music lovers to feel like they were there during the legendary band’s first trip to the United States. Told through a blend of modern interviews, archival videos, and footage from the era shot by documentarians Albert and David Maysles and upscaled to 4K, Beatles ’64 offers behind-the-scenes glimpses of the band and shows how fans reacted to their arrival. The documentary even features new interviews with original band Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
The Beatles documentary was executive produced by Martin Scorsese and brought to life by two of his frequent collaborators in director David Tedeschi and producer Margaret Bodde. Both Tedeschi, an accomplished editor, and Bodde have worked in various capacities on other Scorsese documentaries including The Rolling Thunder Revue and George Harrison: Living in the Material World. Beatles ’64 is Tedeschi’s debut as a solo feature film director, though he has previously co-directed films with Scorsese.
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Screen Rant spoke with David Tedeschi and Margaret Bodde about their work on the music documentary Beatles ’64. The pair discussed getting fans who saw the Beatles firsthand in ’64 in front of the camera for the documentary and talked about filming new conversations with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. They also shared some of their favorite anecdotes and moments from the film.
David Tedeschi Talks Jumping From Co-Directing With Martin Scorsese To Helming Beatles ’64 On His Own
“At The End Of The Day, You’re Responsible For The Vision”
Screen Rant: David, I read that this is the first feature you're solo directing. What was the biggest unexpected challenge that you faced?
David Tedeschi: Being a solo director [Laughs]. When I co-directed with Scorsese, there was a greater freedom to fail because he's there as a co-director and he's got a lot of great ideas as a director. Whereas here, it's your vision. Margaret is a great producer—both Marty and Margaret are great creative producers—and I depended on that a lot, but at the end of the day, you're responsible for the vision.
Margaret Bodde: I'll chime in a little bit on that too. David's a very visionary director. He's also a really brilliant editor, so he's got the editor brain, but [also] the director brain, and the director skillset is different. On this film, we had a lot of interviews with fans who had been really, really affected by the Beatles, so editor David had to go away, and director David had to take over.
David Tedeschi: And just so it's clear, we hired a wonderful editor, Mariah Rehmet, but I think the things that are most difficult about the film are from an editorial point of view. As an editor, my imagination can encom post-production editing structure. It's the other stuff [where] it was very good to co-direct with Scorsese twice because it allowed me kind of the freedom to try out ideas.
Margaret Bodde & David Tedeschi On Finding & Pleasing Die-Hard Beatles Fans
Fans Like Vickie Brenna-Costa Who Saw The Beatles Firsthand In ’64 Appear In The Film
Margaret, you mentioned talking to the fans. I imagine it's easier to track down Smokey Robinson than it is to track down somebody who was at a Beatles concert in 1964. How did you all go about doing that and getting those people involved?
Margaret Bodde: We're lucky because there have been so many great books written about the Beatles and so many great books about the incredible impact the band had on people at that time. We were able to find Vickie Brenna-Costa, who was outside the Plaza Hotel, and she's just a lovely person. She re that moment, like everybody does that we talk to. They it so viscerally.
I think the seed for that idea might've come from when David worked with Jack Douglas, who's a great record producer. He produced the tracks for Personality Crisis, the film that we had just made about David Johansen. David and Jack got along like gangbusters, and Jack told that whole incredible story about the Beatles [and] his going to Liverpool before we even knew that we were going to be working on this project. Things like that were kind of percolating already, and then when the project started, David had Jack in mind, and a few other people. He knew he wanted to get those stories documented.
David Tedeschi: We knew what we were looking for, we just didn't know who exactly they were and how we could convince them to be in the film. It was 60 years ago. There are a lot of people who are hesitant to go on camera now, but I think everyone has an unusual story. The biggest surprise for me was Sananda Maitreya, who is a great musician, [saying] that his very first memory is hearing, “I Want to Hold Your Hand” on the radio and dancing to it at two years old, and that memory grew into something that has followed him all through life because, like many musicians, he became a musician in large part because of the inspiration of the Beatles.
Margaret Bodde: We’re talking about the challenges of finding the interview subjects. There's also the issue [that] you've got this beautiful 16-millimeter black-and-white footage from 1964 that has a very specific and beautiful look, and one of the things that David was trying to figure out was, “How will this material even look and feel intercut [with modern-day interviews]?” The design of the interviews, I'll just point out, is very thoughtful about how [they] will look with the black-and-white. It's kind of like everything's black-and-white and then the people are in color. I thought it was really interesting, the way David envisioned that whole aspect of it.
David, I have a friend who's such a Beatles fan [that] I asked if he had any questions and he said, “Do they know whose yacht Ringo crashed into in Florida on that trip?” I don't know if you have the answer to that, but how do you construct something that will please Beatles fans on that level as well as more casual listeners?
David Tedeschi: We'll see, because it's about to get a wide release. A part of our process is we have a lot of screenings, and for the most part, those Beatles fans were very pleased. But I am on the edge of my chair.
Context Was Everything For Beatles ‘64
After The Assassination Of JFK, The Beatles Were “Just What America Needed”
Margaret, something that really struck me when I was watching this was the way the culture of the US was presented at the time the Beatles arrived. How important did it feel to set the stage and ensure that people got the context of [the Beatles coming to the US] a few months after JFK, and during the rise of TVs being in people's homes?
