Paul McCartney attends special screening of “Man On The Run” at Brown University

On this day, Brown University hosted a screening of “Man on the Run”, the documentary directed by Morgan Neville chronicling Paul McCartney’s life in the 1970s, in the presence of Paul McCartney. Nearly 2,000 students and University community members attended the event, which was followed by a conversation between McCartney and Neville moderated by Brown University President Christina H. Paxson. The evening held a personal dimension: Paul McCartney’s granddaughter is an undergraduate at the Ivy League school.

“Man on the Run” covers the decade between the dissolution of The Beatles in 1970 and the murder of John Lennon in 1980, tracing McCartney’s personal and professional reinvention alongside his wife Linda McCartney as they formed Wings and raised their family. The film had premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2025 and was made available on Prime Video from February 27, 2026.

You know, we’ve lost people in this film, particularly Linda, and so it was very hard — and at the same time glorious — to see her and to see her humor.

Paul McCartney – From Brown University, April 20, 2026

From Brown University, April 20, 2026:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — When Paul McCartney invited Morgan Neville to a family screening of “Man on the Run,” the Academy Award-winning director was very nervous — even though he was the one who made the film.

Neville felt the weight of his responsibility to get the documentary — which chronicles the formation and rise of McCartney’s post-Beatles band, Wings — right.

“There were two things I heard your grandchildren say that night,” Neville recounted to McCartney. “One was, ‘I’d never heard my grandmother’s voice.’ They had never heard Linda’s speaking voice before the movie. And the other was, ‘Grandpa went to jail?’”

“That’s true,” McCartney confirmed to the audience, laughing.

In a special evening with McCartney for the Brown University community — which included McCartney’s granddaughter, an undergraduate at Brown — nearly 2,000 students and University community members convened in Veterans Memorial Auditorium on Monday, April 20, for a free screening of “Man on the Run,” followed by a conversation with McCartney and Neville, moderated by Brown President Christina H. Paxson.

Through extensive and rare archival footage and interviews, “Man on the Run” offers a focused look at McCartney’s life after the Beatles, centering his personal and professional reinvention alongside Linda McCartney as they formed Wings and the band began to take off. It’s a nuanced portrayal of an artist recalibrating while the world watched — a portrayal that drew a standing ovation from members of the Brown community.

Neville, whose work explores the inner lives of cultural figures from backup singers to Fred Rogers, approached the project with a guiding principle rooted in music itself. Before assembling the film, he began by constructing what he described as a “soundtrack” of McCartney’s post-Beatles songs, using them as a narrative blueprint.

“The great thing about making a film about a songwriter is their songs,” Neville said. “The songs tell you that they need to be there, because he’s narrating some part of his life through them.”

That approach shaped the structure and emotional arc of “Man on the Run.” The result is a peek into a life propelled by a sense of restlessness, insatiable creativity, exploration, and forward motion. Despite setbacks that could have discouraged others — a bizarre television special, a handful of commercial flops and an infamous international arrest — McCartney pressed on.

For McCartney, watching this period if his life unfold on screen isn’t without discomfort.

“There were bits of it that got embarrassing, where I thought, maybe we should take those out, because I’m going to be sitting there squirming like I was tonight,” McCartney said, laughing.

“It’s part of the journey,” Neville said. “Failure is how you learn, too. Even things that seem like failure at the time redefine themselves over time.” […]

Watching footage of Linda McCartney, who died in 1998, was among the most difficult aspects of working on the film, McCartney said.

“You know, we’ve lost people in this film, particularly Linda, and so it was very hard — and at the same time glorious — to see her and to see her humor,” he said.

Equally emotional were the film’s portrayals of McCartney’s relationship with Lennon. Long defined in the public imagination by a bitter rivalry, their partnership is presented in “Man on the Run” with more complexity and gentleness.

“Particularly with John, it was such a battle for so many moments, but in the end [Neville] — very sweetly, I thought — put in the fact that we really loved each other, and that made it so much better for me,” McCartney said.

That portrayal was shaped, in part, by contributions from Lennon’s son, Sean Ono Lennon, whose reflections added another layer of perspective.

“It was great to hear him speak so lovingly of me and his dad, and he gets it right,” McCartney said. “What’s interesting is that, even though he never saw us together much, he sensed the truth.”

As the conversation drew to a close, attention turned to a question that lingers beyond the film itself: What continues to drive McCartney, many decades into a career that has, at multiple points, placed him as the most successful artist of his time?

To Neville, it’s curiosity.

“Curiosity as a creative person is huge,” he said. “I remember we talked about all this music you were listening to, all this art you were looking at, how they were all part of the same kind of creative impulse.”

To McCartney, it’s simply “great fun.”

“If I didn’t do it as a job, I would do it as a hobby, because it’s just in me,” McCartney said. “There’s something magical in any art form about discovering ‘that thing.’ It might be a chord in music, or a color combination in painting. In science, maybe it’s some little discovery, the eureka moment — it’s just so exciting, and it never gets boring.” 

From Brown University, April 20, 2026