New York in the 1970s.
Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, Studio 54, John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
It’s a period that has been explored in great detail, with countless works about the ‘scene’ across the city. Is there really anything new or exciting to say about this period or its main protagonists? Scottish filmmaker Kevin Macdonald offers an interesting answer with his new documentary. One on One: John & Yokowhich premieres tomorrow at the Venice Film Festival.
Set in New York in 1972, the ambitious and formally experimental film explores the period through the musical, personal, artistic, social and political worlds of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. The film centres on the little-known One to One benefit concert for children with special needs, John Lennon’s only full-length concert between the Beatles’ last performance in 1966 and his death. The film features a collection of previously unreleased Lennon archives, including personal telephone conversations, home movies filmed by John and Yoko, and restored and remastered footage from the One to one Concert with remixed audio conducted by her son Sean Ono Lennon.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the One-to-One concert. (Sahm Doherty /ABC via Getty Images)
Macdonald’s unique approach to the material gives viewers an intimate look into the lives of the legendary couple, but also creates a powerful bridge between the violent turmoil of 1970s America and our current social and political climate.
Below, Macdonald talks to us about his research into the Lennon estate archives, his visit to John and Yoko’s now-demolished apartment on Bank Street in Manhattan, and what Sean Ono said to Lennon after seeing the film.
The Venice Film Festival runs until September 7th.
DEADLINE: This film was announced a few years ago, but where did the idea come from to focus on this one concert by John and Yoko?
KEVIN MACDONALD: I was approached by Peter Worsley, the producer who works with Mercury Studios, which is part of Universal Music. They have the Lennon catalogue and own the rights to the One To One concert. Sean Lennon and various other people had tried to salvage the audio of the concert. The audio had been recorded so badly by Phil Spector. He was probably completely drunk at the time. The recording was really bad. That’s why it’s not more well known. It came out once on VHS in 1986, but that was it. With modern sound equipment they managed to pull the audio out and remix it. Then they came to me and asked if I had any ideas how they could make a film about it.
I was a Beatles fan and I particularly liked John, so I never wanted to say no. But I thought, there are so many films about the Beatles and Lennon, how do you say something new? I did a bit of research and came across these quotes where John said that in the first few years after he left for America, all he did was watch TV. The film starts with that quote. So I thought it might be interesting to recreate his experiences in the first days of his time in America and try to understand this country through the way it presents itself on TV.
DEADLINE: There are so many gems from the archives in there, like John on the phone with his manager, who presents him with these wild ideas…
MACDONALD: And the manager is always totally against it. And as soon as John pushes him, he says it’s a great idea. That’s how it has been in every artist-manager relationship there’s ever been. It was a real pleasure finding those calls. They weren’t the first thing I heard. I got this ride with all the Lennon private videos and interviews. All the stuff the estate had. It was just an incredible goldmine of unseen things. All bits and pieces, none of it complete. They don’t tell the story, but there were moments. A few months later, I got a call from Simon Hilton, who was kind of the liaison with the estate. He said we’d just found this box of audio cassettes. Apparently, for a while, Yoko wanted to record all her phone conversations. The estate hadn’t even listened to them.
DEADLINE: Where does the estate keep all these things?
MACDONALD: Well, because Yoko was an artist even back then, in the ’60s, she had a tradition of collecting all the pieces of her artistic life. Today you see a lot of visual artists who archive everything in boxes of tissue paper. She already had that attitude. So she kept a lot of stuff. I don’t think John was necessarily a collective person, but she was. So things like the bed they had in New York are still there. That’s where the idea came from to rebuild the apartment where they watched TV. In the original ending, which I kind of regret taking out, I went to New York and visited their old apartment on Bank Street. And lo and behold, it was demolished and turned into a $70 million house with three basements and a pool and all that crap. So the guy let me in there and I filmed them destroying the place where their bedroom had been. That was originally the end of the movie.
