Nowhere Boy is the brilliantly shot, written, and performed biopic of John Lennon’s early life. Before I get into the movie (and the premier) I must give credit to some very important people involved in this film. Sam Taylor-Wood’s direction of the film is beautiful. Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay brought Julia Baird’s (John’s younger half-sister) memoir to film wonderfully. Aaron Johnson becomes a young John Lennon; I can see a promising career in his future. Kristin Scott Thomas and Anne-Marie Duff are also brilliant as John’s aunt and mother. I could not recommend this film more highly, everyone involved in the film are flawless.
The film is the heartbreaking story of John Lennon’s early life. He was raised by his aunt Mimi and didn’t really know his mother until he was in his teens. He started to get to know his mother and become close with her and suddenly she was hit by a car and killed. It was one of the most brilliantly shot and heartbreak scenes I’ve ever seen. Julia is walking down the street with a smile on her face after leaving her sister’s house, they had started reconciling at John’s urging, she meets one of John’s band mates, and he tells her they’ve got a new gig. The sun is shining on a beautiful fall day; Julia is smiling as she crosses the street when BAM a car smashes into her and drives off. The camera pans over to the sun shining through trees and then the sky turns grey, then we see Julia lying dead in the street. It was such a powerful scene it just hit you, everyone in the theater jumped out of their seats.
So since I don’t have the movie to review, I figured it would be fun to blog about some of the fun things about the day. After debating about what to do with my hair I decided to take the plunge and get a well overdo hair cut (it had been a year) at a place I’d never gone to before and was surprisingly happy with the results. After that whole ordeal (the self debating being the ordeal) was done, I went back to Ms. Baby’s house and received the email with the top secret location, time, and no camera information that I needed to confirm that I received. When we arrived, I realized that not only were we lucky enough to attend but that we were being given front row seats in a room full of people like Steven and Mrs. Van Zant, Ethan Hawk, Liam Neeson, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.
Mr Hoffman and the two of us have a history together. A few years ago The man who stole Heath Ledger’s Brokeback Oscar Hoffman’s film Synecdoche, New York was filming on location down the block from my house and his guest star was Michelle Williams. At this time Williams was still coupled with Ledger and, having heard that Ledger and their daughter Matilda often hung around William’s set, I called Lauren and told her we should go “accidentally” bump into Heath and hang out. We never managed to see him, and only saw Williams from a distance but as we walked back defeated, I spotted Hoffman and said, “There’s Phillip Seymore Hoffan,” which would’ve been fine if we hadn’t both spontaneously hid our faces as if he was someone from high school we hoped didn’t notice us. It was really weird and Lauren, in her infinite wisdom, thought that the only way to fix the freak accident (yes he heard me) was to walk back passed him to show it wasn’t anything personal. Why we averted our eyes the second time (again strange and unplanned) I will never know but he did see us coming and I can only imagine that we got in his head and he still thinks about it sometimes. This only makes the fact that, once I pointed him out at the premiere, we got hysterical laughing that much funnier.
Once everyone got settled it was time for speeches about the film from the director, who was interrupted by crazy Yoko Ono who came up and took the microphone because I guess she had nothing better to do since there are no Beatles to break up, and the Producer Harvey Weinstein. Now any fan of HBO’s ENTOURAGE would snicker quietly when seeing a Weinstein in person but I had the added bonus of having just read an interview with Director (and former Monty Python member) Terry Gilliam where he said he regretted ever working with “the F***ing Weinstiens” because they are arrogant, self satisfying, and ruined his film THE BROTHERS GRIMM. I managed to suppress my need to boo and hiss but once he started talking I realized that Gilliam failed to mention pompous God complex. Oh and when talking about how his company almost single handedly kept Amnesty International afloat in its early days, he mentioned how he came up with the idea of creating a fundraiser for the charity (nice) and how he was going to call it THE SECRET POLICEMEN’S BALL (a very popular British fundraiser’s name) until, “those jerks Monty Python told us they’d sue (this man is a tool.)
Despite Ono, Hoffman, and Weinstein’s presence (or maybe partially because of it) I had an amazing time, truly enjoyed the film, and best of all- my beautiful hot pink heals remained on my feel without hurting me the entire night!
Oh yeah almost forgot, here’s my outfit!
