http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8480358.stm
by Kev Geoghegan
24 February 2010
Lennon Naked will be the second film of the past 12 months to tackle
the subject of one of British music's most enduring and enigmatic
icons - John Lennon.
Nowhere Boy, the debut feature by artist Sam Taylor-Wood, portrayed
the precocious teenage Lennon before the Beatles and his complex
relationship with his domineering aunt and free-spirited mother.
The new BBC film, which stars former Doctor Who actor Christopher
Eccleston, shows Lennon at the opposite end of his career from 1967
to 1971, fame-weary and disillusioned with the very band that made his name.
The impact on Lennon of the death of the Beatles' manager, Brian
Epstein comes under the microscope as does his break-up with wife
Cynthia and his meeting with Yoko Ono and the subsequent period of
his life which resulted in his defining song, Imagine.
Lennon Naked has been based, in part, on an historic "jaw-droppingly
open" interview that Lennon gave to Rolling Stone editor Jan Wenner
in 1970. During the course of the interview, Lennon spoke at length
about the break-up of his band and his fractious relationship with
Paul McCartney.
"It's an extraordinarily revealing interview about Lennon's
character," says Lennon Naked director Ed Coulthard.
"He's very bitchy about The Beatles, he slags people off and it's
very bitter. He also says he knew he was a genius at the age of 12.
"It was that last comment that captured me, really. It got me
thinking about him and that late destructive period of his life."
Fan fears
The film is set to be one of the highlights of the BBC's summer
schedule and has Beatles fans salivating, if not also feeling a
little apprehensive.
"Fans have an image of John and the biggest fear that any Beatles fan
has, is that it doesn't capture what he was feeling at the time,"
says Ernie Sutton from the British Beatles Fan Club.
"If it gives the impression that John wasn't bothered about his
divorce from Cynthia or the break-up of the band and loss of Brian,
that would be a real let down.
"John had a caring side and was really quite thoughtful. If he comes
across as just an angry person then it won't give an accurate portrayal."
But Lennon Naked, at least according to the director, is not in the
classic rock biopic mould.
Rather than cramming Lennon's 40 years into a neat hour and a half,
the film centres on a specific period in his life.
But does this mean the film will avoid any number of dreaded rock
biopic cliches?
"I think that you've got to avoid the moments that we know about
already which will just seem really corny. That's why Nowhere Boy
really worked because it's his early years," says Radio 1 film
reviewer James King.
Lennon Naked shows Lennon telling the assembled Beatles the band is
finished, a potential narrative stumbling point which could easily
veer into melodrama. But Coulthard insists he should have avoided any.
"I think the two pitfalls are that you make a hagiography, that is
just a cardboard cut-out version of an artist's popular image or you
choose to tell a negative story," he says.
"The best films of this kind, and what I aspire to, is something in
between that has light and shade. It is three-dimensional and has
some complexity to it and gets you to a deeper sense of who this person was."
Twilight
Later on this year, Twilight star Kristen Stewart will be seen in the
role of 70s US rocker Joan Jett in the film The Runaways.
It premiered at the recent Sundance Film Festival in the US and has
garnered mixed critical reviews.
The casting of Stewart is almost certainly aimed at appealing to the
teen market.
However its focus is on the 35-year-old story of a band of whom most
teenagers will never have heard - a fault common to most rock biopics.
British actor Andy Serkis is currently Bafta-nominated for taking on
the colourful and controversial character of Ian Dury in Sex & Drugs
& Rock & Roll.
In the past few years, the stories of Joy Division's Ian Curtis,
Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Notorious BIG and Bobby Darin have all made
it to the screen with varied success.
There is the long-rumoured but "stuck-in-development" film on Jimi
Hendrix, at one time set to star Outkast's Andre 3000 in the title role.
Even Martin Scorsese is getting in on the act with a planned film on
Frank Sinatra.
Traditionally though, rock biopics have failed to set the
international box office alight.
The multi award-winning Walk The Line in 2005 is by the far the most
successful of recent years, making more than $186m (£118m) worldwide
- making it the exception rather than the rule.
But that did not prevent a savagely funny lampooning in the comedy
Walk Hard two years later.
Jamie Foxx picked up an Oscar for his portrayal of Ray Charles and
that film made more than $125m (£79m).
But last year's Notorious and even Oliver Stone's cult 1991 film The
Doors, starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison, struggled to match expectations.
And despite strong reviews for his performance as Bobby Darin, Kevin
Spacey's labour of love Beyond The Sea in 2004, struggled to make
$10m (£6.3m).
"I know the argument that they wouldn't get made if there wasn't an
appetite for them," says King.
"But looking at the box office takings for Sex & Drugs and Nowhere
Boy - which have both tanked - we're not quite as interested as
film-makers think we are."
--
Lennon Naked will be screened on BBC Four later this year.
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