No Theater in Our Area to Show Beatles Documentary… but It’s OK

As a huge Beatles fan almost my entire life, I'm always on the lookout for new stuff featuring the boys. Imagine John Lennon is a great documentary I saw in the theater when it came out in 1988. I watched the entire Beatles Anthology on ABC TV when it came out in the mid 90s and subsequently bought the DVD box set.  As exhaustive as that film is in its multiple installments, you would think no one would have a fresh take on the story we have seen so many times.  Who could bring something new to the rock 'n' roll fable which has been told time and time again for 50 years?

Enter Ron Howard. Yes, TV's Opie Taylor and Richie Cunningham (or Opie Cunningham as Eddie Murphy so famously put it).  In case you haven't been looking, for the past 30+ years, Ron Howard has been making a bigger name for himself as a director and producer. This year, he decided to tell the story of the touring years of the Beatles and the madness - signified by screaming girls everywhere they went, a sound more treacherous, your ears may never hear again - which surrounded them up to the moment in Candlestick Park in late 1966 when all four finally said enough is enough and pulled the band off the road for good (not coincidentally in my opinion, the period of their greatest musical innovation began at almost the exact moment they stopped touring. Also not coincidentally in my opinion, the horizons they saw for the first time led to the eventual dissolution of the band. That's another story for another post). The aptly named Eight Days a Week gives a snapshot of that brief but intense period.

I've heard about this documentary for several months. Our own ultimateclassicrock.com  had details not only of Howard's stock but also of the soundtrack album, which turned out to be the first release of the Beatles 1977 live at the Hollywood bowl album.  I heard early on that the film was going to be in theaters a month before being released on Blu-ray. As I had first seen in the theater - in a total Ferris Buller moment because I skipped school to do it, tee hee hee - the earlier John Lennon documentary directed by Andrew Solt (which you should totally search out), I wanted to first see this new documentary for myself on the big screen. Alas, it was not to be.

I checked the website of the documentary.  Oh sure, Dallas and Austin and San Antonio all had theater showings of Eight Days a Week but nowhere close to my Bell County digs.  I had my $11 ready to pay, my eyeglasses perfectly cleaned and shined so I could see every pixel projected at larger than life size. But unless I was willing to drive,  it would not be happening.

Then I heard something great: because the movie was partially financed by the fine folks at Hulu, beginning Saturday the documentary would be streamed for all Hulu members to see. As I are one,  this morning after waking up – and admittedly it was a late morning because of the Friday night high school broadcast of Wildcat Football which got me back home after midnight - I remembered it had started. Indeed, it was the first thing that popped up when I activated Hulu on my TiVo set-top box.

I even ventured out to get my breakfast tacos so I would have a totally Texan Saturday morning at my own pace before settling in to watch my favorite band ever.  I can't think of any other way to have started this Saturday morning. Here's the link to watch it yourself.

BONUS:  here's a video from the UK Premiere.