News The Stanley Kubrick movie John Lennon used to watch “every week”
Everyone has either a favourite, guilty pleasure or comfort movie they rewatch regularly whenever they’re in need of a pick-me-up. For John Lennon, his regular source of viewing pleasure came from one of the greatest and most influential ever made.
Stanley Kubrick made a greater impact on cinema than most directors could ever dream of, and even a quarter of a century after his death, the legendary filmmaker’s back catalogue continues to be analysed, dissected and debated endlessly. They were viewed as classics at the time, but in the decades since, several of his finest features have evolved into something else entirely, becoming monolithic fixtures in the history of celluloid.
For many, 2001: A Space Odyssey remains Kubrick’s magnum opus, a game-changing and revolutionary existential sci-fi that saw him win his one and only Academy Award. Despite its towering status in the annals of cinema, though, his solitary Oscar came for the film’s special effects. Based on how many top-tier actors and directors have celebrated its incomparable achievements, the spacefaring parable on the very nature of humanity is hardly defined by how many shiny golden statues it won.
That sentiment applies to some of the most beloved figures in all of music, too, with Lennon said to be a massive fan of 2001. In Michael Benson’s exhaustive deep dive, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, The Beatles icon is attributed as saying he saw the movie “every week” at the height of its theatrical run.
Watching the same thing separated by only seven days each time sounds like one of the easiest ways to grow tired of any given film, but that clearly wasn’t the case with Lennon. Not only that, but he ended up developing a couple of unusual connections to 2001 later on in life, which continued tying him to the ever-expanding mythos of Kubrick’s masterpiece.
Even though there’s hardly a direct correlation between the two in terms of style, substance, content, and arrangement, Lennon would nonetheless describe ‘A Day in the Life’ from Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as “a bit of a 2001“. However, what he meant by comparing the song to the movie, despite there being little superficial similarities between them, was typically obtuse.
Actor Daniel Richter played the leader of the ape-men in the unforgettable opening of 2001, and he’d go on to become a key fixture of Lennon’s everyday life. After meeting Yoko Ono while he was in Japan, Richter ended up living with Lennon and Oko, in addition to becoming a frequent creative collaborator.
He was present for The Beatles’ last-ever photoshoot, appeared in the video for ‘Imagine’, and snapped the photograph that served as the cover image for 1970’s Plastic Ono Band. Presumably, given his infatuation with Kubrick’s classic, Lennon would have asked Richter more than a few questions about his time spent working on 2001.
Watch the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s timeless magnum opus 2001: A Space Odyssey below.
