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Yellow Submarine (1968) : 30 WEIRD Facts You Didn't know! — Transcript

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0:00There was an earthly paradise called
0:03Pepperland.
0:04>> All the lonely people, [music]
0:06where do they all come from?
0:09>> You've heard The Beatles. You've sung
0:11along to every song. But somewhere
0:13between the psychedelic colors and the
0:15Blue Meanies, the real story of Yellow
0:17Submarine got buried. And it is stranger
0:20than anything Pepperland ever dreamed
0:23up. The animators hid their own faces in
0:26a Liverpool street scene, and nobody
0:28noticed for years.
0:31An entire song and sequence was secretly
0:33cut from the American version and stayed
0:35hidden for 31 years.
0:38And the iconic villains of the film,
0:41they were almost a completely different
0:43color until a paint mistake that nobody
0:45can fully agree on changed everything.
0:49These are 30 wild, hidden, and genuinely
0:52unbelievable facts about Yellow
0:55Submarine 1968.
0:57And I promise, some of this magic was
1:00never meant to be found. Oh, and stay
1:03until the very end because I have a
1:05bonus fact that involves a little boy, a
1:08cartoon, and a moment that will quietly
1:11break your heart in the best possible
1:13way. You do not want to miss it.
1:15But before we dive in, I need to know
1:17something.
1:18Which sea would you have wanted to sail
1:21through? The Sea of Time, the Sea of
1:23Holes, or the Sea of Monsters?
1:26Drop your answer in the comments.
1:28Fact one. Here is the secret nobody
1:31mentions when they talk about Yellow
1:33Submarine.
1:34The Beatles didn't make this film
1:35because they believed in animation.
1:38They made it because they were legally
1:40trapped. United Artists had signed them
1:42to a three-picture deal back in 1963.
1:45They delivered A Hard Day's Night, then
1:48Help, which they despised, feeling like
1:50extras in their own movie. A third film
1:52was contractually due. The band had
1:55India booked. They had The White Album
1:57to record. When producer Al Brodax
2:00arrived at Brian Epstein's office and
2:02pitched an animated feature, the Beatles
2:04saw the most beautiful legal escape
2:07hatch in cinema history. Someone else
2:09would do all the work. They would
2:11technically fulfill the contract and
2:13they could get on a plane. They said
2:15yes, not because they believed in it,
2:17because saying yes meant they could
2:19leave.
2:20>> [singing]
2:23>> Fact two. Here's one I could stare at
2:26forever and still not find on my own.
2:29The Eleanor Rigby sequence, that
2:31haunting gray sky journey through the
2:33streets of Liverpool, has a secret
2:35hiding in every single frame.
2:38Animator Charlie Jenkins, who built and
2:40directed the entire sequence, quietly
2:42embedded the real faces of the
2:44production team into the background
2:46characters.
2:47The man smoking a pipe in the alley?
2:50That is producer Al Brodax. The figure
2:52on the rooftop corner? Animation
2:55director Bob Balser. Two umbrella men in
2:57the rain are art director Heinz Edelmann
3:00and director George Dunning themselves.
3:03The woman with the fish bowl is animator
3:05Alison DeVere. The man in the phone
3:07booth was their regular pub's bartender.
3:10Jenkins turned the saddest, most
3:12beautiful minute of the film into a love
3:15letter to everyone building it, hidden
3:17in plain sight.
3:23Fact three. This one still gets me. When
3:27Yellow Submarine was prepared for
3:28American audiences in 1968, someone made
3:32a simple commercial decision. The
3:34running time needed trimming. So they
3:36cut an entire musical sequence, Hey
3:39Bulldog, a brilliantly absurd chase
3:42involving a four-headed blue meanie dog
3:45and the Beatles hiding inside a player
3:47piano, was removed and replaced with
3:49alternate animation.
3:51American audiences had absolutely no
3:54idea what they were missing.
3:56For 31 years, every single American
3:59watching Yellow Submarine was watching a
4:01version with a hole in it.
4:03It was not until the 1999 theatrical
4:06restoration that the complete film was
4:08finally seen in America.
4:1131 years. One of the tightest songs in
4:14the entire Beatles catalog gone for a
4:16generation.
4:20>> [music]
4:22>> Fact four. Two countries, one film, two
4:26completely different endings. In the
4:28British version, the Blue Meanies are
4:29defeated and that is that. Victory. No
4:32sentimentality, just triumph and out the
4:34door.
4:35But American audiences in 1968 saw
4:38something softer. A rewritten conclusion
4:41where the Chief Blue Meanie genuinely
4:43has a change of heart, converts to love
4:45and music, and joins the celebration.
