'Beatles '64' director David Tedeschi on working with Martin Scorsese to create something
There's been no shortage of material about the Beatles, perhaps the most heavily documented musical group in history. John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr's earth-shattering appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 has been recounted in many films and TV specials, most famously Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, so what more could possibly be said about the iconic moment? For David Tedeschi, director of Beatles '64, there was a lot of meat left on the bone.
As Tedeschi tells Gold Derby, "the seed of the idea was this extraordinary footage" shot by legendary documentarians David and Albert Maysles "which had never really been given its due." The footage "only covered about two-and-a-half weeks of time," documenting the group's first trip to America. "It was a very short trip, but it felt momentous. We thought with this extraordinary footage it could be the beginning of something that had never been seen before."
Tedeschi discovered the footage through the Beatle's company, Apple Corps, which had given the negative to Peter Jackson, director of the docuseries The Beatles: Get Back, to restore. Having edited Martin Scorsese's documentary George Harrison: Living in the Material World, he had a good enough relationship with Apple Corps - not to mention McCartney,Starr, Yoko Ono, and Olivia Harrison - to be granted access to the restored footage. "There was a lot of trust and understanding," Tedeschi says of his relationships with the surviving Beatles and their family members. "It was very helpful ... that they looked at the film and they gave their insights."
Source: Story by Zach Laws/MSN
