"Shades of a Personality" and other alternate Third Beatle films

Shades of a Personality allegedly was a proposed third film by The Beatles, originally planned to be produced in 1967, around the same time Magical Mystery Tour was filmed historically. I only know the film's roughest details. Namely, the film supposedly was to be concerned with a man with a three way spit personality. John Lennon was to play the actual person, while the rest of the group were going to play the other personalities that exist in the main character's diseased mind. Of course, because of scheduling concerns, and other issues, the film was never produced. Of course it doesn't have a very good title, but that could probably have been changed. Now my question is, what if the film had actually been made? And what changes would be needed for that to occur? Now this sounds like the kind of idea that could have either produced a great film, or a fantastically bad one.

If this is a terrible idea, what other ideas might have made for a good third Beatle film in the same timeframe? I have thought about some sort of Beatles Through the Looking Glass film, but I had trouble figuring out the cast and how the idea would come to be. (Along with who would direct, who'd play Alice, etc.)
 
Never heard of that film, but I'd be curious to hear where you did.

The Beatles came astonishingly close to making a Lord of the Rings film with Stanley Kubrick directing (John wanted to play Gollum). The butterfly effects on Peter Jackson's career would be more than worth the probable awfulness of such a production.
 
Never heard of that film, but I'd be curious to hear where you did.

The Beatles came astonishingly close to making a Lord of the Rings film with Stanley Kubrick directing (John wanted to play Gollum). The butterfly effects on Peter Jackson's career would be more than worth the probable awfulness of such a production.


I'm not sure if Shades of a Personality is a real thing or not. But I have heard it referenced a number of places as an idea. Basically the concept was that the Beatles would not be playing ''the Beatles" in the third film, hence the idea of a split personality.

United Artists, who as I recall was the studio behind the other Beatles films, did purchase the film rights to Lord of the Rings. But they did so at a incredibly inopportune time for a Beatles film to be made. They purchased it in 1969. If you add to that how long pre-production would have taken, the Beatles almost certainly would have been split up by the time a Beatles Lord of the Rings film could have been made. So that situation is more likely to result in some sort of Apple produced Lord of the Ring's film in which John Lennon appears as Gollum, possibly as a kind of cameo role due to the probable truncated nature of the film, than a true Beatles film. The other possibility is that this whole situation could have led to an animated film, possibly with Lennon providing voice acting talent as Gollum.
 
The script by Joe Orton, Up Against It, might've proven to be the best: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Up_Against_It

I own a copy; it's fuckin' hilarious. :D

Up Against It, originally, was Orton's redraft or draft based on the Shades of a Personality idea (I've read mix things as to whether or not there was an actual script for Shades of a Personality or not. Wikipedea says that there was, written by Owen Holder, and Orton's play derives partially from that script and partially from other compositions he had previously written) Of course, you wouldn't know that from the play itself. Or at least, I wouldn't. I don't really see a trace of the split-personality idea. It should be said that Up Against It as it exists now, is actually a redraft of Orton's original script proposal. So it's difficult to know precisely what the actual draft in question looked like. For example, two characters were merged together after Orton rewrote the script.

Since I can only go by the synopsis, and from what I've heard, I don't think Up Against It would have worked as a Beatles film. But since you've actually read it, you'd be a better judge of that than I would be.
 

Stolengood

Banned
Up Against It, originally, was Orton's redraft or draft based on the Shades of a Personality idea (I've read mix things as to whether or not there was an actual script for Shades of a Personality or not. Wikipedea says that there was, written by Owen Holder, and Orton's play derives partially from that script and partially from other compositions he had previously written) Of course, you wouldn't know that from the play itself. Or at least, I wouldn't. I don't really see a trace of the split-personality idea. It should be said that Up Against It as it exists now, is actually a redraft of Orton's original script proposal. So it's difficult to know precisely what the actual draft in question looked like. For example, two characters were merged together after Orton rewrote the script.

Since I can only go by the synopsis, and from what I've heard, I don't think Up Against It would have worked as a Beatles film. But since you've actually read it, you'd be a better judge of that than I would be.
Yes, I know; I wrote the article. :)

Unfortunately, a copy of Holder's script has not yet been publicly released; the last-known surviving copy, owned by the estate of producer Walter Shenson, was sold by this website some time ago.

I'm pretty sure Orton did utilize portions of the Holder screenplay, however; this is an excerpt from his diary upon reading the screenplay:

Like the idea. Basically it is that there aren't four young men. Just aspects of one man. Sounds dreary, but as I thought about it I realised what wonderful opportunities it would give. The end in the present script is the girl advancing on the four to accept a proposal of marriage from one of them (which, the script coyly says, we shall never know). Already have the idea that the end should be in a church with four bridegrooms and one bride....

This is, indeed, what happened at the end of the published Orton screenplay.