4:48Warmer, more resolved, more American.
4:51And the differences did not stop there.
4:53The All You Need Is Love sequence
4:55contains several alternate shots between
4:57versions. British audiences saw George
5:00floating down murmuring, "It's all in
5:01the mind, you know." While Americans
5:03watched Paul do a somersault. These
5:06were, in a very real sense, two
5:08different films wearing the same title.
5:11>> [music]
5:15>> Fact five.
5:16Every single one of them, every
5:18scowling, six-fingered, apple-bonking
5:21Blue Meanie was born from boredom. Art
5:24director Heinz Edelmann arrived in
5:26London in the summer of 1967
5:29ready to shape the visual soul of the
5:31film.
5:32The script wasn't ready. Nobody gave him
5:34an assignment. For two full months, one
5:37of the most gifted graphic artists in
5:39Europe simply sat there with nothing to
5:41do.
5:42Finally, fed up and ready to quit, he
5:45started drawing just to keep himself
5:47from losing his mind. Monstrous
5:49villains, gravity-defying gloves, giants
5:53hurling apples at strangers. He had no
5:55idea these were for the film.
5:57Director Dunning saw the sketches and
5:59was immediately stunned.
6:01From that morning on, Edelman became the
6:04creative engine of the entire
6:06production.
6:07The Blue Meanies were born from one
6:09man's boredom.
6:10>> Is that understood, Max?
6:13>> No, your blueness.
6:15>> Fact six. Here is one of the most
6:17delightful arguments in animation
6:19history, and nobody involved can agree
6:21on who is right. Background supervisor
6:24Millicent McMillan has said clearly that
6:27the Blue Meanies were never supposed to
6:29be blue. Edelman originally designed
6:31them red, possibly purple, and the color
6:33shifted only after an assistant
6:35accidentally changed the palette and
6:37nobody corrected the mistake. But
6:39Edelman himself told interviewers a
6:40completely different story. He said the
6:43blue was intentional. Blue Meanies was a
6:46direct play on the blues, on depression,
6:49on the particular shade of misery that
6:52grips people who hate joy. Production
6:54supervisor John Coates sides with
6:56Edelman. McMillan remembers a mistake.
6:59The truth probably lives somewhere
7:01beautifully in between. What everyone
7:03agrees on? Blue Meanies sounds
7:05considerably better than purple Meanies.
7:08>> Ha, your newness is no longer blue,
7:12Max.
7:13>> Fact seven.
7:14The Blue Meanies were not designed in
7:16the abstract. Producer Al Brodax openly
7:20confirmed that the Chief Meanie's
7:21mercurial personality, the shrieking
7:24tantrums, the violent mood swings, the
7:26impossible demands, was based directly
7:30on his own behavior during production.
7:32The Chief's physical appearance was
7:34drawn to resemble production coordinator
7:36Abe Goodman. And Brodax, being Brodax,
7:39found this funny. But there was one more
7:41layer. The legendary line, "Are you
7:44bluish? You don't look bluish." was, as
7:47John Coates confirmed in the DVD
7:49commentary, a deliberate pun on the
7:51expression, "You don't look Jewish."
7:54Both Brodax and Goodman were Jewish. The
7:57joke was quietly built into the fabric
7:59of a beloved family film aimed squarely
8:02at two men who had wanted a cheap
8:03cartoon and wound up funding a
8:05masterpiece.
8:10Fact eight. Every single frame of Yellow
8:13Submarine's 90 minutes was painted by a
8:15human hand.
8:17All 132,000
8:19of them. Art students worked night
8:21shifts for months to meet a deadline
8:23that felt, by every measure,
8:25unreachable. They were fed bangers and
8:28mash in the studio canteen. They worked
8:30under fluorescent lights while the rest
8:32of London slept. Some had never worked
8:35professionally in animation before. They
8:37were young, fast, and they kept
8:39painting. Production supervisor John
8:41Coates said it without exaggeration,
8:43without those anonymous overnight
8:45artists, the film would simply not
8:47exist. There is no CGI here. No
8:51shortcuts, no relief, just paint,
8:54brushes, and an almost incomprehensible
8:56amount of human effort applied to
8:58celluloid one frame at a time. Every
9:01swirling image you love was made exactly
9:03the way a cave painting was, by a person
9:07using their hands.
9:09>> [music]
9:12>> Fact nine. When the animators sat down
9:14to design the Beatles cartoon
9:15counterparts, they needed a single
9:18photographic anchor point. They chose a
9:20very specific afternoon, the 19th of
9:23May, 1967.
