Boy Movies #53

Y’all mind if I talk about the Beatles documentary from 2021 rq, feat. Cassidy Olsen

You’re reading Boy Movies, which is my newsletter. Cool!

Rock the vote

At risk of sounding like Rita Ora that one time, I swear I’m not lying when I say that people often ask me if and when I plan on releasing Boy Movies merch. If that is something you would perhaps consider spending your hard-earned money on, please let me know by voting in the following poll. I would never try to sway your opinion because I believe in honest democracy, but before you vote just know that I and Boy Movies art director Sarah may or may not already have something cooking that could make an iconic gift for the boy movie fan in your life this holiday season…

And now, your host for this evening, The Rolling Stones

In all seriousness, I feel uncomfortable asking people to consider handing over money for this newsletter when the truth is that I’ve been feeling a lot of ambivalence about it lately. I’ve mentioned this plodding sense of fatigue to a few friends and was lucky enough to have some of them offer to step up to keep my little operation chugging along as I worked on getting my head on straight. Still, I was envious of how easy the concept of this newsletter seemed to come to everyone other than me, and of how easy writing seemed to come to anyone at all. A handful of personal disappointments happening in relatively quick succession didn’t help me feel like I had any reason to keep this up. I dramatically told Sarah I wanted to quit and she correctly was just like, “Okay.” I love Boy Movies, but over the past few months it’s begun to feel like another obligation — something I’m doing because I have to rather than a fulfilling creative outlet. When creativity stalls and burnout settles in, what do you do?

I was surprised to learn that friend of Boy Movies and friend to me in my life, Nicole, whose own newsletter I’ve recommended before, has been experiencing something similar. She details it in her most recent issue, which I found to be a comforting and perfectly timed read about giving yourself grace during periods where you’re not as tapped into creativity as you’d like to be. Writing can feel like such an insular activity; it’s easy to draw inward and forget that inspiration ebbs and flows for other writers, too. Listen, I wish I was like, idk, fucking Sylvia Plath and could channel the urge to stick my head in the oven into my writing, but I can’t. I coped by enlisting the talents of friends. I went on vacation and drank beverages with Lusi and saw Saltburn and talked and laughed and shrieked about things you couldn’t waterboard out of me. I saw my family. I shopped, maybe too much. And, pertinently, I rewatched The Beatles: Get Back¹.

I did it in pieces over Thanksgiving break, moving slowly through all eight hours of Peter Jackson’s three-part beast of a documentary so as to properly savor each moment, each fabulous outfit, each of twenty-five-year-old George Harrison’s surly little expressions. As it turns out, this is a film (show? Glorified Big Brother live feed?) that rewards multiple viewings. I first watched it in 2021, as you might have as well, but I got even more out of it this time; every frame, to me, has value. Here, the Beatles are preserved as eternal twentysomethings, but I, just a bit older than I was last time I saw them like this and in a different place in my life, felt — without getting too corny about it — a deeper understanding of the things they were dealing with and the ways they were dealing with them.

This rewatch was prompted by Claire, who recently made her way through Get Back for the first time and kept telling me about how she found it to be, among other things, a beautiful portrait of creativity. On one hand, it seems ridiculous to be like, “Ha ha the Beatles are so inspiring!” But on the other hand, why shouldn’t they be? There are some gloriously meta conversations in Get Back where the lads chat about what the recordings from these sessions will turn into; Paul mentions, a couple of times, the potential of a TV show. There’s no way they, at the time, could’ve imagined what the guy who made Lord of the Rings² was able to do with it years down the line; famously, Jackson obsessed over the footage for years and re-tooled the concept a number times before landing on the finished product³. If Get Back is about anything, it’s about pushing your way through all the bullshit because you want so badly just to make something worthwhile.

Men, of course, revere the Beatles. Good for them, I guess, but this is, to quote Haley, “a band that boys want you to think is for boys but is absolutely girl-coded.” Obsessively crafted documentaries of Get Back’s ilk are extremely boy, but the subjects of Get Back specifically are for the girls. Like, let’s just get real for a second. The constant squabbling? All of their bitchy little asides to and about each other? The trail of hurt feelings so central to their history as a group? The very concept of a guitar gently weeping? That’s not even getting into aesthetics: Paul’s cherubic face and big brown eyes, John’s transformation into a lesbian witch, George’s angular bone structure. Ringo is the only true boy Beatle, and even his boyishness is dulled by being so inextricably linked to those three queens. Don’t even get me started on their matching haircuts. The only reason John and Paul didn’t do their own version of that Fleetwood Mac “Silver Springs” performance⁴ is because “Oh, Darling!” was released after the Beatles gave their last live show. Get Back is about Paul McCartney sitting down to write “Let It Be” out of nowhere, but it’s also about Peter Jackson’s earnest comments on how “utterly, utterly” heartbreaking he found it to watch Paul watch John pull away from the band. It’s about the place where creation and pain meet. (George says as much after playing a polished version of “Two of Us⁵”: “It sounds lovely, that, now, after all the anguish we went through with it.”) Like I said, that’s not something I’m good at.

