The only fictional movie Paul McCartney has made as a solo artist, Give My Regards To Broad Street is, unfortunately, a mess. But for Beatles/McCartney fans, it can be an interesting mess.
Some background. John Lennon had been assassinated in 1980, and Paul’s band Wings had self-destructed in the wake of his arrest for possession of marijuana in January of that year. Almost two years and one hit album (Tug of War) have passed. McCartney is a man who has always thrived on connecting with his fans live; now, because of fears for his own safety and the lack of a backing group, he can’t perform. How can he reach out to his admirers? Answer: a film.
Paul and his company MPL got the best cast they could, the best director (Peter Webb, who had done work in television; I assume Scorsese, Spielberg, and Kubrick were all busy), and the best writer.
Um, no. Not the best writer. McCartney wrote the script himself.
This was the biggest mistake he could have made. Paul has many talents, but fiction writing is not one of them. One of the first clues one has when looking at the cast of characters is that most of the “actors” were simply playing themselves. Which they did with varying degrees of success. More on that in a bit. There are a couple of ringers; Bryan Brown, the noted Australian actor, played Paul’s manager, and Tracey Ullman played the girlfriend of the antagonist. She was onscreen for a grand total of ten or fifteen minutes. Too bad. She, at least, had acting talent.
Anyway, let’s look at this story. Paul is being driven by his chauffeur to a business meeting, but they’re stuck in London traffic. He falls asleep, and dreams that he’s driving himself to the meeting. When he gets there, he learns that his roadie friend Harry, an individual with a checkered past whom Paul hired against everyone’s better judgment, is missing—along with the master tapes for Paul’s new album. Due to reasons involving a scary-looking businessman with no lines, they have until midnight to find the tapes.
At this point, I was intrigued, and imagining all sorts of investigative work for Paul and company with tense situations, harrowing escapes, and a final confrontation with Mr. Bad. So what happens?
Nothing. Paul goes about his day, ob-la-di, ob-la-dah; recording songs, making a video, rehearsing new material, and being interviewed and recording at the BBC.
Dude. We’ve established that your monetary wealth is being threatened by these missing tapes. (Ridiculous in itself.) Cancel everything and LOOK FOR THEM!!
But no. Paul professes to care, but doesn’t really seem worried.1 He also insists that Harry wouldn’t steal the tapes, despite his past as a convicted thief. But inside, Paul Has Doubts.
You know, I can understand why McCartney would want the film to be full of music performances. That’s what he’s best at. But then why not simply make a documentary entitled A Day in the Life, and do all the same things except without the idiotic plot and fake performances? It might’ve done better at the box office, and would’ve been much more interesting.
Ah, well. I’ll cut to the end. Paul remembers something Harry had said the previous night and goes to Broad Street station just before midnight (which, I understand, no longer exists). There he finds Harry, who had locked himself in a fucking bathroom by accident. Har de har har.
You can’t make this shit up, folks. It takes a truly untalented writer.2
Oh, yeah. And then Paul wakes up to find It Was All A Dream.
I have a bunch of great friends, because I dragged them all to see this wretchedness on opening weekend, and not one of them walked out of the theater. They even claimed they enjoyed it. Love you guys.
Well, let me get to the real point of this review. Broad Street is an awful film, but it’s a marvelous Rorschach inkblot about Paul McCartney. He sees himself as an ordinary guy; he wears a Hawaiian shirt with khakis and tennis shoes. He’s got a cool car, but he imagines driving himself places. He wants to believe the best of people, and it pays off in the end. And throughout the film, Paul continually cuts to one reverie after another. He imagines Harry escaping through a swamp with the tapes, pursued by police and barking dogs. In the middle of rehearsing a new number, he imagines Harry handing over the tapes to Mr. Bad. While recording at the Beeb, he goes into a truly epic Dickensian fantasy involving himself, Linda, Ringo and Barbara Bach picnicking and then being menaced by Harry and Mr. Bad. (Whose name, I now remember, is Rath. Wrath. Hmm.) And there’s a cute interlude where he imagines himself as a busker once he loses all his money.
From all this, I think Paul must be a person whose mind is constantly thinking up things. When those things are songs, the results are pretty fantastic. Film scripts? Not so much.
But yeah, this story is about 95% dreams within dreams within fantasies. Kind of like Inception, except terrible.
There are a couple of good things about Broad Street. Ringo is witty in his few moments of dialogue. The musical numbers are a mixed bag. The Beatles songs sound great, but—let’s face facts—the Beatles did them better. Paul’s songs, on the other hand, are mostly great. I loved the Ballroom Dancing sequence, and the rehearsal with Dave Edmunds on two of the three new numbers and So Bad from the Pipes of Peace album is wonderful. Dave Gilmour does the guitar solo on No More Lonely Nights, appearing later as background music, and it was one of McCartney’s last hits. Sir Ralph Richardson is lovely as Paul’s father (who had died years earlier, but this was a nice tribute to the man). So it’s worth a watch just for those things.
But plot? Witty dialogue? Characterization? Intrigue? Alas, no. You must look elsewhere. Maybe Help! (Although at least Broad Street doesn’t have any racism that I remember.)
And you’ll have to watch for yourself to hear the truly bizarre remake of Silly Love Songs.