I go “Behind The Scenes” with Peter Jackson.

GET BACK! This was an amazing experience. Just days before Peter Jackson’s mega documentary series, Get Back, premiered on Disney +, I had a chance to Zoom with the legendary director. We recorded an interview for my UCLA course, “The Reel Beatles.” He’s obviously brilliant, a massive Beatles fan and we even spoke for a minute about You Can’t Do That my first music documentary. Towards the end of our conversation, he brought up one of my best films, The U.S. vs. John Lennon. He said that he wished “The U.S.” had won that battle, meaning no green card for John…and no fatal night in 1980.

The folks at Disney really know how to do these press things.

I was in a “Zoom waiting room,” then transferred to the holding place

And then, there he was, from way across the ocean…

Man, does he talk fast, and give you a lot of information in a minute. 

He asked me about my A Hard Day’s Night doc.  Pretty cool that he knew I’d done it.  We even discussed rights issues between Shenson and the Beatles regarding A Hard Day’s Night and Help.

But I was there to talk  Get Back, and the fact that I was “Professor David Leaf” of UCLA’s “The Reel Beatles” gave the conversation a different tone from so many other promotional interviews he was doing.  No promoting necessary.  No explaining what Let It Be was.

I told him that by the time my students see Get Back, they’ll have seen The Beatles First Visit, A Hard Days Night, Help, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, Let It Be, The Beatles Anthology, Eight Days A Week, all of their key TV appearances and lots of other Beatles related documentaries.

He was just so engaged. We were supposed to only speak for 20 minutes, but we went much longer. He answered all of my questions. Now that I’ve seen Get Back, I can’t wait to talk with him again. Which Mr. Jackson may do when my “Reel Beatles” class at UCLA starts again in March.