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He was pretty smart."īoth the Twickenham and Apple sections were fairly straightforward. It's 7 minutes too long.' So we found 7 minutes that didn't quite work and took it out.
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"He looked at Part 1, Twickenham, while we were cutting it, and said, 'There's one too many songs in that Part 1. "Every so often," notes the director, "he'd say, 'Can I see a little bit?' And he'd see 20 or 30 minutes and then say, 'Yeah, it looks pretty good.'" Though his direction might become a little more involved, at times. There were a few more visits, though, from Apple's new chief, Allen Klein. "He would wander in from his office to see what we were doing." Gilding, in fact, would go on to edit Starr's 1972 Apple film, Born to Boogie, about/featuring Marc Bolan. Occasionally, a Beatle would drop in to have a look – Ringo, in particular, who also had an office on the 5th floor. They wanted the story to be that they weren't the four Moptops anymore – but they were still The Beatles." It would start with the four of them, and it would end with the four of them, and not much rough water in between. "They didn't come right out and say it, but it was implied that they wanted to keep the image together. One thing was made fairly clear that The Beatles did not want in the film was anything about George leaving. The "Threetles" with Mal and Yoko at Twickenham, after George's departure. All I can say is, we needed the image, and that's what we had. "And sometimes stuff just doesn't sync." Adds Lindsay-Hogg, "Sometimes, you just have to do the best you can. "When we needed a cutaway, because the audio cut or the cameras from a shot wandered off, and we didn't want to keep that move in – then we cheated shots in," Gilding explains. The sporadic shooting methodology at Twickenham, and the fact that the group often didn't play through whole takes of songs, led to some sometimes rough cutting, occasionally even with sound not in sync with the image (for example, John's out-of-sync lap steel playing on "For You Blue"). For example, Paul comes in and talks about writing 'One After 909' – so that's a good place to cut to them playing the song." But then, when we started to cut, if we had the footage and we had the sound, then we'd start to make something. "We spent a lot of time looking at the dailies, which just went on and on – mostly because of the syncing issue. I wanted to say, 'This is going to be a little different Beatles than you were expecting.'"įrom then on, he says, the process of piecing the film together was like that of assembling a jigsaw puzzle. For the opening, following the Beatles drum head mentioned earlier, "Then it's over to Paul playing the piano, and it's not a rock and roll song. "I wanted to start at Twickenham, and show them inching their way toward making the songs work," he explains. Lindsay-Hogg's approach was indeed a chronological one. "They actually had to strengthen the top floor, to be able to support all of the cutting gear and film," including building a film vault. "They had already started on it while we were at Bayswater," Gilding says. Things really got into gear when the operation was moved to a 5th floor office at Apple, not long after filming was completed. "We made up a quick sort of storyboard of what songs they were playing, and what clothes they were wearing," careful to select facial closeups and those of instruments that wouldn't betray calendar changes. "And then, intercut with later material, wherever we could," keeping an eye out for clothes changes. "I think the process he decided on at the time was that we could cut it in chronological order, day by day, and then put it together in some sort of storyline, of them rehearsing, and what songs," Gilding explains. With their director busy filming The Beatles a half hour away at Twickenham, Lenny and Gilding spent their time assembling the footage by days, based on direction Lindsay-Hogg would come and give them, when time allowed. "I think Jimmy aged 10 years on this project," Gilding says. The two set up shop at an editing suite in Bayswater, near Covent Garden, with a pair of Movieolas, and, not long after, hired the aforementioned Jimmy Rodden to do the troublesome syncing work. "Tony rang up, probably no more than a week or two after we'd finished and said, 'Do you want two weeks' work?' And I said, 'No, I don't.' He said, "Well if I tell you what and who it's for, you might change your mind.' It took me about 2 nanoseconds to do just that." Lenny immediately called an assistant editor friend, Graham Gilding, who had just come off working on Carl Foreman,'s McKenna's Gold at Shepperton Studios for 13 months, seven days a week, and was all set for a well-earned vacation.