Film “I Met the Walrus”, John Lennon, FBI
Jun 17, 2008
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I Met The Walrus
Quote from Wikipedia I Met the Walrus:
I Met the Walrus is an animated film directed by Josh Raskin and produced by Jerry Levitan. The film stars Levitan and John Lennon. The film's pen illustration is by James Braithwaite and computer illustration is by Alex Kurina.[1]
The film is based on an interview of John Lennon by Jerry Levitan in 1969. Levitan, then 14 years old, tracked Lennon to his hotel room at Toronto's King Edward Hotel after hearing a rumour that Lennon had been sighted at the Toronto Airport. Jerry inveigled his way into John Lennon's suite and conducted an interview. The animation is based on Levitan's recording of the interview, which was edited down to 5 minutes. Josh Raskin's focus was on the interview itself. “I just wanted to literally animate the words, unfurling in the way I imagined they would appear inside the head of a baffled 14-year-old boy interviewing his idol.”[2]
The film was created in 2006 to 2007 at the Electric Company, a Toronto animation company. The film premiered March 22nd, 2007 at This is London, a Toronto nightclub. Since then, the film has appeared at numerous film festivals. The film has won several awards including a 2009 Daytime Emmy in the New Approaches, Daytime Entertainment category[3], Best Animated Short awards for the American Film Institute[4] and the Middle East International Film Festival. The film was nominated for an Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[5]
About John Lennon
While annotating David Bowie's song lyrics Life on Mars, i read Wikipedia on John Lennon (1940 to 1980), i learned that in his time he had a decade-long, widely publicized, major conflict with the US government regarding his deportation as means to silence his anti-war activities in US, and that he is murdered. Here's some selected quotes from Wikipedia:
In 1976, Lennon's U.S. immigration status was finally resolved favourably, after a years-long battle with the Nixon administration that included an FBI investigation -- a full-scale effort involving surveillance, wiretaps, and agents following Lennon around as he travelled. Lennon insisted that the investigation was politically motivated, a claim that was later proven true.
Nixon left the White House after the Watergate scandal, and Lennon won his green card in 1975. After Lennon's murder, historian Jon Wiener filed a Freedom of Information request for FBI files on Lennon. The FBI admitted it had 281 pages of files on Lennon, but refused to release most of them, claiming they were national security documents. In 1983, Wiener sued the FBI with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. The case went to the Supreme Court before the FBI settled in 1997 -- releasing all but ten of the contested documents.[125][126] The story is told in the documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon, by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld, released in theatres in September 2006 and on DVD in February 2007. The final ten documents in Lennon's FBI file were finally released in December 2006.[127] and are available on the web.[128]
Lennon is a true folk hero of humanity.
See also: