“He was tough, my dad. I think Paul’s tough too, he just has a gentle manner about him,” says Sean Ono Lennon, in Man on the Run (Prime, Feb. 27), a documentary about post-Beatles Paul McCartney, executive produced by post-Beatles Paul McCartney. It’s certainly a vanity project, and a huge chunk in the middle provides more than you’ll ever need to know about Wings (although Jet, Band on the Run and even Silly Love Songs hold up).
Where the doc soars is in slices-of-life footage from McCartney’s remote sheep farm in Scotland, where he fled in 1969 when John Lennon said he was quitting the band. When a photographer discovers his hideout, Paul throws a bucket at him and immediately feels bad – and scared that those aggressive pics might get out – so, instead, he invites the photographer back to take intimate photos of him, his wife Linda and daughters Heather and baby Mary in their rural domestic bliss. Tough, but gentle.
Later, present-day Paul discusses how relieved he was that he and John did make up after years of bitterness – not to mention that 1970 lawsuit Paul filed against the fab three. Only to be followed by daughter Stella McCartney’s voiceover describing her memory of her dad’s intensely emotional reaction to John’s death. Then it cuts to a street reporter at the time asking how Paul feels about Lennon’s murder, and he says, “It’s a drag, isn’t it?” Sean watches the same clip and points out the hurt in Paul’s eyes. Again, tough and gentle. It’s these few perfectly placed observations from the Beatles’ offspring that make this latest output from the Beatles nostalgia machine feel fresh and meaningful.
“I’ve never been to England,” says Elvis Presley in the new doc EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, “but I kinda like the Beatles.” It’s 1969, and Presley is prepping for his big stage comeback after making movies for the past 10 years. He often has the British band on his mind, as he weaves their songs into the set he’s rehearsing, singing “Something in the way she moves / Attracts me like no other lover,” and remarking to his band, “Those are very suggestive lyrics.”
And this is coming from the hunka hunka burning love himself. The raw footage that director Baz Luhrmann (who made the 2022 Elvis biopic) unearthed and brought to the big screen is take-your-breath-away special for absolutely any level of Elvis fan. There are his glorious jumpsuits and magnificent mutton chops – and I am shocked by all the open-mouth kisses he gives to random fans. Yet that’s all window-dressing to the vocal and physical powerhouse performances he’s doing for two shows a night, seven days a week, over five years, belting out his emotional takes on Suspicious Minds, Can’t Help Falling in Love, Polk Salad Annie and so many more.
How can one person be such a joker – “If it’s six or 600 people, they bring out the ham in me,” he says – and so earnest and sexy all at the same time? (Yes, I’m now smitten with 70s-era Elvis.) Technically, the film jumps back and forth between an early rehearsal with just a tight four-man band, to a bigger rehearsal with horns and a host of soulful background singers, to footage from the five-year International Hotel residency. And the only narrative voiceover you hear is Elvis, himself, talking about how much he loves all kinds of music, that he’s never been to Europe or even New York, how he didn’t like the movies that he made, and that he considers himself a geek. By this time, he would have been deep into a prescription opioid addiction, but you can’t really tell. His high from the crowd’s love is all you see.
