A look at the period of time musician John Lennon and his family spent living in New York City during the 1970s.A look at the period of time musician John Lennon and his family spent living in New York City during the 1970s.A look at the period of time musician John Lennon and his family spent living in New York City during the 1970s.
- Awards
- 1 nomination
John Lennon
- Self
- (archive footage)
Jerry Rubin
- Self
- (archive footage)
Abbie Hoffman
- Self
- (archive footage)
Rennie Davis
- Self - Activist
- (archive footage)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- GoofsWhen critic Robert Hilburn describes how he saw John a few rows over at the Troubadour he says "I'm sitting there drinking my Diet Coke..." This incident happened in 1974. Diet Coke was not introduced till 1982, two years after Lennon had passed away.
- Quotes
Self - Keyboards: This is what we had been building to. And we were, we were playing with John Lennon and were on a tour of the universe.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Imagine: Lennon: The New York Years (2011)
Featured review
Marginal.
The movie has some good moments but overall is historically dishonest.
The film was financed by a woman named Yoko Ono. She's John's widow. She lives in Manhattan. (I realize that no one under age 30 will recognize the name. She's an elderly person living in a luxury apartment, eating sushi, casting spells on people she doesn't like, and spending money made by John Lennon many years earlier. In the early '60s she worked on the margins of the New York art scene. She was widely dismissed as corny.)
She's a shrewd public relations manager, no question about it. She's got money to work with (from John's Beatle royalties) and she's got access to a lot of hungry young filmmakers eager for a paycheck. Hence this movie.
The movie whitewashes John's self-destructiveness. Very canny how it does this. It delves into his craziness during the L. A. years of 1972-74. These were the years when he dismissed Yoko from his life. The movie says, "Oh, look! We're being honest in this film! We're delving into his madness!" But the film avoids examining Part II of his craziness, when Yoko accepted him back (1974 to '80). He was back in her arms but he was still crazy. Whitewashing.
Another example of whitewashing (this is frickin' brilliant) - the film presents May Pang, his girlfriend, as a talking head, briefly. ("Hey, this film is honest!") But the film doesn't give May space to say any of the awful stuff about John that's in her book. Yoko paid May to appear in the movie and then mostly cut May out of the movie. This is public relations genius.
Essentially the film is a rebuttal to Albert Goldman's biography of John which depicts the man during the second half of the '70s as a dork, extremely impatient with his son Sean (the film, by contrast, shows John as a dream of a father), sealing himself off alone in his room with his books, TV and pot, starving himself to maintain the skinny rock star look, sermonizing naked ad nauseum to the servants, moping around, yelling at his cats, yelling at the kid, and being generally depressed, and doing a lot of coke to get "Double Fantasy" made (the guy had all the marks of a cokehead in the studio in '80). I will grant you that Albert Goldman's book has holes in it. I will grant you that Goldman does not understand the life energy of rock music. I will also grant you that connecting to the music of the spheres requires heavy consciousness and that Goldman doesn't remotely understand this. But I think Goldman's book is well-reported. I think it's more accurate about the Manhattan life of John Lennon than a lot of people with vested interests claim it to be (Yoko Ono, Jann Wenner, etc.). Wenner, and Rolling Stone magazine, have been in bed with Lennon, metaphorically speaking, for 50 years now. In the early '70s, Wenner's attempt to jack up Lennon, and blantant attempt to destroy Paul McCartney (aided and abetted by reviewer Jon Landau) is one of the bleakest chapters in American journalism.
I will add, for the record, that Sean Lennon, circa the 2020s, appears to be one of the most depressed and hostile persons on the Eastern Seaboard. I base that thought on the vibe he gives off, which is a vibe of "I AM cool, damn you." I may be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I think he should probably not allow people to film him.
The movie is well made technically. It provides nice glimpses of John in the studio.
The film was financed by a woman named Yoko Ono. She's John's widow. She lives in Manhattan. (I realize that no one under age 30 will recognize the name. She's an elderly person living in a luxury apartment, eating sushi, casting spells on people she doesn't like, and spending money made by John Lennon many years earlier. In the early '60s she worked on the margins of the New York art scene. She was widely dismissed as corny.)
She's a shrewd public relations manager, no question about it. She's got money to work with (from John's Beatle royalties) and she's got access to a lot of hungry young filmmakers eager for a paycheck. Hence this movie.
The movie whitewashes John's self-destructiveness. Very canny how it does this. It delves into his craziness during the L. A. years of 1972-74. These were the years when he dismissed Yoko from his life. The movie says, "Oh, look! We're being honest in this film! We're delving into his madness!" But the film avoids examining Part II of his craziness, when Yoko accepted him back (1974 to '80). He was back in her arms but he was still crazy. Whitewashing.
Another example of whitewashing (this is frickin' brilliant) - the film presents May Pang, his girlfriend, as a talking head, briefly. ("Hey, this film is honest!") But the film doesn't give May space to say any of the awful stuff about John that's in her book. Yoko paid May to appear in the movie and then mostly cut May out of the movie. This is public relations genius.
Essentially the film is a rebuttal to Albert Goldman's biography of John which depicts the man during the second half of the '70s as a dork, extremely impatient with his son Sean (the film, by contrast, shows John as a dream of a father), sealing himself off alone in his room with his books, TV and pot, starving himself to maintain the skinny rock star look, sermonizing naked ad nauseum to the servants, moping around, yelling at his cats, yelling at the kid, and being generally depressed, and doing a lot of coke to get "Double Fantasy" made (the guy had all the marks of a cokehead in the studio in '80). I will grant you that Albert Goldman's book has holes in it. I will grant you that Goldman does not understand the life energy of rock music. I will also grant you that connecting to the music of the spheres requires heavy consciousness and that Goldman doesn't remotely understand this. But I think Goldman's book is well-reported. I think it's more accurate about the Manhattan life of John Lennon than a lot of people with vested interests claim it to be (Yoko Ono, Jann Wenner, etc.). Wenner, and Rolling Stone magazine, have been in bed with Lennon, metaphorically speaking, for 50 years now. In the early '70s, Wenner's attempt to jack up Lennon, and blantant attempt to destroy Paul McCartney (aided and abetted by reviewer Jon Landau) is one of the bleakest chapters in American journalism.
I will add, for the record, that Sean Lennon, circa the 2020s, appears to be one of the most depressed and hostile persons on the Eastern Seaboard. I base that thought on the vibe he gives off, which is a vibe of "I AM cool, damn you." I may be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I think he should probably not allow people to film him.
The movie is well made technically. It provides nice glimpses of John in the studio.
helpful•11
- henryonhillside
- Apr 12, 2014
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Official site
- Languages
- Also known as
- John Lennon, New York
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
- Runtime1 hour 55 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
Contribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content