George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011)

Director:

Martin Scorsese

Release Date:

4 October 2011 (UK)

Genre:

Documentary | Biography | Music

Plot:

Inter-cut with archive material, friends, family and associates of the musician tell the story of his life and how spirituality became such a major part of it.

Plot Keywords:

Friend | Musician | Spirituality | Girl With Glasses | Fame

Awards:

Won 2 Primetime Emmys. Another 4 wins & 9 nominations

Cast

George Harrison	...	Himself
Paul McCartney	...	Himself
John Lennon	...	Himself
Ringo Starr	...	Himself
Louise Harrison	...	Herself
Harold Harrison	...	Himself
Harry Harrison	...	Himself
Peter Harrison	...	Himself
Olivia Harrison	...	Herself
Dhani Harrison	...	Himself
Eric Clapton	...	Himself
Pattie Boyd	...	Herself
Pete Best	...	Himself (archive footage)
Cynthia Lennon	...	Herself (archive footage) (as Cynthia Powell)
Julian Lennon	...	Himself (archive footage)
Mimi Smith	...	Herself (archive footage) (as Mary Elizabeth Smith)
Stuart Sutcliffe	...	Himself (archive footage)
Astrid Kirchherr	...	Herself
Klaus Voormann	...	Himself
Neil Aspinall	...	Himself
Mal Evans	...	Himself (archive footage)
Brian Epstein	...	Himself (archive footage)
Maureen Starkey	...	Herself (archive footage) (as Maureen Cox)
Jane Asher	...	Herself (archive footage)
George Martin	...	Himself
Derek Taylor	...	Himself (archive footage)
Joan Taylor	...	Herself
Gene Vincent	...	Himself (archive footage)
Jimmie Nicol	...	Himself (archive footage)
Mick Jagger	...	Himself (archive footage)
Peter Brown	...	Himself (archive footage)
Ravi Shankar	...	Himself
Lakshmi Shankar	...	Herself (archive footage)
Alla Rakha	...	Herself (archive footage)
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi	...	Himself (archive footage)
Ken Scott	...	Himself
Jane Birkin	...	Herself
Suki Potier	...	Herself (archive footage)
Jack MacGowran	...	Himself (archive footage)
David Hemmings	...	Himself (archive footage)
Gillian Hills	...	Herself (archive footage)
Yoko Ono	...	Herself
Jimi Hendrix	...	Himself (archive footage)
Bob Dylan	...	Himself (archive footage)
Joe Cocker	...	Himself (archive footage)
Linda McCartney	...	Herself (archive footage) (as Linda Eastman)
Mukunda Goswami	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Matt Cimber	...	Himself (archive footage)
Ray Cooper	...	Himself
Rod Davis	...	Himself (archive footage)
Len Garry	...	Himself (archive footage)
Terry Gilliam	...	Himself
Billy Graham	...	Himself (archive footage)
Eric Griffiths	...	Himself (archive footage)
Colin Hanton	...	Himself (archive footage)
Eric Idle	...	Himself
Jim Keltner	...	Himself
Jeff Lynne	...	Himself
Jayne Mansfield	...	Herself (archive footage)
Tom Petty	...	Himself
Princess Margaret	...	Herself (archive footage)
Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother	...	Herself (archive footage)
Keith Relf	...	Himself (archive footage)
Pete Shotton	...	Himself (archive footage)
Phil Spector	...	Himself
Jackie Stewart	...	Himself
Ivan Vaughan	...	Himself (archive footage)

Directed by
Martin Scorsese

Produced by
Margaret Bodde	....	executive producer
Rachel Cooper	....	associate producer
Erin Edeiken	....	associate producer
Blair Foster	....	supervising producer
Olivia Harrison	....	producer
Tia Lessin	....	consulting producer
Scott Pascucci	....	executive producer: Grove Street
Martin Scorsese	....	producer
Nigel Sinclair	....	producer
Emma Tillinger Koskoff	....	executive producer: Sikelia Productions

