The Beatles Plus 50 It was fifty years ago today…

Scenes from today’s filming in and around Newquay:

• John Lennon directing a Benny Hill–like sequence where the character Happy Nat the Rubber Man chases bikini-clad women around a swimming pool.
• Ringo Starr arguing on camera with “Aunt Jessie,” played by actress Jessie Hill — whose resume, coincidentally, included episodes of “Benny Hill.”
• Paul McCartney walking and riding a tandem bicycle with “Little George the Photographer,” played by little person George Claydon.

Most of what was shot didn’t make it into the finished product, but it seems like an enjoyable day by the seaside.

George, meanwhile, excused himself from the shenanigans to sit down for an interview with Miranda Ward of the BBC. In the course of this talk, which would be broadcast September 30, he discussed the movie they were making now:

This part that we’ve been doing is mainly just to tie the whole show together, because it’s called a Magical Mystery Tour, then this is just a typical coach tour, but anything can happen. You see, that’s the difference because it’s magic, then we can do anything.

The one they planned to make next:

We wanted to do a film that might mean something to either us or to the people who go to watch it. So the thing is, over the last year or two since Help, we’ve had thousands of ideas but they’ve all been Help and Hard Day’s Night revisited. It’s no good. We’ve got to have something good, how we visualize the film. It’s got to be at least the difference between the song “Help” and “Sgt. Pepper,” as the movie has got to be that progressed too.

And how he felt about being a Beatle:

The Beatles is still something abstract as far as I’m concerned. You know, it’s something that other people see us as The Beatles, and I try to see us as The Beatles but I can’t…when it’s in the midst of all this and people are saying “Beatles this” and “Beatles that,” then I’ve got to accept the thing that they think I’m a Beatle. I’m willing to go along with it, you know, if they want me to be a Beatle then I’ll be one.

Um…thanks for clearing that up, George. How’s that drug-free lifestyle working out for you?