The Beatles. One of the biggest bands in the history of, well, forever. A worldwide following, thousands and thousands of adoring fans. If something were to happen to one of them in their heyday, would it cause levels of panic heretofore unseen in the world?According to the film Paul McCartney Really Is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison, yes. Yes it can.
Jason's premiere film for me in this format was the aforementioned flick, which I will refer to as PMRID, if I find the need to refer back to it. The crew behind this film purports to have obtained tapes recorded by George Harrison shortly before his death, which blows the lid off a huge cover-up by British Special Intelligence--namely that Paul McCartney died in a car accident in the 60's. Fearing some sort of epic mourning session by fans, they spent the time and money covering the death up by changing a man into Fake Paul, or "Faul", as the band reportedly took to calling him.
The film then goes on to confirm what diehard Beatles fans, and even casual listeners have heard before--that the Beatles, and Lennon in particular, went to great lengths to provide clues to fans, whether it's "Faul" facing away from the audience in pictures on album covers, to actually backmasking "Paul is Dead" into songs. Admittedly not a huge fan of the Beatles, I did find some of them quite interesting--if not a bit of a stretch.
Going in, I'll be honest--I was skeptical. Coming out of it, I'm still pretty skeptical. It's an interesting movie, because I'm not sure what the filmmakers' true intention was. If they were shooting for a full-on documentary, I have to question everything about it. For starters, they say that they have the audio tapes recorded personally by George Harrison. However, the voice that it has narrating the tapes sounds a lot like the cameo by the Beatles in the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. (Warning: NSFW Language) Getting over that, it's still incredibly hard to believe something like that could get covered up by that many people for that long. Conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, are already willing to extend disbelief, so who knows?
Going in, I'll be honest--I was skeptical. Coming out of it, I'm still pretty skeptical. It's an interesting movie, because I'm not sure what the filmmakers' true intention was. If they were shooting for a full-on documentary, I have to question everything about it. For starters, they say that they have the audio tapes recorded personally by George Harrison. However, the voice that it has narrating the tapes sounds a lot like the cameo by the Beatles in the film Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. (Warning: NSFW Language) Getting over that, it's still incredibly hard to believe something like that could get covered up by that many people for that long. Conspiracy theorists, on the other hand, are already willing to extend disbelief, so who knows?
On the other hand, if they were shooting for a mockumentary, more power to them. As a mock, the thing works perfectly. It's well drafted, has a solid enough footing in reality, but takes the ideas of the concept to some zany points. It almost seems to take itself too seriously, and that's what gives it some of that comedic effect.
Going in, I wasn't sure what to think, and to be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to want to watch it. Afterwards, though, I'm glad I did. I'm going to assume that it was put out there to give me a chuckle and entertain me, and it most definitely did that.
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