9:25The press party at manager Brian
9:27Epstein's home celebrating the release
9:29of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club
9:31Band. The photos from that party became
9:33the complete visual template. Their
9:35clothes, their hair, the precise shape
9:38of their expressions, all of it traced
9:41to one celebration. As a kid watching
9:44this film, I never once thought about
9:45the fact that these cartoon versions
9:48were frozen in time at a single party.
9:51Here is the quiet irony. By the time the
9:54real Beatles filmed their live-action
9:56cameo 8 months later, Lennon and
9:58Harrison had already changed their
10:00appearances so dramatically, they no
10:02longer matched their own cartoons. The
10:05animated Beatles stayed in May of '67.
10:08The real ones had already moved on.
10:11>> [music]
10:15>> Fact 10. The casting [clears throat] of
10:16George Harrison's voice is one of the
10:18strangest stories in the history of film
10:20dubbing. Director George Dunning was
10:22searching for someone to play the quiet
10:24Beatle, and he found him not in an
10:27audition room, but in a London pub. He
10:30overheard a young man across the bar
10:31speaking in a perfectly natural
10:33Liverpudlian accent, walked over, and
10:36cast him on the spot. The man's name was
10:38Peter Batten. He had never acted a
10:40single day in his life. He was not a
10:43trained voice artist. He was not
10:45connected to the entertainment industry
10:47in any way. He was just a man in a pub
10:50with the right accent. And for a while,
10:52it worked beautifully. Batten recorded
10:55the first half of George Harrison's
10:56dialogue, and by all accounts, he was
10:58doing a fine job. Then, in one of the
11:01more remarkable turns of fate in
11:03animated film history, everything came
11:06crashing down.
11:07>> Of course I can. Let me peruse it.
11:10>> Fact 11. Peter Batten was midway through
11:13recording George Harrison's voice when
11:15the authorities came for him. It emerged
11:18during production that Batten had
11:19deserted from the British Army of the
11:21Rhine in West Germany, and the military
11:24police had finally, very inconveniently,
11:27caught up with him. He was arrested
11:29before he could finish recording his
11:30lines. Production suddenly had half a
11:33George Harrison and nowhere to turn. The
11:35solution was improvised on the spot.
11:37Paul Angelis, already the voice of Ringo
11:40Starr, stepped in and finished all of
11:42Batten's remaining dialogue. Batten's
11:44contribution went completely uncredited
11:46in the original release. He remains, by
11:49most accounts, the only person in cinema
11:51history to be arrested for military
11:54desertion while actively working on a
11:56feature film. The movie he helped make
11:59went on to be called one of the greatest
12:01animated features ever produced.
12:04>> And all I can hear my beard growing.
12:06>> Fact 12. Paul Angelis may be the most
12:09quietly extraordinary performer in
12:11Yellow Submarine, and almost nobody
12:13knows his name. He voiced Ringo Starr,
12:16the film's warm, emotional anchor, the
12:19first Beatle the audience follows into
12:21the submarine.
12:22He voiced the Chief Blue Meanie, the
12:24hysterical, shrieking, tantruming lead
12:27villain.
12:28And after Peter Batten's arrest, he
12:30stepped in and finished George
12:32Harrison's remaining dialogue, too.
12:34In a single animated film, Paul Angelis
12:37was simultaneously the gentle hero, the
12:39lead villain, and a third Beatle, all
12:42with fully realized, distinct,
12:44recognizably different voices. Ringo is
12:48warm and wondering. The Chief Meanie is
12:50theatrical and unhinged. George is dry
12:54and understated. Each sounds like a
12:56completely different human being. It is
12:59one of the great unsung multi-role
13:01performances in animation history, and
13:04it has never received the recognition it
13:06deserves.
13:07>> Glove, glove, point, and having pointed,
13:10bounce. Go!
13:11>> Fact 13. Charlie Jenkins built the most
13:14technically advanced rig in the history
13:17of the production. And every night,
13:19without fail, he took it home with him.
13:22The device was a Frankenstein's monster
13:24of salvaged wood, old camera parts, and
13:27sheer improvisation. A modified
13:30rotoscoping bench that let him combine
13:32painted animation with live-action
13:34footage in real time, creating depth and
13:37movement no standard animation stand
13:40could replicate. But, here's the part
13:41nobody talks about. Jenkins took it home
13:44every single night, not just out of
13:46eccentricity. The technology was so
13:49proprietary, so entirely improvised from
13:52his own head that he genuinely could not
13:55risk anyone else seeing how it worked,
13:57how he was, essentially, cheating the
14:00physics of animation. If another
14:02animator had studied that machine for 20
14:04minutes, the magic would have been
14:06reverse-engineered overnight. Producer
14:08Al Brodax, watching this ritual in daily
14:11bafflement, nicknamed it the magical
14:13mystery bench. Jenkins took the secret
14:16home with him every evening, and every
14:18morning, he brought it back.
