A Hard Days Night Film WATCHALONG!!!

A few words from Director Revo and Director DWAYNE!!!
This month is the 60th year anniversary of the release of The Beatles debut film, A Hard Day’s Night. This was at the height of Beatlemania, in 1963 their music created a storm among the youth as their songs took over the Pop Charts on both sides of the Atlantic. A major influence of theirs was Elvis Presley. Elvis Presley had acted in movies of low quality films that were essentially quick money grabs. The Beatles wanted to make films too but wanted to do it on their terms. As John Lennon said, “We didn't even want to make a movie that was going to be bad, and we insisted on having a real writer to write it." With Paul adding, “We were offered one early on called The Yellow Teddy Bears. We were excited but it turned out that the fella involved was going to write all the songs, and we couldn't have that." In terms of film studios, they went with United Artists whom was hot with the new Bond franchise and chose experimental director Richard Lester to direct(As Paul put it "He was an American but had been working in England; he'd worked with The Goons, that was enough for us." For the script, they hired Alun Owen whom based on his television play No Trams to Lime Street could write in their scouse dialect that was almost completely neglected by the BBC at the time(actually funnily enough American reporters would ask them why they weren’t speaking in a British accent but they were, they were speaking their Northern England accent and not the Southern England accent that was common in British media).
Director Richard Lester and writer Alun Owen decided on a fake-documentary style for the film and as such Owen travelled with the band. McCartney said, "Alun hung around with us and was careful to try and put words in our mouths that he might've heard us speak, so I thought he did a very good script." There are some inside jokes for the times, the most prominent of which is that the actor that plays Paul McCartney’s grandfather was at the time famous for Steptoe & Son where he was often derided as a “Dirty Old Man” but in this Beatles film everyone calls him “Clean”. The movie also uses a lot of surrealist humor and imagery that borrows from the experimental art scenes of the time.
Of note, this film also features an appearance of model Pattie Boyd whom on the set of the film struck up a relationship with George Harrison and they would later get married. George Harrison has credited her with the influence of several of his songs he has written and later she would divorce him for Eric Clapton, whom also has a lot of songs that he has credited to being inspired by her. This movie was a commercial and critical success with it getting nominated for 2 Academy Awards! Here We Go!