Imagine John Lennon's childhood: Nowhere Boy heads for big screen

[zobalob]

http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2291610,00.html

"...Beatle biopic among new projects awarded grants by the UK Film Council

Jo Adetunji
Friday July 18, 2008
The Guardian

John Lennon once said he wasn't one for doing autobiography, but a new film - from the Bafta-winning writer of the Ian Curtis biopic Control - will take up the challenge with a controversial retelling of his early life.
Matt Greenhalgh, whose film about the Joy Division frontman won an award for special achievement by the director of a debut feature, will develop Nowhere Boy, a film based on a book by Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird, which questions the conventional account of his upbringing.

Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi, who disapproved of his mother Julia, her younger sister, for "living in sin". Baird's book claims Aunt Mimi's disapproval was driven by jealousy, dating back to childhood sibling rivalry.
"When looking for my next project I was wary of musical protagonists - but when John Lennon was floated, that vanished. He is beyond music; above it even," said Greenhalgh.

"And his early life as told in Julia's book took me into a world that illuminated so much about this legendary genius. I could see the drama and film immediately. The women in his life, the men who weren't, the birth of rock'n'roll; all imposing on a brilliantly complicated adolescent mind.

"The nagging questions, the icy secrets, the need for love. John's angst and anger pouring out into his music, his thankful salvation. Without this story we would never have heard the Beatles - can you imagine that?"

Backing

The film is among projects - four films, two literary adaptations and a documentary - being developed by award-winning filmmakers who will receive backing from the UK Film Council's development fund for established filmmakers, the Guardian can reveal."

[forthlin]

Of all Beatles/Lennon productions that didn't need to be made, I think this may actually have some value. The story of his childhood could make for an interesting movie if he hadn't turned out to be the globally loved individual that was John.

[namretsam]

Interesting subject for a film. Perhaps it will help to explain how it came to be that someone who was so "globally loved" was also so often a insensitive , world-class jerk.
He wasn't named as Ron Nasty in the Rutles for nothing!

[swedgin]

http://www.metro.co.uk/fame/article.html?Kate_to_play_Lennon's_mothe r?&in_article_id=286270&in_page_id=7&in_a_source=

More info.....

[Squealy]

The story of his childhood could make for an interesting movie if he hadn't turned out to be the globally loved individual that was John.

Would it? I would think the only interesting thing about it was that he turned out to be John Lennon.

[Matt Wittman]

Would it? I would think the only interesting thing about it was that he turned out to be John Lennon.

John had a fascinating childhood.

[Squealy]

What was fascinating about it? His father left? He was raised by his aunt?

[Matt Wittman]

There are plenty of good books that get into the details.

Of course you never know what is 100% truth... some have said that Freddie was cut out of John's life since Mimi didn't like him. While he wasn't Father of the Year before he "left", it wasn't as if he happily ran off.

[Mike Dow]

Interesting subject for a film. Perhaps it will help to explain how it came to be that someone who was so "globally loved" was also so often a insensitive , world-class jerk.
He wasn't named as Ron Nasty in the Rutles for nothing!

Aren't we all capable of being insensitive, world-class jerks? I know I have my moments and I'm guessing you do, too.

[Michael]

...this is something I'd have to see!
John was one of the most influential and important musical figures in my life...

[Michael]

Aren't we all capable of being insensitive, world-class jerks? I know I have my moments and I'm guessing you do, too.

+1

[swedgin]

Aren't we all capable of being insensitive, world-class jerks? I know I have my moments and I'm guessing you do, too.

Absolutley, it's called being a human being, he never professed to be a Saint...

[zobalob]

More on this here.....http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2450045.0.0.php

"..
New film explodes Lennon myths
Beatle's 'missing' mother actually lived round the corner ... and taught him George Formby songs on the Ukelele
By Brian Pendreigh

JOHN LENNON owed his interest in music not to early American rock and rollers, as popularly believed, but to British music-hall entertainer George Formby and to his mum, according to a new feature film that will shoot next spring.

The wayward Beatle is the latest in a series of British national icons to come under the microscope of Douglas Rae, the Scottish producer whose screen career began in the 1970s presenting the children's programme Magpie.

He had a big hit with Mrs Brown (1997), which looked at the relationship between Queen Victoria and Highland ghillie John Brown. He tackled Jane Austen's love life in Becoming Jane (2007) and he has even had the audacity to remake Brideshead Revisited as a two-hour film, opening in British cinemas next month.
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"The John Lennon story has never been told before on film and it's going to be quite a controversial movie," said Rae, whose company Ecosse Films, also made the long-running TV series Monarch Of The Glen.

