Two of Us (2000 television)
Encyclopedia
Two of Us is a 2000 television drama
(and the third original VH1
film) which offers a dramatized account of April 24, 1976 (six years after the break-up of The Beatles
), the day in which Lorne Michaels
made a statement on Saturday Night Live
offering The Beatles $3,000 to reunite on his program.
It was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg
(who also directed the 1970 Beatles film, Let it Be
) and starred Jared Harris
as John Lennon
and Aidan Quinn
as Paul McCartney
. The Beatles historian, Martin Lewis, served as the film's technical advisor, and the screenplay was written by "longtime Beatles fan and Beatlefest attendee, Mark Stanfield."
The title of the film comes from the 1970 Beatles song, "Two of Us".
, who had booked many of the Beatles' historic American appearances in 1964-1966, published a full-page ad in the New York Times publicly requesting the group to reunite and offering millions of dollars. On April 24, 1976, Saturday Night Live
producer Lorne Michaels
parodied such offers with an on-air announcement that he would pay the Beatles $3000 if they would perform on his program together. He joked, "divide [the money] up any way you want. If you want to give less to Ringo
, that's up to you." John Lennon
discussed the Saturday Night Live episode, as well as his relationship with McCartney, in a September 1980 interview for Playboy
:
Paul McCartney
also remembered the event for an interview: "[John] said, 'We should go down there. We should go down now and just do it.' It was one of those moments where we said, 'Let's not and say we did.' "
The screenplay consists of a series of long conversations between John Lennon and Paul McCartney (while their wives, as well as other Beatles, are referred to, they do not appear in the production). The discussions between Lennon and McCartney explore a number of issues including the breakup of The Beatles and the difficulties that developed between them after Lennon married Yoko Ono
. According to Lindsay-Hogg, "most of the film [consists of] two men and four walls . . . you can't get more intimate than that."
Critic Kevin McDonough argues that, "in less talented hands, Two of Us, like any Beatles-reenactment movie, could have been an awful exercise in bad wigs and Liverpool accents. Instead, Lindsay-Hogg and first-time screen writer Mark Stanfield have created a small masterpiece, a variation on My Dinner With Andre
meets The Beatles."
Nanciann Cherry argues that, "[Harris and Quinn] are superb, capturing accents, mannerisms, and behavior of their two famous characters. More than a fine job of imitation, Harris and Quinn get beyond the trappings of fame and show us two men, former best friends, who have gone separate ways and no longer know how to recapture that friendship."
Critic Ed Bumgardner also notes that:
about his involvement with the film. Lindsay-Hogg stated that he became involved with the project because the screenplay,
Of the screenplay he further stated, "Mark Stanfield is a good writer and a Beatles fan who has a lot of knowledge [...] Some of that stuff was ad-libbed by the actors because they really got into this, but Mark also wrote characters instead of stereotypes or caricatures."
In another interview, Stanfield discussed the decision to create a fictionalized account of actual people: "I didn't give it a lot of thought. Certainly it's been done before, from Shakespeare through something like Melvin and Howard
. And, more recently, in films like Gods and Monsters
. Shakespeare in Love
, for that matter."
The film's Technical Advisor (and Beatles historian), Martin Lewis, conducted extensive research, drawing upon both his, as well as Michael Lindsay-Hogg's personal knowledge of The Beatles:
with actor Ian Hart
(who portrayed John Lennon in the 1994 film, Backbeat
). While there, he visited a number of places including McCartney's childhood home.
Jackie Spencer at www.beatleguides.com was tour guide in Liverpool that day, and was impressed by Aidan's commitment to the role.
Quinn discussed McCartney's reaction to the film in an April 18, 2004 interview: "Just after I finished the film, I went on holiday and Paul McCartney was staying at the same place. I met him and we became quite friendly. Later, he saw the film and fortunately he liked it. It would have been terrible if he'd hated it."
." Critic Jim DeRogatis notes that, "the movie was over before it struck me that the soundtrack was devoid of any Beatles songs [...] Such is our saturation in all things Beatles-related that their actual music isn't even missed in the movie. And maybe that should tell us something about getting back to what really matters in this group's legacy."
Critic Kevin Thompson further argues:
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
(and the third original VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
film) which offers a dramatized account of April 24, 1976 (six years after the break-up of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
), the day in which Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...
made a statement on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
offering The Beatles $3,000 to reunite on his program.
It was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Sir Michael Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 5th Baronet is a British television and stage director and an occasional writer and actor.-Background and early work:...
(who also directed the 1970 Beatles film, Let it Be
Let It Be (film)
Let It Be is a 1970 documentary film about The Beatles rehearsing and recording songs for the album Let It Be in January 1969. The film features an unannounced rooftop concert by the group, their last performance in public...