The former Bank Street apartment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Greenwich Village, December 3, 2020, in New York City. (ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images).
DEADLINE: Wow, do you think you’ll ever release this footage?
MACDONALD: I’m sure we’ll publish it somewhere.
DEADLINE: What I always admired about the Beatles and John is their avant-garde qualities. And this film takes full advantage of that energy.
MACDONALD: Yes, they were. That’s why almost all forms of music except rap, I would say the Beatles were kind of the first. People give Yoko such a hard time too, but I think she was really avant-garde. She was really a member of the New York art scene. One of the things I was happy about when Sean Lennon finally saw the film was that he said, “This is the first film that really captures who my mother was as an artist and as a human being.”
DEADLINE: I always thought John was erratic in his beliefs at this point in his life. He was still pretty immature and trying to figure out who he was and what he believed in. That’s why he clings to so many things. And that’s pretty clear in this film.
MACDONALD: I think that’s true. It’s amazing that he was 31/32 when the film starts. The film covers 18 months from when they moved to Bank Street to when they moved to the Dakota. It’s a story about how that concert came about and about that little-known period of their lives. I think you also see someone who is almost traumatised by the Beatles experience. He’s running away from it and trying to figure out who he is. Nobody else had achieved what the Beatles had achieved except Elvis, who totally messed it up. And there was so much unpleasantness, particularly around Yoko in Britain. A lot of it was racism. The way she was treated in Britain was pretty appalling. So they were running away from it and trying to figure out who they were and what they wanted to do.
DEADLINE: Yeah, it’s funny, the story of John and Yoko in New York is actually a story about Britain. And in some ways it reflects the US and Britain today.
MACDONALD: That’s true. When we started researching what he might have seen on TV, we found that all the news clips and shows were incredibly similar to today. Instead of people protesting Gaza on campus, they’re protesting the Vietnam War. That’s America today, still unable to deal with its racial issues. You have George Wallace, a populist politician very similar to Trump, saying things like, “You’re not safe in the big cities of this country,” and then he gets shot. I couldn’t believe it at the time when Trump got shot too. We always think we’re the first generation to care about the environment. But back then, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency, which was the only good thing he did while in office. So we’ve been talking about the same damn things for about 50 years, depressingly, and we still don’t get it.
DEADLINE: Interestingly, Paul McCartney is missing from the documentary. Around this time, he and John were sending each other diss tracks, right?
MACDONALD: There’s no real omission in the sense that I wanted to leave things out. The approach to this film was to use everything that was there, so I can’t be accused of leaving anything out because I just didn’t have everything, which was a refreshing starting point. I hope that the film can reach a wide audience and that people will connect with it. But I am aware that it is a structurally unusual film, so I don’t know what the wider audience will think. But I think it is entertaining and engaging because John and Yoko are very entertaining and engaging.
DEADLINE: You made this document with Plan B. What’s it like working with these guys?
MACDONALD: I’ve known Jeremy and Dede for 20 years. We were friends and recently decided to start this documentary joint venture to do in documentary what they did in feature films and TV series. That is, we try to do artistic and challenging work that, regardless of what the industry thinks, appeals to audiences. What I really admire about them is that they’ve stayed true to their opinions and that’s paid off tremendously over the years. That’s partly because of Brad, of course, who has enabled that ethic and supported the work.
DEADLINE: Compared to most British directors, you’ve had quite a varied and unique career. Why do you think you’ve managed to work so freely for so long?
MACDONALD: I am very flexible and curious. I come from the documentary field, so the topics, even in fiction, often come from a political area. The Mauritanianfor example. This film is being made thanks to the support of many big stars and no one is really making any money. I’m not sure many other filmmakers want to enter this territory. They want to make the kind of films they want to make, which may require bigger budgets and personal stories. I’m not really a personal filmmaker in that respect. I’m just very curious about the world and want to make lots of different kinds of films.
