The Film Club Read Online Free PDF

discovery.
    I told Jesse about seeing them at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto in 1965. I’ve never seen anything like it, the screams, the explosion of flashbulbs, John Lennon hamming his way through “Long Tall Sally.” The teenage girl next to me snatched so violently at my binoculars she almost took my head with them.
    I told him about interviewing George Harrison myself in 1989 when he released his last album; how, waiting in his office at Handmade Records, I had almost passed out when I turned around and there he was, a slim, middle-aged man with thick black hair. “Just a minute,” he said in that accent you heard on the Ed Sullivan Show , “I’ve got to comb my hair.”
    I tell Jesse how “right” they got it when they made A Hard Day’s Night —from shooting in gleaming black and white, to getting the boys to wear the trend-setting black suits with white shirts, to the use of hand-held cameras to give the movie a documentary, a real-life, feel. That jiggly six o’clock–news style influenced a generation of filmmakers.
    I point him toward a few delightful snippets: George Harrison (the best actor of the bunch, according to the director, Richard Lester) and the scene with the awful shirts; John Lennon snorting at the top of a Coca-Cola bottle in the train. (Few people got the joke then.) But my favourite part, easily, is the Beatles running down a flight of stairs and bursting outdoors into an open field. With “Can’t Buy Me Love” soaring in the background, it is a moment so irresistible, so ecstatic, that it fills me, even to this day, with the feeling of being near to—but unable to possess—something profoundly important. After all these years, I still don’t know what that “something” is but I feel its presence when I watch this movie.
    Just before I put the film on, I mention that in 2001, only a few years ago, the remaining Beatles released a collection of the group’s number-one hits. It went straight to the top of the charts in thirty-four different countries . Canada, the U.S., Iceland, all over Europe. This from a band that broke up thirty-five years ago.
    Then I say what I’ve wanted to say all my life. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Beatles!”
    Jesse watched the film in polite silence, at the end of which he said simply, “Dreadful.” He went on. “And John Lennon was the worst of the bunch.” (Here he mimicked Lennon with astonishing accuracy.) “A totally embarrassing man.”
    I was speechless. The music, the film, its look, its style . . . But most of all, it was the fucking Beatles!
    â€œIndulge me for a second, okay?” I said. I fished around in my Beatles CDs until I found “It’s Only Love” on the Rubber Soul CD. I put it on and played it for him (my finger raised to capture his attention should it meander for a millisecond).
    â€œWait, wait,” I cried ecstatically. “Wait for the hook! Listen to that voice, it’s like barbwire!”
    Overtop of the music I shouted, “Is that not simply the best voice, ever, in rock and roll!”
    At the song’s conclusion, I subsided into my seat. After a religious pause and in a voice grasping for normalcy (it still kills me, that middle-eight), I said, “So what do you think?”
    â€œThey’ve got good voices.”
    Good voices?
    â€œBut how does it make you feel ?” I cried.
    Appraising me cautiously with his mother’s eyes, he said, “Honestly?”
    â€œHonestly.”
    â€œNothing.” Pause. “I feel nothing at all.” He placed a conciliatory hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
    Was there a look of concealed amusement on his lips? Had I turned into a ranting old coot already?

3
    Late one afternoon, it was nearly six o’clock and no Jesse. I went down the stairs and knocked on his door.
    â€œJesse,” I said. “Can I come