Morgan Neville on Paul McCartney: Man on the Run

0:00Adam Kempenaar:I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him.

0:08Morgan Neville:If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.

0:11Adam Kempenaar:That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.

0:52Adam Kempenaar:It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.

1:29Adam Kempenaar:Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:36Morgan Neville:This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world.

1:50Adam Kempenaar:The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Film Spotting is presented by Regal Unlimited. Regal Unlimited is the all-you-can-watch movie subscription pass that pays for itself in just two visits. See any standard 2D movie anytime with no blackout dates or restrictions. Save on tickets. Save on snacks. members get 10 % off all non-alcoholic concession items. Sign up now in the Regal app or at regmovies.com slash unlimited.

2:32Adam Kempenaar:Hey, film spotters, Adam here. I'm excited to share with you my conversation with Morgan Neville about his new film, Paul McCartney, Man on the Run. You may know Neville from his Oscar-winning Doc, 20 Feet from Stardom, his film about Fred Rogers, Won't You Be My Neighbor, and Anthony Bourdain, Roadrunner. Man on the Run starts where most Paul McCartney documentaries might end, with the breakup of the Beatles. We talk about that choice, our love of Paul McCartney's bass lines, and much more. Here is that conversation. One, two, three, five. The Beatles have been my whole life, really. When we split up, I thought, I'll never write another note of music, ever.

3:19Adam Kempenaar:I've seen a fair number of rock documentaries, usually about baby boomer musicians, and quite often you get the origin story moment where they reveal how everything changed once they saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan in 1964. You know, they bought a guitar, they grew their hair out, they started a band or joined a band, and the path was set. You were not alive when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan in 1964, but I'm curious if you have a documentary filmmaker origin story moment?

3:49Morgan Neville:God, I mean, there were a few documentaries that really got me excited early on. Sherman's March was actually one of them. And Hearts and Minds was another one, too. Like, I think I saw both those when I was in college. And they just made me realize that documentary was more than just kind of what it was at the time, which is kind of old school PBS-y documentary. I've made many films for PBS and it's great, but, but it was definitely when I started documentary was like the spinach of filmmaking and you know, it's, it's, uh, come a long way.

4:28Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. For my last birthday, my wife got me a record player. So I'm one of those guys now who's buying vinyl like so many people. Yeah. I missed, I missed that window really by the time I was old enough to spend my own money. I was buying cassettes and then CDs. But as a young kid, I listened to my parents' albums. The standouts were the birds' greatest hits, who could resist those harmonies, and Rubber Soul and the White Album. And what's so great still about the American version of Rubber Soul is, you know, I would come to learn much later, is that it replaced Paul's Drive My Car with, I think, the far superior I've Just Seen a Face as the opening track.

5:12Adam Kempenaar:And between that and Dear Prudence on the White Album, I was hooked as a Beatles fan. So I asked you about your origin story moment as a doc filmmaker. What about your entree to the Beatles? I mean, my dad was a big Beatles fan.

5:30Morgan Neville:And he had me very young. My parents did. He'd seen the Beatles, I think, in Indianapolis in 1964. And then we had a jukebox in our house growing up. And it was full of Beatles 45s. I particularly remember eight days a week just playing that all the time. It sounded great on the jukebox. And then I started playing music when I was young, too. So I was listening to music. I was a huge Beatles fan. And then some of the first music I ever bought were Wings Records. I mean, I remember London Town being one of the first three albums I ever bought. But my dad had a bunch of the other Wings Records. So I was kind of loving that.

6:12Morgan Neville:But the fact that Paul was still making music and putting a lot of music, you know, by the late 70s, John and George weren't. So, you know, Paul was the one who was still really adding a lot. So I loved that. And then, you know, this was kind of making this film was full circle for me, going back to all the music that I've kind of been listening to my whole life.