) and starred Jared Harris
Jared Harris
Jared Francis Harris is a British character actor, well known for playing the obnoxious Mac McGrath in the Adam Sandler film Mr. Deeds, and for his portrayal of Lane Pryce on the AMC series Mad Men.- Personal life :...
as John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
and Aidan Quinn
Aidan Quinn
-Early life:Quinn was born in Chicago, Illinois to Irish parents. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic and raised in Chicago and Rockford, Illinois, as well as in Dublin and Birr, County Offaly in Ireland. His mother, Teresa, was a homemaker, and his father, Michael Quinn, was a professor of...
as Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
. The Beatles historian, Martin Lewis, served as the film's technical advisor, and the screenplay was written by "longtime Beatles fan and Beatlefest attendee, Mark Stanfield."
The title of the film comes from the 1970 Beatles song, "Two of Us".
Historical background
There was great public demand for a Beatles reunion during the 1970s. For example, in September 1976, American promoter Sid BernsteinSid Bernstein
Sid Bernstein is an American music producer and promoter. Bernstein changed the American music scene in the 1960s by bringing The Rolling Stones, Herman's Hermits, The Moody Blues, The Kinks and The Beatles to America. He was the first impresario to organize rock concerts at sports stadiums.-...
, who had booked many of the Beatles' historic American appearances in 1964-1966, published a full-page ad in the New York Times publicly requesting the group to reunite and offering millions of dollars. On April 24, 1976, Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
producer Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels
Lorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...
parodied such offers with an on-air announcement that he would pay the Beatles $3000 if they would perform on his program together. He joked, "divide [the money] up any way you want. If you want to give less to Ringo
Ringo Starr
Richard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
, that's up to you." John Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
discussed the Saturday Night Live episode, as well as his relationship with McCartney, in a September 1980 interview for Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
:
Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
also remembered the event for an interview: "[John] said, 'We should go down there. We should go down now and just do it.' It was one of those moments where we said, 'Let's not and say we did.' "
Overview
Two of Us opens with the following introduction:The screenplay consists of a series of long conversations between John Lennon and Paul McCartney (while their wives, as well as other Beatles, are referred to, they do not appear in the production). The discussions between Lennon and McCartney explore a number of issues including the breakup of The Beatles and the difficulties that developed between them after Lennon married Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono
is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...
. According to Lindsay-Hogg, "most of the film [consists of] two men and four walls . . . you can't get more intimate than that."
Critic Kevin McDonough argues that, "in less talented hands, Two of Us, like any Beatles-reenactment movie, could have been an awful exercise in bad wigs and Liverpool accents. Instead, Lindsay-Hogg and first-time screen writer Mark Stanfield have created a small masterpiece, a variation on My Dinner With Andre
My Dinner with Andre
My Dinner with Andre is a 1981 film starring Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn, written by Gregory and Shawn, and directed by Louis Malle.-Plot:...
meets The Beatles."
Structure and characters
Critic David Bianculli likened Two of Us to a three-act play with the following structure:- Act I: "McCartney, on the New York leg of his world tour with his post-Beatles group WingsWings (band)Wings were a British-American rock group formed in 1971 by Paul McCartney, Denny Laine and Linda McCartney that remained active until 1981....
, arrives unannounced at Lennon's Dakota apartment at a time when Yoko is away; they exchange small talk and biting insults, consume some marijuana and eventually end up noodling around on the piano."
- Act II: "[McCartney and Lennon] don disguises, walk through Central Park and confront a few of their fans at a quiet little restaurant."
- Act III: "As the evening wears down, they watch Saturday Night Live together and, by chance, witness producer Lorne MichaelsLorne MichaelsLorne Michaels, CM is a Canadian-American television producer, writer, and comedian best known for creating and producing Saturday Night Live and producing the various film and TV projects that spun off from it.-Early life:...
offering the Beatles a laughably low sum - $3,000 - to reunite on his show. Impulsively, they toy with the idea of speeding to Rockefeller Center to perform a few songs that very night."
Nanciann Cherry argues that, "[Harris and Quinn] are superb, capturing accents, mannerisms, and behavior of their two famous characters. More than a fine job of imitation, Harris and Quinn get beyond the trappings of fame and show us two men, former best friends, who have gone separate ways and no longer know how to recapture that friendship."
Critic Ed Bumgardner also notes that:
- This conjured-up day-in-the-life meeting between Sir Paul and Saint John, a pretentious project ripe for disaster, is actually a thoughtful, well-developed character study that shouldn't embarrass either actor or the two men they so beautifully portray [...] Lindsay-Hogg's sharp eye for detail lends credence to the storyline. The period clothes and haircuts ring true, as do the dead-on scouse accents sported by Quinn and Harris as McCartney and Lennon.
