Alistair Donald comments on Wingspan

Oh what could have been...

"The amount of vintage footage that we had to work with was beyond belief. The stuff from Australia could have made a four hour documentary because the film crew just shot everything.

Early on, Mary and I found a researcher who helped us round up odds and ends from all over the world. We had to get most of the TV stuff from private collectors because the BBC had erased all their old videotapes in order to use them again, if you can believe that.

Initially the production unit was enthusiastic about Wingspan being a theatrical release due to the staggering amount of film we had. Paul wouldn't even listen to the idea. I imagine the Broad Street fiasco turned him sour on movies. There was also talk of marketing the project as a multi disc DVD but again, Paul was disinclined. He said he didn't want to do another Beatles Anthology.

After ABC came onboard, all other considerations collapsed. They wanted a one shot TV special, and they wouldn't even look at anything over ninety minutes. They kept telling us to edit it down, and we grew more and more frustrated every time we had to make another cut.

There were other problems as well. Paul had his heart set on "Seaside Woman" being shown, but ABC in America felt the promo depicted ethic stereotypes - that's the type of mentality we were up against.

In retrospect, the DVD could have shown a lot more off cut footage. It could have been a two disc affair featuring a lot of the deleted clips, but that's up to Paul. Maybe someday we'll see it."

- Wingspan Director Alistair Donald

 

He has a good idea. (A. Donald) Why don't they release a DVD with an extra hour of footage ? The Beatles Anthology eventually came out on DVD with extra footage I loved it!

 

I think at this point in time everything that could have been contained in an expanded Wingspan DVD will be placed on all of the bonus DVDs for Paul's Deluxe Archive reissues. Of course, at the current pace of 1-2 Deluxe sets per year, it's going to take a decade or more before we get to see all these things. Arnie

 

If you are correct, you have identified the real gripe so far as I am concerned. The length of time it takes for the footage/material to become available. A decade! That is way way too long!

I don't care how these types of things come out nearly as much just having it available in a reasonable amount of time.

I noticed several months ago the Harrison/Scorsese documentary had footage of Harrison/McCartney doing the reunion Beatle harmonies together on the microphone, this was footage not in the Beatles Anthology, but the footage was clearly from that Free As A Bird (making of FAAB). It was only a snippet maybe thirty seconds, but I can always burn my own copy if I want to see all the making of FAAB footage in one segment. It took I think 17 or 18 years for that extra FAAB footage of McCartney/Harrison singing on the microphhone to become available!

Same for Wings and McCartney solo, just get the footage out there so we can see hear it! Harrison's Dark Horse footage, all the solo Beatles videos, get it all on the market while long time fans are still alive for God's sake.

 

Oh well, at least there's YouTube.