6:36Adam Kempenaar:Have you heard Ethan Hawke's theory that you can't actually be like a Paul guy or a John guy that you can't have a favorite Beatle? You have to just collectively love the Beatles. I'm not going to be able to repeat it or articulate it as well as he does, but I've seen it recently and it's quite brilliant. So I'm curious if you have heard that. And then also, despite that, is Paul definitely your favorite Beatle?

6:57Morgan Neville:well and i actually talked to ethan about this so really yeah we were at the telluride film festival together when this film premiered and you know i i have a theory that there's kind of a beetle for every time in your life so when you're a little kid you're in the yellow submarine and octopus's garden and like ringo's your guy he's like goofy and little kids think he's funny And then when you're like an angsty teenager, John's your guy because he is cynical and wants to stick it to the man and he is hard edged. And then when you're in your 20s and you're kind of trying to figure out the philosophy of your life and the spirituality of your life, George is your guy because he's on those journeys.

7:41Morgan Neville:And then when you get married and have kids, Paul's your guy because he's kind of the adult a little bit and kind of the guy who's always put family very front and center in his life. That being said, I don't need to choose. Like, I do agree with Ethan. We get them all. I think all of it. Yeah. Why do you have to pick? Everybody wants to pick sides and critics always were picking sides because it made for good copy. But you can love it all. I do. Yeah.

8:08Adam Kempenaar:Yeah. I guess I've always considered myself a Paul guy just because, and you can probably see the bass on the wall behind me. I, in seventh grade, I had a group of friends and we decided that we wanted to start a band and nobody had picked up a bass. That was the way I was going to be in the band is if I bought a bass and took bass lessons. And since I already loved the Beatles and I was starting to pick up what he was doing a little bit melodically on the bass and later would, would really discover how amazing he was. as a bass player, that was when I really got turned on to him and even more turned on to the Beatles music.

8:45Adam Kempenaar:So I was in bands all through junior high, high school and college and just became really enamored with him. So you mentioned that you were listening to a lot of wings. Where did the idea originate, though, to focus on this period, this really tumultuous period, but also this really creatively fruitful decade in the Beatles, in the wake of the Beatles breakup.

9:09Morgan Neville:Well, first of all, I'm a bass player too. Nice. Okay. And I played in bands from the time I was 12. So as a bass player, McCartney is, you know, a God. And, you know, my son's a bass player too. I heard him downstairs practicing silly love songs and good night tonight. And some of Paul's great seventies bass lines a couple of weeks ago. And I was like, OK, I've totally succeeded as a father then because passing it along because Paul is an amazing bass player. So that part of it, I've always loved and connected with him in that way. But this film, literally, I got the call from Paul's manager saying Paul's interested in doing something about the Wings period.

9:53Morgan Neville:Like that was it. Like, no, you know, I had to figure out what that was. And when I thought about it, I instantly thought, well, the story really begins when the Beatles break up, you know, and in that way, I kind of think it's this film is like a sequel to Get Back, you know, that if you look at Get Back is like the last snapshot of where the Beatles were at in 1969. There's friction, but there's humor and there's love and all these different things. And they're just brothers who are growing apart and they want to have their own lives. and I think this film kind of begins what happens when that goes away as John says in the documentary Paul's the one that wanted it to stay together more than anybody and so I think it's that journey for him out of the Beatles and then to me I instantly thought well the story ends with John's passing because then he's not trying to escape the Beatles anymore I mean it's called Man on the Run because he's trying to run away from the shadow of the Beatles.

10:56Morgan Neville:And when John dies, he stops running. I mean, he breaks up wings. He starts recording with George Martin and Ringo again. He embraces that part of his life because he's not being hounded by everybody saying, why don't you guys just get back together again? So I kind of instantly thought that's really the story. It's a decade. It's the seventies. When I sat down to talk to Paul about it, I told him that and he said, sounds good you know i mean it was just like okay you you figure it out but i think in a way this film also happened because of get back that i think i think paul understanding that that chapter of the beatles story wasn't as terrible as everybody said it was and if you go back and look at the original edit of let it be the original film of those sessions it's all the bad stuff you It's basically a film about divorce.

