VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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PAUL McCARTNEY REALLY IS DEAD: THE LAST TESTAMENT OF GEORGE HARRISON
Directed by Joel Gilbert
​Released 2010
Picture
Do bear in mind that this movie is supposed to be funny.
​
Just when you think that the idea of conspiracies being used to discredit proper analysis can't get any more hysterical, someone named Joel Gilbert comes along and releases Paul McCartney Really is Dead: The Last Testament of George Harrison. The first reek of this rather grim jest emerged from the crypts back in October 1969 when a listener contacted a Detroit Disc Jockey, informing him of all sorts of odd "clues" about the death of Beatle Paul nearly three years earlier. Because that was a time when a lot of decent people had some legitimate concerns about the nature of their own reality, the story was deemed to have legs, as it were, and became the subject of all sorts of speculation. After all, the argument went, if THEY could lie about the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, then surely THEY could be lying about McCartney. In a flash, all sorts of evidence sprang up, from album cover symbolism to straight-forward lyrics to hidden meanings to backward masking on the vinyl LPs. Finally, Paul McCartney stepped out of his Scottish farm house and denied that he was dead, that he had ever been dead, or that being dead anytime soon was on his list of immediate plans. 
    Then in 1980, John Lennon was shot and killed.
    Then in 1999, George Harrison was stabbed.
    Then in 2001, George Harrison died.
    Then in 2005, a company called Highway 61 Entertainment and headed by a guy named Joel Gilbert, reportedly received a package containing two audio cassettes with a narration claiming to be from one Mr. George Harrison. Gilbert--or someone purporting to be Gilbert--appears briefly at the beginning of this documentary to state that he has been unable to successfully authenticate the voice on the tapes as being that of Beatle George. The rest of the film is the narration accompanied by a mix of some fairly common and a bit of rare footage, most of it familiar to Beatles fans, although the story that comes out is as wild as anything we've heard lately, I must admit.
    Naturally I've heard all of this before. Chances are you have as well. Gary Patterson published a neat book a few years back called The Walrus was Paul, all about this great hoax and the clues that substantiated it. This film, however, takes things to an absurd extreme, in the process, it pains me to admit, evoking a few guilty laughs along the way. For instance? Well, when the MI5 guy, Maxwell, takes George, John and Ringo to the scene of the tragedy, he points to Paul's decapitated body and says, "Looks like a walrus, don't he?" to which a horrified and furious Lennon responds, "I am the walrus!" 
    The narrating Harrison further claims that all of Lennon's post-Beatles activities were intended to prove that Lennon was insane and hence should not be held responsible for leaving all those ghastly clues all over the bloody albums. 
    Similarly we learn that the Paul impostor, William Campbell, was taken by the three real Beatles to India under the pretext of seeking enlightenment, the REAL reason being that they hoped to channel the dead soul of McCartney through the body of Campbell, or "Faul" as he became known. 
   Likewise, it turns out that photographer Linda Eastman blackmailed Faul into marrying her once she discovered that he was a fake. Indeed, the reason for Lennon's assassination was that he had dared defy Maxwell by threatening to finally reveal the truth to that galaxy of fans. 
    It's all quite ridiculous and not a little ghoulish, especially when you notice that the narrator--who sounds more like someone doing a parody of a Beatle voice than any actual member of the group--gets the chronology for many of these events wrong. Still, it's kind of quaint listening to the backwards stuff, like "Turn me on, deadman," although I for one refuse to believe that Harrison had originally planned to name "Taxman" "Taxidermist," as this movie claims. 
    All in all, it's a stupid concept for a documentary and if I had actually paid anything to watch it you can bet I would have felt ripped off, although not entirely disappointed. After all, Gilbert is the guy who claims to have discovered the real live Elvis and who is certain that Bob Dylan's famous motorcycle accident was staged to allow the singer to go through drug rehab. 
    Mythology has its place, even in pop music. It might have been more clever, however, to have staged an original hoax rather than to dig up this old tripe after so many years. 
    Oh, by the way: the license plate on the VW on the Abbey Road album that reads 28IF--indicating that McCartney would have been twenty-eight years old if had he lived--is fallacious. Paul would have been twenty-nine. Sorry. 
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links