Interview for MOJO • October 1999

Interview

This interview remains the property of the respective copyright owner, and no implication of ownership by us is intended or should be inferred. Any copyright owner who wants something removed should contact us and we will do so immediately.

Al Brodax: I was in the animation business, working for King Features, a division of the Hearst organisation. The day after The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show I called Brian Epstein and made a terrible deal with him for the rights to animate The Beatles. The budget was $32,000 for the whole half hour, which was ridiculous, and most of it went to Brian. But I thought it was an opening for something new.

Paul McCartney: We all thought the cartoon series was a joke and refused to do the voices for it. But financially it was a good deal and the kids seemed to like it. We weren’t really keen on the people from King. They were nice enough but artistically we weren’t that impressed.

Lance Percival: I did the voices for Paul and Ringo on the cartoon series. The Beatles arranged to come for a showing in Soho. Paul was sitting next me to saying, “Is that supposed to be me?” I said, Don’t worry, it’s not supposed to be you. It’s just supposed to be a funny voice that suits you.

Brodax: The series ran for three years. During that time Brian made a deal with United Artists to make three pictures. He did A Hard Day’s Night and Help! But the third picture came up and the boys didn’t want to do it. They wanted to go to India. So I contacted UA and I suggested that I could do an animation and they could go to India and everybody would be happy. Brian consented and the deal got a little better for us. Lots of treatments were submitted by important people like Joe Heller, who wrote Catch 22. Brian was impossible. He dismissed Heller’s treatment because the cover was purple and Brian didn’t like purple. It got up to about a dozen treatments. I wrote one. Erich Segal wrote one. He’s a wonderful guy. He’s also full of himself.

Erich Segal: I was an assistant professor of classics at Yale. I was asked by the late Richard Rodgers to collaborate with him on a musical. On the day Richard Rodgers made the announcement, Al Brodax flew to London and read the New York Times on the way. He saw the article about me and when he got to London and I found chaos he said, We’ve got to get this guy, he just might be the ticket.

Brodax: The Beatles thought I was too old. They wanted someone younger and I called a man who said his kid brother might fit the bill because he’s got long hair and wears crazy suits. That was Lee Minoff. Lee could not write dialogue but he did come up with names that I thought were intriguing like The Monstrous Blues and The Snapping Turtle Turks and Old Fred. The Beatles liked Lee but they hated the treatment. So we cobbled something else together, using that treatment as the basis and just called it Yellow Submarine.

Lee Minoff: Nowhere Man was based on the director of my play [Come Live With Me], Jonathan Miller, who really helped to ruin it when it finally got to Broadway. I was unhappy with him, and felt he was a great intellectualiser who could do everything – a writer, a doctor, a director, blah, blah, blah. But I felt he was ultimately full of shit. [Jeremy, the Nowhere Man, was voiced in the film by Dick Emery.]

Segal: I was told that Joe Orton and Tom Stoppard were among 40 writers. What had set this all off was the fact that John Lennon had looked at the Lee Minoff draft, said “This is the bloody Flintstones,” and walked out.

Brodax: That’s baloney. Erich was in from the beginning. Erich claims he didn’t know who The Beatles were. That’s baloney too. He was a real Beatles fan.

Segal: Not true. Al said, “Do you know that Sgt Pepper has already sold two million copies?” I said, That must be good for Mrs Pepper. He laughed. But I was serious.

Brodax: When we finally got an approval I decided that Erich and I would be the team. By this time Brian didn’t give a damn. He just signed off. We had a few story meetings for the feature at which The Beatles appeared. John was brilliant but very opinionated. The Beatle I most liked was George. He was a gentleman and a wonderful musician. Ringo was Ringo. Paul was sort of a PR man. Very bright but full of himself

George Harrison: The thing I liked most about the movie was that we didn’t really have a thing to do with it.

Paul: Al Brodax talked to us about the possibility of doing a feature and we met at my house in London. Erich Segal came along as well. I talked to them about Yellow Submarine which they wanted to build the film around. I told them that I had very definite thoughts about this. There is a land of actual submarines – all different coloured and in fact it’s a commune. All four of us hoped for something a little bit groovier. Sort of more classic Pinocchio or Snow White. Right away, they made it clear they weren’t keen to do just a straight Disney thing.

Brodax: We consciously went away from the Disney style. We had a big sign up at the studio: Disney – The Opposite.
iw.” So from cartoon serf wanted to go completely psychedelic’
Poul: They sod, We think you
rather childish, which st definitely was, they
Jock Stokes: The original script was full of psychedelic, sort of flower-powcry, and we were o bit pissed off with it We thought. If we’re going to do it we re going to do it properly
John Cootes: George Dunning and myself bod set up TV Cartoons [TVC] in 1957 We designed the cartoon scries and mode about half the episodes
Brodax: George Dunning was the director. He had a very small animation house in Soho which was not doing well ot all. This was o bonanza for them George, however, was not too well and the real heroes, in terms of direction, were Jock Stokes and Bob Balser But the look of the movie was really Heinz Edelmann’s thing.
Heinx Edelmann: I was 0 graphic designer working in Germany known for my poster work And Charlie Jenkins, the art director in charge of special effects, happened to be familiar with my work and called me He was the one who got me into ail this mess I wasn’t nervous at first because I assumed I was going to loam from the professionals But. when I come to realise that nobody had any experience in feature films, I started getting worried.
Coates: The fact that they fixed a premiere I I months ahead of starting without o script and without a storyboard was foidy crazy
Brodax: Erich and I were patching the story together in this hotel in London But the claim will be made by Bolter ond Stokes that there was never any story.
Stokes: There was o kind of rough-arse script that we tore apart and ripped up We had to get some kind of storyline, which was a swine to do considering wc hod about 15 ruddy songs, none of them having ony connection with each other.

Last updated on January 24, 2024