‘Don’t do this!’ Why Paul McCartney cares about looking shorter than John Lennon in Sam Mendes’ Beatles films
You’re Paul McCartney. So how come you’re still getting het up at a fictional version of you being marginally smaller than a fictional version of John Lennon? There has been a lot of discourse and conjecture surrounding Sam Mendes’s forthcoming Beatles biopics. Some of this is logical (will people really turn out to see four near-identical films on the same day?), some creative (what animal did they have to shave to…
Key points
- Paul McCartney raised a concern about his height relative to John Lennon in Sam Mendes's forthcoming Beatles biopics.
- McCartney said Mendes assured him the apparent height difference came from their strides in the shot and sent another image showing them equally tall.
- McCartney has long objected to depictions of himself as the smaller or slighter half of the Lennon-McCartney partnership.
Paul McCartney has spoken out about how he is portrayed in Sam Mendes's forthcoming Beatles biopics, objecting to any suggestion that he appears shorter than John Lennon. He discussed the matter on the most recent episode of Amy Poehler's podcast.
McCartney said Mendes told him the apparent difference was simply down to their respective strides in the shot, and sent another image showing the two actors at equal height. The films' cast includes Paul Mescal as McCartney and Harris Dickinson as Lennon.
Past portrayals of McCartney
McCartney has said he remains unhappy about Nowhere Boy, the 2009 film that showed him as Lennon's slighter and weedier sidekick. The article notes that the 1960s Beatles cartoon series also depicted him as a relative pixie next to Lennon, while the Yellow Submarine film kept the two at the same height.
The article adds that a perception has persisted that McCartney was the smaller half of the partnership. It cites his 2002 live album Back in the US, for which he changed the credits of 19 songs from Lennon-McCartney to Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
Don’t do this!
— Paul McCartney
Why the detail matters
The article says that if the four films do as well as expected, the actors in their wigs may become a generation's lasting depictions of the band. It adds that the slightest inaccuracy could rewrite history as it is known.
It concludes that nobody, especially McCartney himself, wants his gravestone to read Composer and musician (slightly shorter than John Lennon).