And yet. I was moved by George quoting the songwriting wisdom John once gave him: “I keep thinking, ‘I’ll just go to bed now,’ then I kept hearing your voice from about ten years ago saying, ‘Finish ‘em straight away. As soon as you start ‘em, finish ‘em.’” Just as quickly, I was brought back down to earth by John’s reply: “But I never do it, though. I can’t do it, but I know it’s the best.” (This coming from the same person who is so severely checked out for the first part of the doc is fascinating.) It’s one of those sweet little moments in Get Back where two Beatles are rendered no different from any other writers — George, so dedicated that he stays up all night to finish what he started; John, going to bed because he can’t take his own advice. It’s expectation vs. reality. You can tell Jackson worked hard to bring out those moments as often as he could. I’ve read reviews calling Get Back aimless and meandering, but the strongest glimmers of humanity exist within those long stretches of apparent nothingness. That humanity is central to breaking down the intimidating veneer male Beatles fans have draped over this band for decades. Look at what Get Back did for John, who gained an intense and serious reputation over the years, but in reality was a silly dude who loved nothing more than a good goof.

Obviously me getting burned out on Boy Movies is nowhere near as earth-shattering as the scene in Get Back where three out of four Beatles discuss whether they should break up. Compared to those guys, I am but a toast crumb on John Lennon’s unwashed shirt. This issue isn’t, like, my rooftop concert or anything, but there’s something to be said of finding middle ground between Nicole’s idea of giving oneself grace and the very Beatlian impulse to push yourself to work even when you feel depleted. Consider John and Paul taking a break from rehearsal to sing their gay little song in the dumbest way possible, which to me is as strong a metaphor for how I think of this newsletter as any. The intersection between work and joy, found between comically gritted teeth.

Cassidy’s corner

Cassidy Olsen, past Boy Movies guest and my bestie of five million years, is the biggest Beatles fan I know and the leading authority on the topic. I texted her in a tizzy the other night when the idea for this issue came to me, begging her to comment, as I could not let this issue go by without asking for her thoughts on whether the lads are a girl band or a boy band. Here’s what she said:

Allison puts it best herself: Get Back, a supersized, vaguely ugly concert documentary about a few weeks in the lives of the most important band in history, is a boy movie – but the lads themselves? They’re for the girls. The Beatles were the very first boy band, and by definition their image was shaped through the eyes of girls, most of whom wanted to tear them to shreds for reasons they didn’t really understand yet (myself included, about 50 years too late).

I won’t even pretend to gatekeep here – you don’t become the most famous band in the world by only appealing to roughly half the population. But the debt the band owes to young women is immense, and it’s one each of the members has discussed at length, particularly in regards to the influence of earlier girl groups like the Shirelles and the Ronettes on their work.

I love Get Back for so many of the reasons Allison outlines here; it’s truly and deeply inspiring to watch people create something wonderful while also bickering and drinking and going home early, just like the rest of us. The Beatles aren’t just people, but they are flawed, and getting a glimpse at those flaws alongside their creative process makes anything seem possible. If George can make himself get on the roof, and John can stop being an asshole for five minutes, then maybe I can, too.

Additional notes: 

• I’ve always been a George girl and Get Back further validated my choice, but I’ve realized that maybe I’m so critical of Paul because I see the most of myself in Paul

• A Hard Day’s Night is a girl movie, Help! is a boy movie, Magical Mystery Tour is a boy movie, Yellow Submarine is a boy movie, Let It Be is a girl movie, Get Back is a boy movie

• I do not condone what Peter Jackson has done for the “Now and Then” music video whatsoever

• Michael Lindsay-Hogg, go fuck yourself

• Everyone go see Cirque du Soleil’s Love live at the Mirage if you haven’t already

Taking the last three weeks off meant missing out on discussing some stunning developments in the boy movies space. Here are the things that delighted and upset me while I was on sabbatical:

• Another stunning Ridley Scott press tour

• <3 “Great to catch up with Marty recently” <3

• Venom 3 delayed, as if there isn’t enough vile shit going on

• Oppenheimer fancams are here (special mention goes to this Allison-coded one)

• The Bikeriders dropped by the virgin Disney, snatched up by the chad Focus Features

• How indeed!

• Could never in a million years have predicted Comrade Cruise

• Barry Keoghan’s top 4 left me speechless… Barry please come on Boy Movies

• Maestro would “probably” do Hangover 4 (and 5) “in an instant”

1. No other place to put this but I do believe that the Beatles scene in Walk Hard is, like, as good as Get Back. “Mmmmm, Paul’s a big fat cunt!”

2. From Cassidy: Incredibly important boy movies aside here — the boys were once supposed to star in an adaptation of LOTR with John as GOLLUM, Paul as Frodo, George as Gandalf (duh), and Ringo as Sam (also duh) that Kubrick was approached to direct and he was like absolutely fucking not.

3. Sucks so bad that Paul and Ringo have to know what Disney+ is. I pray they have never heard of Loki.

4.  A certified girl performance from a certified girl band.

5. This song is psychotic, of course George quit over it. TWO of us. In a four-person band! K!