Margaret Bodde: That's something that David and Marty do brilliantly, and David always had the concept. right? It was always part of the vision for the film that the Beatles were coming on the heels of one of the great disasters and losses of the 20th century. People have maybe put that idea out in different writings and things, but [our goal was] to visualize that and for people to be reminded of how close that was. It was this period of devastation, sorrow, and darkness, and then [there were] these four incredibly charismatic, good-looking, fresh, funny guys who are making incredible music that people felt they had never heard anything like before. It is trite to say, but it seemed like just what America needed at that time.
But you have to present that idea visually, so [it’s] “What are the moments from JFK?” It's all [presented] with archival docs. It's all research, and we had a great research and archival producer, Austin Short, who we've worked with before. [It’s] just the idea of really digging deep into archives, going beyond the obvious sources, and oftentimes going to other filmmakers’ works about those moments in history, like Robert Drew's Faces of November, which is licensed and used in the film. Robert Drew was one of the great documentarians [and] direct cinema filmmakers, and he captured the emotion of that time like no one else.
Tedeschi & Bodde Reflect On Including All Four Beatles Equally
New Interviews With Paul McCartney & Ringo Starr Reveal Fascinating Information About Their First Trip To The States
David, Paul and Ringo are executive producers and there's new interview footage with them. What was it like working with them on this, and how hard is it to ask those two questions they haven't heard a billion times before in their lives?
David Tedeschi: I would add that we didn't do formal sit-down interviews. With Paul, we did it at the Brooklyn Museum. He had an exhibit that had been in London called “Eye of the Storm”, which was all photographs from 1964, so he was already revisiting 1964. And he is a person who evolves still. I thought the tone of the interview was pretty different. He said some things he'd said before, but there was a tone and a few new things that I had never heard before, and I think part of it was who he is now.
With Ringo, he had his drum kit from Sullivan. He holds onto this stuff. He has most of the great clothes that he wore, from “Hey Jude”, Budokan, Magical Mystery Tour, and one of the suits he was wearing in the footage. The suits from Sullivan were stolen, so he didn't have that. I thought Ringo said a lot of things that I'd never heard before. Some of them were, I think, because he's behind the drums. [That because of that,] maybe he’ll something about the drums, which he did. He talked about how he liked the drums being close to the band.
He tells a great story about the rehearsal at Sullivan: When they did the rehearsal, they put chalk to mark what the levels should be, and then a cleaning lady came at the break and erased everything. So, by the time they performed live, it all had to be set again on the fly. I'd never heard that. I thought that was brilliant.
Margaret, I know John and George are very present in this as well, through archival and interview footage. How did you all discuss making sure they felt as involved in this documentary as Paul and Ringo?
Margaret Bodde: That was always the number one idea—to represent all of them. They're all so different and yet they're part of this same organism—this beautiful cohesive whole that they were, or at least were to the fans. We had worked on a film [called] George Harrison: Living in the Material World, so we were pretty familiar with the archive that was out there featuring George but we hadn't [done that] with John.
John was an activist, and, for a period of time in the seventies, he was really quite articulate about the Beatles and music in general and politics, and he's so insightful. That was a real revelation. Our minds kept getting blown by the way he was so clear-eyed, even just in talking about why people took to the Beatles the way they did. When he talks about how rock and roll was never accepted and people were trying to stamp it out from the time it started and he's asked why and he's like, “Well, because it came from black music,” he's just stating things where clearly, it’s true, but people didn't really talk like that.
We were always very keyed into the notion that the Maysles’ footage shows the whole band together, and we had to somehow figure out a way to make these disparate interviews with Paul, Ringo, John and George feel like a continuation of that.
Did Any Beatles Stories Get Left Out Of Beatles ’64?
“I Hope Not”, Says Tedeschi—But Other Things Were Cut
If there's one thing this documentary proves, it's that people want every bit of the Beatles they can get. Is there anything that was left on the cutting room floor that you wish had made it into the documentary?
David Tedeschi: I hope not.
Margaret Bodde: Some things didn't end up making it into the film that weren't part of the Maysles’ footage, but that's just the process of pruning and pruning and getting to [the point] where you feel like everything in this film is what it's supposed to be.
David Tedeschi: I would say it's the non-Beatles moments. We cut out a lot of non-Beatles moments—different Sullivan acts, [and] stuff like that. I miss it, I regret it, but I know the film is much better because we made it leaner. The film was telling us not to include it, but…
Margaret Bodde: You have to make these choices unless you're going to make a minute-by-minute recreation of something.
David Tedeschi: Also, the Beatles’ trip to America was engineered by Brian Epstein. Now, Brian Epstein's in the film, but not as much, in a way, as he deserves. But that's the nature of the footage that exists, and that's the nature of a manager versus a performer.
About Beatles ‘64
On February 7, 1964, The Beatles arrived in New York City to unprecedented excitement and hysteria. From the instant they landed at Kennedy Airport, met by thousands of fans, Beatlemania swept New York and the entire country. Their thrilling debut performance on The Ed Sullivan Show captivated more than 73 million viewers, the most watched television event of its time. Beatles ’64 presents the spectacle, but also tells a more intimate behind the scenes story, capturing the camaraderie of John, Paul, George, and Ringo as they experienced unimaginable fame.
Beatles ’64 will land on Disney+ on November 29.
Beatles '64
- Release Date
- November 29, 2024
- Runtime
- 108 Minutes
- Director
- David Tedeschi
Cast
Paul McCartney
Beatles '64 is a documentary directed by David Tedeschi, showcasing the rise of The Beatles during their landmark 1964 visit to New York City. Utilizing rare footage, it captures Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr's transformative impact on music and culture as they achieved global fame.
- Main Genre
- Documentary
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