In 2000, Beatles nut Mark Stanfield achieved the rare feat of releasing a genuinely good Beatles film. He’s the writer behind Two Of Us, an imaginative exercise that dramatised the legendary night, in 1976, when Paul McCartney visited his formerly estranged pal John Lennon at the latter’s apartment in New York. Directed by Let It Be filmmaker Michael Lindsay-Hogg, it’s become a cult favourite among those in the know.
Now a professor at the University Of Minnesota, Stanfield has reworked the film into a new play starring Barry Sloane (Shameless) as John and Jay Johnson (who played John’s cousin Stan Parkes in biopic Nowhere Boy) as Macca. Partly inspired by the 1981 movie My Dinner With Andre, it gives fascinating insight for Fabs fans, as well as a thought-provoking drama that explores universal ideas about fractured relationships, regret and reconciliation. No: he doesn’t fancy doing one for the Gallagher brothers.
Hi Mark! Of all the Beatles periods, why did you focus on this one in particular?
Mark Stanfield: “Back in the ‘90s, I had seen an interview that Paul did on the Charlie Rose show. I couldn’t help but notice that when they brought up the subject of John, his whole face – his tone of voice, everything – changed. I remember thinking: ‘Wow, that’s underneath all the showbiz, thumbs-up Macca and all that stuff. He’s really sad; he’s really lost someone dear to him.’ I thought: ‘There’s something there.’”
John and Paul were in interesting places in ‘76: the former semi-retired from public life, the latter achieving huge chart success with Wings…
“I wanted the audience to be wondering: is John OK? He seems maybe depressed, or something. And what’s in it for Paul? Why is he here and why does he take some of the borderline verbal abuse from John? Even more in the play than the movie, I think Paul ends up being the heroic figure because he’s there to look in on his friend. I remember the period when John had kind of retired. More than indifference, there was usually concern [for him].”
How did you come to revisit Two Of Us for the stage?
“Two years ago, I had just gotten out of the hospital. I had an aneurysm. Within a week of getting home from being in ER for a month, with multiple surgeries and this life-changing event – my Dad died of the same thing and I didn’t know if I was gonna make it – Richard [Short, who helped to adapt the script] and Barry got a hold of me via email. It was a total labour of love way back when I wrote the script for the movie, so that never left me. I’ve always been proud of the movie and it was close to my heart. It felt right.”
Michael Lindsay-Hogg said he’d had no interest in making another “rock ’n’ roll movie” after Let It Be, but he liked Two Of Us because it was more of a story about two friends. Is that how you saw it, too?
“The title is Two Of Us after the Beatles song, but it’s also ‘two of us’ – you know, you and me. Like, just as two people trying to look out for and check in on one another as the years go by. Michael said to me, ‘I’ve received a lot of Beatles scripts over the years and they’re interesting for one reason or another, but I always say ‘no’ because I don’t wanna do something so narrow.’ But the way he saw it – and I think he directed it this way – is that it was about two friends, in their mid-thirties, at that stage in your relationship where there’s a lot of stuff that’s gone under the bridge: a falling out, a reconciliation.”
In an interview with NME earlier this year, Lindsay-Hogg said: “The Beatles had been with us all through the 1960s… Their break-up was staggeringly awful for a lot of people.” Do you think that’s why we can’t leave the subject alone, even if we weren’t there in the ‘60s?
“I think there’s two things. There’s that – we all wanna take a sad song and make it better – and there’s also the challenge to say something new about the Beatles.”
How did you go about reworking the film script for the stage?
“We switched the format on Final Draft software from ‘screenplay’ to ‘play’!” [Laughs]
How did you first get into The Beatles?
“Without getting too maudlin, I had a pretty messed-up childhood. I know I’m not alone in this: I’ve had many conversations with students of mine where they have a similar home life and they’re looking to escape or find some better world to occupy for a while, at least in their imaginations. Not to over-dramatise it, but The Beatles did save me as a kid. That was my little world. I was obsessed with them the way other kids are with Dungeons & Dragons or whatever. They had such joy – for me, that’s the key word.”
Settle the debate for us once and for all: what’s the best Beatles album?
“Alright: it’s ‘Revolver’. Because of where they were in their creative growth process – they were just on fire. It plateaued with ‘Sgt. Pepper’s…’, and in my mind they could have stopped after ‘The White Album’. There were a few essential songs but no essential albums after that. I don’t think ‘Abbey Road’ was essential. It was well-pieced together, but not a traditional Beatles album. I think ‘Abbey Road’ is the beginning of their solo careers…”
‘Two of Us’ opens at the Watford Palace Theatre on Friday (September 13) before visiting HOME Manchester from September 26