Cinematography by
Martin Kenzie
Robert Richardson

Film Editing by
David Tedeschi

Production Management
Michele Farinola	....	executive in charge of production
Glen Zipper	....	executive in charge of production

Sound Department
Bob Chefalas	....	sound re-recording mixer
Chris Fielder	....	assistant sound editor
Tom Fleischman	....	sound re-recording mixer
Dudley Houlden	....	sound recordist
Bret Johnson	....	sound re-recordist
Michael Miller	....	adr mixer
Juan Nunez	....	sound recordist
Barry O'Sullivan	....	sound mixer
Philip Stockton	....	supervising sound editor
Paul Tirone	....	sound re-recordist
Stuart Wilson	....	sound recordist
Allan Zaleski	....	sound editor

Visual Effects by
Christian Kontis	....	digital restoration artist
Robert Legato	....	visual effects

Camera and Electrical Department
Russell Carpenter	....	camera operator
John Colley	....	gaffer: UK
Paul Daley	....	gaffer
Stuart Dryburgh	....	camera operator
Hugues Espinasse	....	first assistant camera
Simon Harding	....	camera operator
Ellen Kuras	....	camera operator
Robert Leacock	....	additional cinematographer
Rob Muthamia	....	assistant camera
David Penfold	....	first assistant camera
Robert Richardson	....	camera operator
Lisa Rinzler	....	camera operator
Harris Savides	....	camera operator
Peter Suschitzky	....	camera operator

Editorial Department
Molle DeBartolo	....	digital intermediate producer
Joe Gawler	....	digital intermediate colorist
Alan Lowe	....	assistant editor
Ryan McMahon	....	additional on-line editor
Benjamin Murray	....	on-line editor
Michael J. Palmer	....	first assistant editor
Francis Power	....	post-production supervisor
Justin Krohn	....	assistant editor (uncredited)

Music Department
Jennifer L. Dunnington	....	music editor
Giles Martin	....	additional music producer
Giles Martin	....	music production
Joe Rudge	....	music clearances

Other crew
Jim Berkenstadt	....	historical consultant
Marissa Branson	....	additional research
Jenny Carchman	....	additional production supervisor
Trevor Davidoski	....	production coordinator
Sam Dwyer	....	additional research
Harry Eagle	....	production assistant: uk
Steve Fletcher	....	database consultant
Lisa Frechette	....	assistant: Martin Scorsese
Danny Gardner	....	production assistant
Mátyás Haraszti	....	lead translator
Ben Holden	....	representative: Spitfire Pictures
Anne Hummel	....	additional research
Tia Lessin	....	consultant: executive producer
Allison Niedermeier	....	production assistance
Richard Radford	....	chief archivist
Annie Salsich	....	additional research
Adriano Valentini	....	production assistant
Andrew Wright	....	additional research

Thanks
Anna Lascurain	....	special thanks

Production Companies

• Grove Street Pictures
• Spitfire Pictures
• Sikelia Productions
• Grove Street Productions

Distributors

• Audio Visual Entertainment (2011) (Greece) (theatrical)
• Kadokawa Pictures (2011) (Japan) (theatrical)
• British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) (2011) (UK) (TV)
• Entertainment One Benelux (2011) (Netherlands) (DVD)
• Entertainment One Benelux (2011) (Netherlands) (DVD) (Blu-ray)
• Front Row Filmed Entertainment (2011) (United Arab Emirates) (all media) (Middle East)
• Home Box Office (HBO) (2012) (Netherlands) (TV) (limited)
• Home Box Office (HBO) (2011) (Canada) (TV) (cable)
• Home Box Office (HBO) (2011) (USA) (TV) (cable)
• Lionsgate Home Entertainment (2011) (UK) (DVD)
• Nordisk Film (2011) (Finland) (DVD)
• StudioCanal (2011) (Germany) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Bonded Services  film storage
• De Lane Lea  post-production sound services
• Dolby Laboratories  sound mix
• POP Sound  ADR recording

Also Known As:

Runtime:

USA:208 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White (archive footage) | Color

Certification:

UK:12A | Netherlands:AL | Finland:K-3 | Japan:G | Singapore:NC-16 | South Korea:12

Company:

Grove Street Pictures

Trivia:

Harrison's widow, Olivia, who collaborated on the film, has said: "I almost don't want people to see it. It's like showing everybody into your most private place."

