It’s coming! One To One: John & Yoko is a documentary filled with 70s New York City. In it, political activist and agitator A.J. Weberman rants about everybody – from Bob Dylan to Yoko Ono. “He’s become the enemy,” Weberman says. “Even if he didn’t take junk, he’s still a fucking multimillionaire.”
One of the best mags on earth, NME, spoke to director Kevin Macdonald. “You get the sense, when he says that to Yoko,” laughs Macdonald, “I always imagine she’s going, ‘Oh, fuck! Don’t look at me!’”
You’re right, btw. The doc is named after John & Yoko’s 1972 benefit concerts for disabled children who were abused at Staten Island’s Willowbrook State School. The two shows were his only full shows with Ono, and his only post-Beatles concerts!
If you know John & Yoko’s story, you know that they sympathized with New York’s Rock Liberation Front including the plight of John Sinclair, co-founder of the anti-racist and anti-capitalist White Panther movement, who was sentenced to a decade in jail for possession of two marijuana joints.
Yikes. My how times have changed!
70s New York City. The Vietnam War the backdrop of the time’s political engagement. Macdonald says, “For A.J., the fact that they’re (John & Yoko) living in the West Village, which was not as fashionable as it became, and are living in this very modest way and people can knock on their door, maybe makes them different from Dylan.”
Lennon says he spent much of his first year in New York City watching TV, soaking up the U.S. culture.
Lennon recorded his own phone calls because he thought the US Government had wired tapped him. Macdonald had “20 or 30” hours of tape to sift through and “was an amazing, unexpected piece of archive that we found halfway through the edit. The Lennon estate phoned us up and said, ‘Oh, we’ve found this box: ‘Phone recordings 1972.’ We don’t know what’s on it!’”
You’ll know director Macdonald from The Last King Of Scotland and the 2012 Bob Marley doc, Marley.
What else could there be to say about John & Yoko?
Macdonald says, “There’s something about the sincerity of it – the lack of cynicism. There are moments where people – including myself – might guffaw at (Lennon’s) naivety, but naivety means that you really believe in something and you’re open enough to new experiences and ideas. Maybe we’ve all become so cynical that we just don’t think you can believe in those ideals.”
One To One shows that Lennon (murdered less than a decade after its endpoint) left more than a musical legacy – and has previews exclusively in IMAX April 9/10 and opens in theatres on April 11.
This is pretty cool. Which other rock n’ roll stories would you like to see hit the big screen?