Production
Jim DeRogatis interviewed director Michael Lindsay-HoggMichael Lindsay-Hogg
Sir Michael Edward Lindsay-Hogg, 5th Baronet is a British television and stage director and an occasional writer and actor.-Background and early work:...
about his involvement with the film. Lindsay-Hogg stated that he became involved with the project because the screenplay,
- wasn't so much about The Beatles. It was a very good script in which the agency of these two famous people and their story takes you somewhere deeper. To me, that's the nature of friendship: How we grow, how we grow up, and how things change. These boys knew each other when they were 16 and now they're 35 and they have to find a new truth. We all have our own relationships like that, whether they're matrimonial relationships or friendships.
Of the screenplay he further stated, "Mark Stanfield is a good writer and a Beatles fan who has a lot of knowledge [...] Some of that stuff was ad-libbed by the actors because they really got into this, but Mark also wrote characters instead of stereotypes or caricatures."
In another interview, Stanfield discussed the decision to create a fictionalized account of actual people: "I didn't give it a lot of thought. Certainly it's been done before, from Shakespeare through something like Melvin and Howard
Melvin and Howard
Melvin and Howard is a 1980 American comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Demme. The screenplay by Bo Goldman was inspired by real-life Utah service station owner Melvin Dummar, who was listed as the beneficiary of USD$156 million in a will allegedly handwritten by Howard Hughes that was...
. And, more recently, in films like Gods and Monsters
Gods and Monsters
Gods and Monsters is a 1998 drama film that recounts the last days of the life of troubled film director James Whale, whose homosexuality is a central theme. It stars Ian McKellen as Whale, along with Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, and David Dukes...
. Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 British-American comedy film directed by John Madden and written by Marc Norman and playwright Tom Stoppard....
, for that matter."
The film's Technical Advisor (and Beatles historian), Martin Lewis, conducted extensive research, drawing upon both his, as well as Michael Lindsay-Hogg's personal knowledge of The Beatles:
- I spent a lot of time working on the project. I dug up hours of film, video, TV and radio material of John and Paul - so that Aidan and Jared could immerse themselves in the characters they were portraying. Much of the material was rare. What I especially wanted to give them were tapes of John and Paul talking when they were not "on" - but being themselves - as they obviously would be when the two of them were together without others around. We also spent hours discussing their characters and the dynamic of their relationship [...] Aidan and Jared were incredibly hard-working. They took their work very seriously. Neither of them planned to be IMPERSONATING their characters. They wanted to capture the ESSENCE of them more than anything.
Paul McCartney
To further prepare for the role of Paul McCartney, Aidan Quinn traveled to LiverpoolLiverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
with actor Ian Hart
Ian Hart
Ian Hart is an English stage, television and film actor.-Early life:Hart, the grandson of Irish immigrants, was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. He is one of three siblings and was brought up in a Roman Catholic family...
(who portrayed John Lennon in the 1994 film, Backbeat
Backbeat (film)
Backbeat is a 1994 British-German drama film directed by Iain Softley. It chronicles the early days of The Beatles in Hamburg, Germany. The film focuses primarily on the relationship between Stuart Sutcliffe and John Lennon , and also with Sutcliffe's German girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr...
). While there, he visited a number of places including McCartney's childhood home.
Jackie Spencer at www.beatleguides.com was tour guide in Liverpool that day, and was impressed by Aidan's commitment to the role.
Quinn discussed McCartney's reaction to the film in an April 18, 2004 interview: "Just after I finished the film, I went on holiday and Paul McCartney was staying at the same place. I met him and we became quite friendly. Later, he saw the film and fortunately he liked it. It would have been terrible if he'd hated it."
Soundtrack
The original soundtrack by David Schwartz does not include any songs by The Beatles because "the producers could not get clearance from the notoriously difficult copyright holders, a company owned by Michael JacksonMichael Jackson
Michael Joseph Jackson was an American recording artist, entertainer, and businessman. Referred to as the King of Pop, or by his initials MJ, Jackson is recognized as the most successful entertainer of all time by Guinness World Records...
." Critic Jim DeRogatis notes that, "the movie was over before it struck me that the soundtrack was devoid of any Beatles songs [...] Such is our saturation in all things Beatles-related that their actual music isn't even missed in the movie. And maybe that should tell us something about getting back to what really matters in this group's legacy."
Critic Kevin Thompson further argues:
- Lauren Zalaznick, VH1's senior vice president of original programming and development, notes, 'This movie is all about two souls, arguably the most famous musicians of our time. It's not an excuse for a Beatles hit parade.' Well, VH1 tried to get the rights to some Beatles songs, but wasn't successful. The songs weren't necessary, however. On the surface, Two of Us is about a long overdue meeting between two music industry icons. Look deeper and the film is really about friendship and loss.
External links
- VH1 Official Site
- The Making of "Two of Us"
- http://www.beatleguides.com