"In His Life: The John Lennon Story"

NBCi presents

December 01, 2000

Join "In His Life: The John Lennon Story" writer and executive producer Michael O'Hara for a chat about the NBC movie, his opinion of the Beatles and why he thinks the world is still fascinated with them.

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NBC Live: Hi there and thank you for joining us. Today we are chatting with Michael O'Hara, writer and executive producer of "In His Life--The John Lennon Story," which is airing on NBC Sunday Dec. 3 at 9 PM ET/8 PM CT. And now, please welcome Michael!

Michael: Hello everybody, and I'm happy to be here tonight!

Mystery Girl: Why do you think that after 20 years, we (the public) are still so fascinated with John?

Michael: You know, I think John is one of the greatest artistic figures of the 20th century, and I think that not only are we interested in him now, but we will still be 200 years from now. Someone asked me who the audience was for this movie--baby boomers, or just Beatles fans--and I answered that it's kind of the same audience that would have been attracted to a movie about Mozart or any great artistic figure of the ages. I think Lennon's legacy and the legacy of The Beatles will go on for centuries. I put them in the category of Charles Dickens.

Nightshade7: Hiya Michael, I am looking forward to the movie on Sunday. My question is how did you come up with the idea to do this, and why John Lennon?

Michael: I came up with the idea almost by accident. I was surfing the net one day and I found the story about John Lennon's first guitar being auctioned at Sotheby's in London. At the end of the story, there was a little anecdote about how John got his first guitar, and it mentioned his mother Julia and his Aunt Mimi. Now I've been a really big Beatles fan my entire life, but never really paid much attention to the personal side of The Beatles. It was always really more about the music. About a week after that, I was in a used bookstore, and in a bargain bin there was a biography of John Lennon. I picked it up and read it. I found the whole early part of Lennon's life, up until he became a superstar in 1964, really fascinating because it was so dramatic. I didn't realize what a troubled early life he had. So as a dramatist, I was attracted to that aspect of John Lennon, and I felt I had never seen it on screen before. Basically, I went out and sold that concept to the network.

Space: What sort of life do you think John would have had if he hadn't been shot?

Michael: I'm not sure. He was starting to record again, and I think he was doing some of the best work of his career. John would have been 60 if he had lived, and it would be difficult to say what he would have done. He was a very interesting character, forever changing and growing and trying to escape the demons he lived with since he was 3 years old. It shows some of the influences that shaped Lennon's life, both as a musician and as a human being.

Len: How did you find the information you wanted to make this film?

Michael: There's an enormous public record out there on The Beatles and on John Lennon. There have been over 500 books written, and I read close to 40 of them plus a lot of newspaper articles, and I listened to hundreds of hours of tapes. Then I went to Liverpool and did some personal research, talking to people who knew them in the early days. Then there was the structuring of the story to make a movie in more than just a documentary way. When you structure a movie, you have to make your characters multidimensional in a way that actors can act. But it wasn't a hard script to write, because once I identified the story, I really liked Lennon's story. Even though some people will think it takes a hard look at Lennon, I think in the end it's a very affectionate tribute to the man without whitewashing him. I think it's what Lennon would want.

Enigma: Do you see John differently now? If so, how?

Michael: I totally see John differently, in that I have a great deal more compassion for him as a human being and as a superstar. He had all the money in the world and all the fame in the world, and nobody experienced the kind of fame The Beatles did. To this day, I'm amazed at just how incredibly popular they were. Despite all that, John was still deep down fairly unhappy, and the reason for that was essentially abandonment by both his father and his mother. I think that left a hole in his heart that he was never able to fill.

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