Movie Connections:

Features The Concert for Bangladesh (1972)

an in-depth film about an elusive but pleasant spirit

Why did Martin Scorsese decide to make a film about George Harrison? Why did he decide to make a film about the Dalai Lama? Or The Age of Innocence? While this is another documentary about a rock-star icon, following along from Scorsese's own The Last Waltz, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan and Shine a Light, it's closest in style and tone to the Dylan doc, as a profile of a man of his time and how he lived through it.

Unlike Dylan, who is a mystery even to the most curious of fans (or just one of the more obnoxious, depends how you look at it), George Harrison seems to be, from accounts and interviews, to be a man of spiritual and artistic integrity who had various concerns and ideas, and he expressed them throughout his life - or, if not in the recording studio or as a producer of films, then with his garden. One may not be able to find the link between the sarcastic (if 'quiet') kid from A Hard Day's Night with an old man in a garden (or for that matter the old man having to defend his life against a burglar, as he did, in 1999), but it's all here.

I may not have found Harrison quite as enlightening as Bob Dylan, but should he be? Maybe in his own simple way though Scorsese finds a more direct path or personal link to him through the spiritual side. Harrison was someone who found through the Maharishi, Indian music, transcendental meditation, some kind of path through the noise of Western civilization.

The clash is what's interesting here, and Scorsese knows it too. While the director is fascinated with BIG emotions in his films (see anything with De Niro for more on that), he's also fascinated how someone operates with a calm demeanor on the surface burning with emotion underneath. Harrison was the guitarist for the Beatles and then when the break-up happened, he had to break-off and find another way. He was still a pop star, and his first solo album, the great 'All Things Must Pass' went into the top ten of the charts. But how did he reconcile a working class British-Liverpool upbringing with the teachings of Haria Krishna?

Of course, the first hour of this massive three 1/2 hour films are dedicated to him and the Beatles, and it's wonderful to see the footage, hear the songs, find out some details about the songs Harrison wrote for the group (i.e. the first song he ever wrote, 'If I Needed Someone'). Then the second part is about the spiritual search, or what's close to it, mixed with the start of the solo career (and of course some of the famous tales of romantic highs and lows via Patti and Eric Clapton are included).

There's a section for the film-part of his career, where as a man of faith, though not exactly (it's complicated you see) he helped pay "the most ever anyone's paid for a movie ticket" for Monty Python's Life of Brian. And then about his gardening, his second wife Olivia (and - kind of a shock to me - the candor which Olivia, who was a producer on the film and wrote the book spin-off of the film, talks about Harrison's infidelities in their marriage, something I really admired), and other things like friendships, the burglary in 1999, and his untimely passing from cancer.

It wouldn't be a Scorsese movie without music, and hey, it's George Harrison so there's lots of good stuff here (sadly, for me, no 'I Got My Mind Set on You'), and there's the director via editor David Tedeschi's marvelous way of navigating the story with music. Watch the opening and how 'All Things Must Pass' goes over the WW2 footage, then mixed in with some of the more traditional music of the 1940's period to see some of the brilliance with which Scorsese does this. And the interviews are mostly illuminating and nice, once or twice piling on the adulation (perhaps as one might expect) while still giving some moments for the quirks Harrison had - such as a story Tom Petty tells about ukuleles - and some of his flaws as a man and artist.

I'm not sure if for fans the film will shine a whole lot of new light, though for newcomers it should provide the bulk of know-how. What's great about the film ultimately is the thread of the story, and how the filmmaker is not afraid to jump around, or jump ahead, and expect the audience to keep up. It's not as straight-thru as, say, The Beatles Anthology. We're seeing a life in various dimensions, time-spans, and it's as if not more post-modern than the Dylan doc. It's joyous, meditative, somber, happy, funny, a little daft and a little less than perfect. I can't wait to revisit the life and work.