The tone of it is almost like a late-'60s Lester Beatle movie. I think it'd have been quite fun. :)
 
...wow, I really killed this discussion, didn't I? :(

Don't worry, I'm still interested. I've been reading your synopsis of the plot of Up Against It, I'm still having trouble translating it into a film in which the Beatles would star. Granted, I can definitely see John Lennon as Jack, though the whole killing the Prime Minister thing would be hard to get away with. I think a Beatle version of Up Against It would be toned down compared to the final product Orton produced, and would probably be toned down compared to Orton's draft. The trouble is, if you take away the elements that might be going too far, you don't have much left of that script. And indeed, that might have been the point. It's an internet source, so the veracity is of course questionable. But the Internet Beatles Bible suggests that Orton intentionally submitted a draft that he knew the band would never accept. And then you have McCartney's stated reason for why the movie was rejected.

"The reason why we didn't do Up Against It wasn't because it was too far out or anything. We didn't do it because it was gay. We weren't gay and really that was all there was to it. It was quite simple, really. Brian was gay...and so he and the gay crowd could appreciate it. Now, it wasn't that we were anti-gay -- just that we, The Beatles, weren't gay."
Don't get me wrong, based on the little I know of the plot, it seems like the basis for a good film. But I'm not sure it would have fit the Beatles. I think it could well have produced a good film, but the proposed Richard Lester Directed version would have probably turned out better than a Beatles one would have. (That one would have starred Ian McKellan and Mick Jagger).

Like I said in the original post, if I were in control of things, I would have had someone propose some sort of Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass film, given Lennon's love for Lewis Carroll and the fact that the latter actually partially influenced songs he wrote in 1967. (Namely, Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds and I am the Walrus). But since nobody proposed that, I'd have to explain how that came to be. And I don't have an obvious divergence to create that film, even if I can imagine it pretty well in my mind. Imagine a Beatles Alice film in 1967, at a time when the counterculture was embracing the Alice stories, at least superficially speaking. Of course when I stop and start trying to think of who would play who I become more indecisive. I can come up with a track list fairly easily, ranging from Revolver to Magical Mystery Tour, but the only person I can cast in a role in my mind definitively is Ringo as the White Knight. While he doesn't look the part I kind of think Lennon might be a good fit for Carroll's Humpty Dumptey.

But I digress.
 
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Thinking over the famous Lord of the Rings suggestion, further reading on the subject has made me slightly more flexible on the subject. While I still content a Kubrick directed straight adaptation would have been an utter disaster, there might have been another way of doing it that might have had a better chance. Not that purists would like it, but then again, purists don't really like any cinematic version of the film. Apparently, around the same time Lennon wanted to make Lord of the Rings with Kubrick, the Directed of Yellow Submarine wanted to make an animated version of it. Instead of doing a straight interpretation he
proposed to make the film “as a kind of opera, or a sort of operatic impression”, more closely related to Disney’s Fantasia than, say, The Sword in the Stone. He intended to approach it “As one does an operatic version of any book,” he told Outré magazine, “[to] sort of try for a distillation of the mood and the story, but not follow every twist of the plot.” For instance, “One could have packed 300 pages of wandering into a five-minute sequence set to music.”

Now if we could somehow mix the Beatles Lord of the Rings idea to this. Say, have the Beatles provide some of the vocal cast where voice acting is actually used, and provide songs for the "opera" we might have ended up with an interesting sequel to Yellow Submarine. Not that it would count in terms of the contract, but still. There are still a lot of problems involved even with this idea, it's probably too ambitious. And it might have been every bit the disaster that a live-action one would be. But I would be interested to see that kind of film, personally speaking.
 
Wasn't Sgt Pepper's going to have music videos made for all the songs for a film/tv special? We only have one for 'A Day in the Life' and I believe thats partly unfinished, but all the others were going to have films made and it was going to be woven together.

It's a wonder their pantomimes weren't made into a film either

Then, slightly unrelated, there was the script for a Paul McCartney solo film written by the great Willy Russell of 'Blood Brothers', 'Educating Rita' and 'Shirley Valentine' fame I believe called 'Band on the Run'. McCartney turned it down for some reason I can't remember and eventually did 'Broad St.' instead.

Then there's the never made Rupert the Bear film, which has origins towards the end of the Beatles with the track 'Palace of the King of the Birds'.

The Magic Christian probably could've worked as a Beatles film.
 
Maybe it would have made sense to make an outright "concert" film instead of Let it Be. That is, keep the performance idea and ditch the idea of filming the rehearsal. They could rent a sound stage somewhere and put on a concert. Yes, nobody but Paul McCartney really wanted to perform live again, but if it's a one off deal you could probably get away with it. The problem would be padding it out to feature length, since a Beatle concert only lasts fifteen minutes long. Maybe interviews about the new songs/songwriting in general and some sort of documentary on why the Beatles have decided to make a live performance again, along with a documentary on the Beatles past would do for that purposes? This might be a bit too much like Let it Be, but it has a benefit of a quick shoot. I mean, it'd be one concert and a series of interviews with the band members. Theoretically, if everything went right, you could do all that in a day. True production on the film would last longer than that, but the Beatles could have their involvement in the film finished fast, preventing any long miserable period after the already acrimonious White Album sessions
 
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