Beatles and Bob Dylan as Directors (mid-60s)
The mid-1960s was a time of musical evolution; Dylan had fallen from Folk Hero to electric Judas, crashed his bike and hid away in Woodstock with The Band and the Beatles were retiring from live performance, focusing on more experimental sounds and studio work. Both were also making films. In mid-to-late 1966 Dylan would have been editing his directorial debut Eat the Document after being dissatisfied by renowned verite director D.A. Pennebaker's cut of the film, and September of the following year would see the Beatles shoot their film Magical Mystery Tour to promote their album of the same name. Both films were meant to be TV spots, thus totally around the 50-minute mark, but they are full of fascinating images and ideas drawing from the likes of Godard, Kubrick, Burroughs and Kesey.
Part 1: The Beatles
Magical Mystery Tour is technically the third Beatles film, though the first they directed themselves. I do not care about the other two in this moment, partially because I haven't seen them but also because they were directed by Richard Lester, and fully scripted. A co-directive effort by all four Beatles; John Lennon, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr the film full of psychadelic, surrealist images used to meld a main plot with the performances of the accompanying album's songs. Not to say that the main plot was more realistic, skipping from dreams to reality to somewhere in the middle, it's truly a film you just have to see to wrap your head around, and even so it might take a second try. Of course, the film is largely unscripted, but surprisingly well thought out and decently coherent. I really liked this film despite the occasional middling and the specific British type of Humor I do not care for, sorry Beatles. The crux of the film comes together in editing, which from my understanding was conducted by some other guy not related to the Beatles, who had worked of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove which explains the sequence that hand me furiously googling the shooting date and the release date of 2001 Space Odyssey and telling the walls, "That's like in the stargate sequence!" It's also a sequence in Dr. Strangelove it seems.
Part 2: Bob Dylan
Dylan's New York City was a place of artists and poets, the type of people drawn to the cinema to catch a French New Wave film or a live poetry readings or blues clubs and jazz bars. All these influences synthesized down into a unique tour doc directed by Dylan himself called Eat the Document.
Robbie Robertson, lead guitarist of The Band, who backed Dylan through his 1965-66 and 1974 tours once likened Dylan's music to documentary films in contrast to the Beatles' and their more 'larger than life' sounds "like the later Beatles and Beach Boys [were] making 'movies' [with their sound] ... Bob was more interested in documentary..." I think this quote takes an even more interesting turn when you look at the formula of Eat the Document. The film is comprised of three different 'types' of footage; performance recording, behind the scenes of the tour, and semi-scripted bits of nebulous reality. These three threads are woven into an almost dream-like portrait of a tour, the type of experience you would have if you were on amphetamines and fifteen other things the way rock n rollers were back then. I actually really liked this one, it was bootlegged to a 4-pixals quality and the audio sounded like it was recorded on a lawnmower but the humor in the edit, most of the jokes coming from the juxtaposition of images and play with reality charmed me. I think Bob Dylan would be a wonderful filmmaker if he really wanted to, unfortunately he is often met with horrified executives and scathing critiques. They are so mean to him and for what? Well probably the same reason they booed him during the '65-'66 tours.
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