Not long after John Lennon was shot (I’m thinking '84 or '85), there was a TV movie about him. It wasn’t a documentary, actors played him and all the people surrounding him. His guitar playing was simulated by a different guitarist, but they actually had a close-up of this other guitarist instead of fake-synching it with the actor playing Lennon. This other guitarist might have been Adrian Belew, or just somebody who looked a lot like him. The whole thing was super low budget and may have appeared on PBS. Does this ring any bells with anyone?
John and Yoko: A Love Story? From 1985.
Not great. But Peter Capaldi as George Harrison!
Bit of trivia about that film.
Mark McGann wasn’t the first choice for John.
The first was an actor named Mark Lindsay. He had a good audition, impressing everybody, including Yoko, who was intimately involved with the whole movie.
Then Yoko found out his full name was Mark Lindsay Chapman (he went by his middle name due to another actor named Mark Chapman). And that was the end of that.
22 years later, though, Jarrett Shaefer was doing a movie about Mark David Chapman, and Mark Lindsay Chapman finally got to play John Lennon. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say if he killed, or not. >_>
I don’t think this is it. The few scenes I remember: Young John’s mother fobbing him off on his aunt, John in HELP!-era black clothes with Greek fisherman’s cap. A lot of this one was his life before Yoko, whereas John and Yoko: A Love Story pretty much starts with their first meeting.
Could be. I was hoping to find out who that guitarist was, but he’s uncredited.
What was the one on network where the promo had this short dude listening to the front buzzer at the Dakota, sticking his finger up in the air, and saying “Friend or Foe!!!?”
It was so unLennonesque and embarrasing. I avoid almost all music biopics and just the memory of that promo is one big reason.