11:50Morgan Neville:And I think the Get Back Project let Paul see that it wasn't just bad. It was everything all at once. And this chapter, the next chapter of his life, was also painful in a lot of ways. He had to sue his former bandmates to get out of the Apple contract. And critics were angry at him for breaking up the Beatles and for not being the Beatles. and for, you know, people were angry at Linda, people were angry at everything. Everybody was just heartbroken. So there was a lot of the tuperation about everything. So I think he thought, well, maybe it wasn't as bad. And sure enough, looking at it, like, yes, there were lots of bad things, but if you look at the life he and Linda created in Scotland and kind of their new family and everything else, it actually, as Stella says in the film, You know, it was some of the happiest years of their lives, probably the happiest years of their lives.

12:48Adam Kempenaar:Perfect transition, because I wanted to ask you, where does form start to enter the equation for you? Did you always know that you wanted to take the archival route that that we would only hear Paul and others, but we would never see them? And that's that's great if that's the approach you want to take. But it only works if you've got the archival material to pull from. And while Paul McCartney is obviously a very public figure, you really wouldn't have the movie that you have without all that personal footage that was shot.

13:19Morgan Neville:Yeah. And fortunately, Paul married a photographer. So, you know, Linda was a rock photographer, but she took pictures of everything. You know, there are photos in the documentary of like their cupboard, you know, and what their house looked like. And they also had home movie cameras. And early on, I really dug into the archive and I saw how rich and deep it was. And so very early on, I said, I think I just want to do this with audio only. I didn't shoot any interviews, you know, so it was audio kind of from the beginning then. But part of it, too, was that I wanted to try and get Paul to a place of intimacy and kind of contemplation that just is way more difficult with cameras and lights in your face.

14:08And so the way I did it is I would just meet up with him at different times with the two of us in a room with the microphone, and we would just talk for a few hours.

14:18Morgan Neville:and part of it is you know it was loose and it was revealing and i i think i was able to get paul to a place that where he's not just talking about the stuff he normally talks about yeah and so that just would have been a lot more difficult with cameras but then also the last thing i love about not having on-camera interviews is if you're not cutting to 80 year old people talking about 50 years ago it becomes less retrospective and more of like a present tense story where you're just immersed in that time period and it feels like it's unfolding in front of you as opposed to looking back on it.

14:58Morgan Neville:I really liked what that did to the film.

15:01Adam Kempenaar:I really enjoyed the film. There's so much more we could dig into, including just riffing on Paul McCartney bass lines. Maybe another time, Morgan, I would enjoy that.

15:10Morgan Neville:Absolutely.

15:11Adam Kempenaar:Best of luck with the film. Thank you. People thought we were totally crazy, but that was our way. and the word spread that like, this was a good show. Paul McCartney, away!

15:22Morgan Neville:Well, it wasn't bad.

15:27Adam Kempenaar:My thanks again to Morgan Neville. Paul McCartney, Man on the Run is available exclusively on Amazon Prime. If you get a chance to see it and would like to share your thoughts, we'd love to hear from you. Feedback at filmspotting.net. Thanks for listening and watching.

15:41Morgan Neville:This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

15:54Adam Kempenaar:I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him.

16:03Morgan Neville:If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would.

16:05Adam Kempenaar:That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 1969. Malcolm and Martin are gone. America is in crisis. And at Morehouse College, the students make their move. These students, including a young Samuel L. Jackson, locked up the members of the Board of Trustees, including Martin Luther King Sr.

16:46Adam Kempenaar:It's the true story of protest and rebellion in Black American history that you'll never forget. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins, and If You Can Hear Me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers. Most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you.

17:23Adam Kempenaar:Listen to If You Can Hear Me on my iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? I've just been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.