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(1940–1980). British songwriter and musician.
Acted in:
How I Won the War (Lester 1966); "Christmas Special" (1966), episode
of Not Only… But Also.
Co-wrote
with Robert Benton, Jules Feiffer, Dan Greenburg, Jacques Levy, Leonard Melfi,
David Newman, Margo Sappington, Sam Shepard, Clovis Trouille, Kenneth Tynan,
and Sherman Yellen: Oh, Calcutta! (tv movie) (Levy 1972).
Produced,
directed, appeared in, and wrote music for: Imagine (documentary)
(1973).
Out of all the Beatles, surely, John Lennon
was best prepared for a career in film. He was a naturally talented actor, as
demonstrated in the first two Beatles films, A Hard Day's Night (1964)
and Help!, and was recruited by director Richard LESTER for a small part
in his surreal antiwar film, How I Won the War (1966); he had some
genuine ability as a writer, as demonstrated by his two books of satirical
sketches, In His Own Write (1964) and A Spaniard in the Works
(1965), and the first book was even adapted as a play in 1968; and, as a former
art student, he had a natural affinity for the woman he met and married,
avant-garde artist Yoko Ono, and they went on to make a number of short films.
However, Lennon had absolutely no interest in
anything resembling a conventional narrative. He was visibly bored by the
antics in Help!; irritated by the long waits between filming while on
the set of How I Won the War, he sought no further acting roles; while
officially credited as a co-author, co-producer, and co-director of the chaotic
television special Magical Mystery Tour, Paul MCCARTNEY was really in
charge, and he and the other Beatles were just along for the ride; and he
contributed nothing but a cameo appearance to Yellow Submarine. As for
the films he made with Yoko Ono, they are best described as eccentric
documentaries that have been viewed, for the most part, solely by diehard
Beatles fans; topics include a study of John's penis, the construction of an
office building, and a woman they randomly chose to follow about with a camera.
The only Lennon film that occasionally surfaces, his documentary about the
making of the album Imagine, had a few visually striking touches, like
the sequence of John singing "Imagine" while Yoko opens all the
windows in a vast room, gradually brightening the environment. With no real
desire to tell stories, John also was doing little writing, save for a few
contributions to the erotic musical Oh, Calcutta! which was later filmed
for television.
By the mid-1970s, all of John's artistic
endeavors came to a halt, as he first focused on his battle to remain in the United
States and later on raising his son Sean. By the time he returned to the spotlight
in 1980, he had seemingly resolved to focus on the one activity that had always
been central to his life—making music—as he recorded a new album with Yoko
and planned to embark upon a concert tour. But in October, 1980, an assassin's
bullet brought his career to a premature end.
In the decades since his death, his widow
Yoko Ono has kept his memory alive with new albums of unreleased material and
the preparation of a series of music videos, using old footage, to promote his
music for a new generation; in similar fashion, when the surviving Beatles
worked on tapes of two unreleased Lennon songs to produce two new Beatles songs
in 1995 ("Free as a Bird" and "Real Love"), skillfully edited videos seemingly
reunited him with his old companions. And these videos probably represent John
Lennon's most significant, and most poignant, contributions to science fiction
and fantasy film.
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