It is widely known that Lennon was brought up by his Aunt Mimi. It is generally believed he was abandoned by his mother and that her absence throughout his childhood and her early death traumatised him and inspired the Beatles ballad Julia and the later solo recording, Mother.

But in Rae's film, entitled Nowhere Boy - after one of the Beatles' most famous songs, Nowhere Man - Lennon discovers on his 15th birthday that his mother is living round the corner. He visits her in secret and she teaches him how to play the ukulele and then guitar.

They practise with songs from the repertoire of George Formby, the Wigan-born singer, musician and comedian, who enjoyed a successful career in music hall and films in the 1930s and 1940s.

Formby popularised the song When I'm Cleaning Windows, but his simple-minded songs, squeaky singing voice and juvenile sense of humour have few followers today. Glasgow skiffle star Lonnie Donegan was another favourite with the teenage Lennon and his mum.

"A 15-year-old John Lennon sitting down in the front room with his mother teaching him to play the ukulele and singing George Formby - that was the forerunner of John Lennon the Beatle," said Rae. "And that's quite an interesting story to tell."

Rae insists the film will be the true account of Lennon's formative years. "We have got sources who will confirm everything," said the Edinburgh-born producer.

"We researched the John Lennon story and there was this extraordinary revelation of rediscovering his mother and her nurturing his talents as his first kind of musical mentor."

One key source for Nowhere Boy was Julia Baird, Lennon's half-sister, who wrote a book called Imagine This. She claimed Aunt Mimi more or less took Lennon way from his mother, because the family disapproved of her lifestyle, "living in sin" with another man in the absence of Lennon's seaman father.

"There are lots of people who were at school with him that we're talking to as well, who remember those days very clearly," said Rae.

He said Lennon had not seen his mother since he was five when a schoolfriend told him she was living round the corner. "He starts a kind of relationship with his mother that he keeps quiet from the aunt.

"Because Lennon met her again and rediscovered her, it allowed that communication between them in a way that we wouldn't have had with the normal angst-ridden teenager, who would be rejecting his mother around 15.

"It's that extraordinary circumstance that allows her to pass on her enthusiasm for entertainment and musicianship."

The relationship, however, lasted only a couple of years. Julia Lennon was killed crossing the road when Lennon was 17.

Pete Nash, of the British Beatles Fan Club, said the relationship between Lennon and his mother has been the subject of discussion and conjecture and there was certainly potential for controversy.

"There was a very strange relationship between John and his mother, which is alluded to in Lennon's diaries," he said.

The film is causing great excitement in the industry, with Kate Winslet and Emily Watson touted as Julia and Mimi. The role of Lennon himself is likely to go to an unknown.

It will be directed by video artist Sam Taylor-Wood and is scripted by Matt Greenhalgh, who wrote Control, the biopic about ill-fated Joy Division singer Ian Curtis.

Lennon had family in Scotland and as a boy went on holiday to Edinburgh and to the village of Durness in Sutherland, though the film will shoot entirely in Liverpool.

Asked if Lennon would have become a star and the Beatles the greatest pop phenomenon of the 1960s without the contribution of Julia Lennon, Douglas Rae responded: "Who can say."

In contrast to Julia, Mimi tried her best to discourage Lennon's interest in music. "The guitar's all very well, John," she told him, "but you'll never make a living out of it."..."

[His Masters Vice]

JOHN LENNON owed his interest in music not to early American rock and rollers, as popularly believed, but to British music-hall entertainer George Formby and to his mum, according to a new feature film that will shoot next spring.

That'll upset all the Elvis Presley fans if it turns out that the likes of George Formby and The Goons were the biggest influences on the Beatles! :shh:;)

Sounds like it might be a good film, if done right. Thanks for the info :thumbsup:

Maybe it might give some insight into a man who seems to have swung wildly, from day to day, between being a pleasant, generous, funny man, and a nasty sharp-tongued bastard.

[dprokopy]

This could be interesting, in a low-key sort of way - the same way The Hours and the Times touched on a particular moment in John's life, without the movie being too "Beatle-y." My fear is that they'd throw in a bunch of "wink-wink" foreshadowing to things that happen later (referencing future song lyrics, etc.). Although I fully expect at least some passing reference to Strawberry Fields.

I'm curious how much of his childhood this will cover - i.e., will it go up to (or past) the moment when John started playing rock'n'roll, and eventually met Paul, etc.