Us Only Sky". For some reason I thought that would create a trilogy that worked narratively, but now it just seems really morbid of me. Mea culpa, which is Latin for "my bad".
THE PLOT: A dramatic psychoanalysis and step-by-step breakdown behind one of the most shocking and senseless crimes the world has ever witnessed.
AFTER: It's not just morbid to make a film about the killing of John Lennon, it's also in poor taste. Really, if this is how you make money, by slapping together true crime docs to either fill up an hour on Fuse Music or turn on all the fans of this genre out there, and I hope to God there are only a few, you really should take a good, hard look at yourself. Surely there must be a better way for you to earn your money, talking to you, Jordan Hill. And shame on Fuse Music for airing this, too, it can only lead to bad things like entertaining the wrong people or giving the other wrong people bad ideas about maybe killing a different music legend. Just saying, if that possibility exists you really have a solemn duty to NOT make or air something like this.
Also, it gives a voice to Lennon's killer, who should by all rights be silenced forever, I don't care if he admits he was crazy then or admits he's crazy now, he's given up his right to talking about this act by committing this act. He needs to remain locked up so that nobody ever hears from him again, because any time spent listening to him could be better devoted to listening to Lennon's music, either solo or with the Beatles. Right?
I don't need the details about what happened that day, you don't need the details, nobody really does. How does that enlighten or entertain us in any fashion? If it does, it shouldn't. People who wanted to interview Charles Manson maybe had good intentions, they wanted to try to understand why he did what he did or told other people to do. But again, what good can come of that? You can't understand crazy, so don't even bother trying. Lennon's killer thought that he would somehow become or replace Lennon by killing him - but that's not how things work, plus he had no musical talent whatsover, he was just delusional.
True, Lennon was basically canonized after the fact, none of his fans held anything against him, not his fights with the other Beatles and not his "year-off" from Yoko when he was running around L.A. with May Pang. What does it matter if he went back to his wife and they then had a son together? All debts are paid in death, we'd like to think all sins are forgiven, too, but I'm not that religious any more. All of our decisions have repercussions, it's just that some are blatantly obvious and others are open to interpretation. I could just as easily surmise that if Yoko hadn't come to that Elton John concert and if she hadn't sent him those flowers, maybe they would not have gotten back together, and they wouldn't have moved into the Dakota, and he wouldn't have been killed outside it. But that's all idle speculation, isn't it?
We can't see the big picture of all the possible timelines, things that could have happened but didn't, things that would have happened differently, the ripples that changing one thing would cause in the cosmic lake. There was that movie "Yesterday" that showed a world without the Beatles, and the one man who did remember the songs became a pop idol, with a little help from his Beatle friends, and late in the film he tracked down the John Lennon of that timeline, and he was leading a very different life than the one we're familiar with.
Anyway, if you should encounter this film and you choose not to watch it, you can feel confident that you made the right choice. There are other egregious things about this doc other than its existence, like really it only contains about 10 minutes of useful information, and the rest is all filler and time-killer. There are some interview conversations that are shown TWICE, which is a very bad thing for a documentary to do, I'm not sure if they just didn't have enough material or they were desperately trying to fill up an hour of network time and they thought nobody would notice. Well, I did, and I caught you, and you suck.
Comparing the John Lennon killing to the JFK assassination in ANY way is also totally bogus - they have nothing at all in common, and if you think they do, then you don't understand them. There was no conspiracy within the State Department to kill Lennon because he'd outwitted them and found a way to get his green card after all the court cases about it. J. Edgar Hoover may not have liked Lennon, but he also died in 1972, 8 years before Lennon was killed. Just because there was no funeral and no murder trial does not mean there was anything shady happening behind the scenes.
Directed by Jordan Hill (director of "Elton John: Becoming Rocketman")
Also starring Christina Aguilera (last seen in "Shine a Light"), Lutz Bethge, Kelly Brook, Estelle, Sid Griffin (also carrying over from "The Beatles: In the Life"), Peter Hughes, Daniel W. Schwartz, with narration by Bryan J. Olson
and archive footage of Mark David Chapman, John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Beatles '64"), Jacqueline Kennedy (ditto), Richard Nixon (last seen in "What the Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?", Yoko Ono (also carrying over from "The Beatles: In the Life"), Elvis Presley (also last seen in "Beatles '64")
RATING: 2 out of 10 autographed album covers
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