Peter Jackson Talks Getting Back The Beatles

There can be no doubt that New Zealand director Jackson, after his intensive review of 130 hours of audio and 57 hours of long-hidden video of the band at their career hinge point of January 1969, has no non-Beatle equal in knowledge of the group, writes Fred Schruers in a Los Angeles Times entertainment story.

If he has a humble brag it’s his, “I have no criticising of the Beatles in my DNA,” but he’s no mere fan boy, according to Schruers. His three-part, six-plus-hours The Beatles: Get Back documentary series on Disney+ is as unvarnished and all-inclusive as he could make it.

That these perspectives are available to us all is largely thanks to the brain trust at the Beatles-founded Apple Corps choosing Jackson to direct the project. It’s not only his place in the front rank of the art form – thanks to bringing his storied technological expertise to the epochal Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies. Equally key in his filmography is his painstakingly restored, deeply humane 2019 World War I documentary, They Shall Not Grow Old.

Original article by Fred Schruers, Los Angeles Times, June 17, 2022.

Photo by Linda McCartney.