Saturday, August 27, 2005

More on Bramwell's book

As I said in a previous post, I'm enjoying Tony Bramwell's book, Magical Mystery Tours. The deeper I get into it, however, the more things I find that don't fit the facts that I've heard from other sources. Here's a small example: Bramwell talks about the making of A Hard Day's Night and says something about "what script?", suggesting that it was mostly improvised. Yet, in the DVD of A Hard Day's Night we find the script and it is uncanny how the original script matches the seemingly improvised dialogue. This sort of disconnect happens every once in a while in this book.

I'm still enjoying the book and treat it as someone who remembers a lot but just doesn't always get the facts exactly right. Consequently, I now only recommend it to someone who has read other more authoritative books about the Beatles. This gives some great color but it is clearly one man's story and not a definitive history of the boys.

7 comments:

bethany said...

of course, you have to approach this all with a sense of importance. perhaps Beatles historic accuracy isn't the first value of a reader...

Bob K said...

But if it's not accurate, then what is it? Fiction.

bethany said...

OR memior. Perhaps there's more to story than factual accuracy. Matt directed me to a book by... I think Patricia Hampl that addresses this in interesting ways.

Ron Rienstra said...

Of course, maybe Matt is correct, and the "script" in your DVD is a post-production production, written to approximate what was actually filmed. Mere mortals like you and I will never know.

Bob K said...

True - all history is put through a filter. One reads multiple accounts and tries to look for similarities to see how they all fit together. That's what makes Bramwell's book so fascinating in part - new twists on an old story. Kind of like the DaVinci Code - hahahahaha

Anonymous said...

It's not surprising that the final Hard Day's Night script matched the film. When they started filming, there was an outline script of sorts, but when the film was finished the script was written to match the dialogue. You have to think backwards with this one. Same with the film Magical Mystery Tour. It was scripted at the end. The Beatles never stuck to a script.

Bob K said...

I hope the anonymous poster comes back to read my response - what's your source for that? In the AHDN DVD those involved with the film specifically praise Alun Owen for nailing the Beatles' banter in the script.