“Yesterday” (June 28, 2019): The Beatles never existed, but one man knows their songs.

Aren't ALL Hollywood movies remakes of French films?

 

With Danny Boyle directing I think this has a good chance. Still bummed he’s not doing the next Bond film though. That was too good to be true.

 

There was a great episode of Quantum Leap where the lead character, Sam Beckett, travels back in time and sings "Imagine" to his sister before John has written it. (Ignore the poor guitar miming):

 

WOW! gonna see this!

 

of course! LOL...we know it!

 

what year episode #?

 

what year and episode #?

 

I wouldn’t know about that, but judging from the teaser, Yesterday does look like a remake of Jean-Philippe.

 

Kind of ironic that Ed Sheeran is giving advice on changing the song title to Hey Dude when Ed got caught in real life pinching the chords/feel to a Marvin Gaye song.

 

I would start my first appearance on Ed Sullivan with revolution and ask me why as my openers and come back with I want to tell you to create the MEmania

 

More sane.

 

Season 2 episode 1 of Twilight Zone (the 1980s revival).

 

thanks...I may own this.

 

Any Bernard Purdie appearances in here?

 

Watched it for the first time since it aired!

Spoilers




I do remember Elvis 1 dying in a fistfight with time travel Elvis, but I didn't remember him getting impaled in a guitar...ouch!

 

What a hilarious idea for a movie! I've often dreamed of being able to go back in time and just writing all the Fabs' songs a year before they did.

I bet the music clearance rights must have cost a bloody fortune. I was told by an insider that the 30 songs used in Across the Universe back in 2007 were $330,000 a piece, for a total of $10 million for the entire film. And that's before they hired anybody or shot a frame of the movie.

The trailer looks dynamite -- I can't wait to see it.

 

Related: "Weird Al" Yankovic worked out a way to afford to pay for the rights when he includes a portion of a song in his polka medleys (he included "Hey Jude" in one of them): He figures out the percentage of the time the song takes in the entire medley and (if the rights holder agrees) pays that percentage of the normal clearance fee. Using the above fee, if "Hey Jude" took 5 percent of the medley he'd pay $16,500 for the use of the song in the medley.

The massive implications of small changes to the timeline is a common (and often entertaining) aspect of time travel and time alteration stories. From what it looks like in the trailer, The Beatles (as they were) and everything they did were deleted from history. I think it would have a massive effect on the world of music since not only would their music be gone, but every artist inspired by them would also be changed.

As an example, the first album, Offering, by my favorite group the Carpenters included the song "Ticket To Ride" (a cover of The Beatles song). In this new history what would have replaced the song? More than that, since it was the song that got them attention enough to get a recording contract, does that mean that the Carpenters as the group that we know would not have existed?

The implication of a small change in the timeline was shown in the animated movie Justice League - The Flashpoint Paradox. In the movie someone alters history to prevent the mother of The Flash (Barry Allen) from being murdered when Barry was a child so she lives. However, making that change led to a world that is going to be destroyed in a war between Wonder Woman (and her people) and Aquaman (and his people).

 

I remember that scene from how upset his sister become upon hearing that song, and Al chides Sam for ruining things for his family.

 

I agree with a lot of your time-travel points, but in the real world, the publisher sets the price for whatever they want. They don't necessarily have to say, "hey, our normal price is $500,000, but since you only sang :15 seconds of it, we'll just charge you 1/12th of the normal fee." They could say, "screw you -- the price is $500,000 whether you use 5 seconds or 5 minutes of our song." Sometimes it takes years and years of desperate negotiation to get the price down to something affordable. (That's what ultimately happened with the Wrecking Crew documentary, where the initial music rights were something like $10 million, but after about 7 years they got it down to $3 million or so, which was "almost" affordable.)

There's a lot of discretion with music rights for film & TV: some publishers will let you use the same song several times -- like in the main credits, on a radio, and in the closing credits -- for one fee (as opposed to charging you three times for the same song). But some want to be paid three times. And if you happen to get the rights to several songs from the same publisher, they might make you a deal: like the songs are $100,000 apiece, but if you pay for four, they'll throw one in for half price ($50,000). But there's always publishers who might say, "sorry -- the artist refuses to license the song for any amount of money. Period." I would bet there's a very interesting story as to how they managed to get Sony/ATV Music to sign off on this. (Note that the Beatles would not necessarily be part of the decision, since these are all cover versions.) Some artists who control their own publishing need to be reassured that their music won't be heard in a negative context; Steve Perry almost vetoed the use of "Don't Stop Believing" in The Sopranos, because he hated the idea of it being used in a murder scene. But since they just cut to black, he allowed them to use it (at the last minute).

I worked peripherally on the show (syndication only for Universal) and actually got very choked up on that episode. The key element to that scene was that the sister didn't believe that Scott Bakula was really from the future until he sang her a John Lennon song that had not been released yet. Back in the 1980s, when this episode was produced, Lennon's death was still very fresh in our minds, so that moment had a lot of tragic overtones.

 

Sadly, I used to ponder that;
In this post-"singing competition' world we live in, it's as if The Beatles don't even MATTER anymore...
I would give the movie credit if they incorporate THIS idea into the movie...
making a little commentary on the state of music would be nice....BUT...
I doubt THAT'S gonna happen here....

 

There was also an episode of "American Dad" where Roger, in the early '70's, find a tape of Disco's Greatest Hits......

 

At least it is realistic that without the Beatles all we have is Coldplay and Ed Sheeran. A true nightmare scenario.

 

There was a cool little 1/2 hour film I ran across on YouTube where Lennon (played by Ian Hart) quit the Beatles in 1962 or so. I can't look for it on YouTube (it's blocked at work...I guess they want us to work rather than waste time on the internet ). Anyway, here is the IMBD page for it: "Playhouse Presents" Snodgrass (TV Episode 2013) - IMDb

I won't give away the plot but I really enjoyed it and you will too if your a Beatles fan.

 

Coldplay wouldn't exist without The Beatles. For that matter, the face of popular music would be radically different with The Beatles. But this a light romantic fantasy meant to push all the expected emotional buttons. Don't expect much in the way of deep thought here.