14:20>> Ah, the get all the
14:22lovely people.
14:24>> Fact 14. When the real Beatles agreed at
14:27the last minute to film a brief
14:29live-action epilogue, the plan was
14:31genuinely ambitious. They would be
14:33filmed against a plain backdrop and
14:35surrounded in post-production with
14:37psychedelic animated effects, swirling
14:40colors, Pepperland imagery, the full
14:43visual language of the film exploding
14:45around the actual Fab Four. It would
14:47have been extraordinary. Then, the money
14:49ran out, the time ran out, and here's
14:52the detail I love most. The Beatles had
14:54a plane to catch to Rishikesh, India,
14:57for their famous meditation retreat with
14:59the Maharishi, and every extra hour of
15:02filming was an hour they weren't packing
15:04their bags. So, on the 25th of January,
15:061968, they stood in front of a camera,
15:10said their lines, and left. The
15:12background behind them stayed exactly as
15:14it was, flat, plain,
15:17entirely black.
15:18>> Oh, I'll fix it to keep his mind from
15:21wandering.
15:22Hey.
15:23>> Fact 15.
15:25The Beatles celebrated the release of
15:26Yellow Submarine in July of 1968 with an
15:30event that could only have existed in
15:31that specific moment in history. They
15:34threw a submarine-themed disco at the
15:37Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater,
15:39London. The invitations carried one
15:41instruction,
15:43wear yellow. And London's counterculture
15:45elite arrived in every shade of it. Rock
15:48stars, film people, artists,
15:51journalists, all of them were
15:52resplendent in yellow. John Lennon
15:54attended with Yoko Ono, despite still
15:57being legally married to Cynthia at the
15:58time. Those present described it as
16:01exactly the warm, glorious, joyfully
16:04strange evening the film itself
16:06embodied. What nobody knew yet was that
16:09this would be one of the last times all
16:11four Beatles publicly celebrated
16:13something together in that spirit. The
16:16world they had built was beginning,
16:17quietly, to shift.
16:20>> Fact 16. The four actors who voiced the
16:22Beatles, John Clive as Lennon, Geoffrey
16:25Hughes as McCartney, Paul Angelis as
16:28Starr, and Peter Batten as Harrison,
16:30were not invited to the film's premiere.
16:33When John Clive discovered he was not on
16:35the guest list, he threatened to go to
16:36the press. Invitations were reluctantly
16:39extended. They attended. They sat in a
16:41packed cinema surrounded by celebrities
16:44and journalists and the actual Beatles,
16:46and nobody in that building recognized
16:48them. Nobody approached them. Nobody
16:50knew they were there. Clive later
16:52recalled walking out of the premiere
16:54with a hollow, invisible feeling he
16:56found difficult to describe. "We came
16:59out," he said, "and thought, none of
17:01these people know it's us." The real
17:03Beatles got the premiere. The voice
17:05actors got an invitation that nearly
17:07wasn't extended and a bus home.
17:10>> I don't mean to alarm you, mates, but
17:11the years are going backwards.
17:13>> Fact 17. George Dunning was fighting a
17:16quiet, sustained war throughout the
17:18entire production. The financial backers
17:20behind Yellow Submarine wanted the voice
17:22actors' accents softened or removed
17:25entirely. The thick, unmistakable
17:27Liverpudlian Scouse sound, the very
17:30thing that made the characters feel like
17:31they genuinely came from the same city
17:33as The Beatles, was considered too
17:36regional, too local, potentially too
17:38difficult for international audiences.
17:41The investors pushed for something
17:43neutral, something more broadcastable,
17:46more generic. Dunning refused every
17:49single time. He insisted the characters
17:51sound authentically Liverpudlian because
17:53the emotional soul of the film depended
17:55on that specificity. He held the line
17:57through weeks of pressure, and the voice
18:00performances, warm, dry, genuinely
18:03northern, completely real, became one of
18:06the most universally praised elements of
18:08the finished film. The investors who
18:10wanted to sand them smooth were never
18:12mentioned in the reviews.
18:14>> I
18:19>> Fact 18. Before Yellow Submarine had a
18:22story, it had a queue of legendary
18:24writers submitting treatments. Among
18:26them was Joseph Heller, the author of
18:28Catch-22, one of the most celebrated
18:31satirical novels of the 20th century.
18:33Heller wrote a full treatment and
18:35submitted it. Producer Al Brodax has
18:38told the story many times since. Brian
18:40Epstein looked at the cover of the
18:42document, saw it was printed in purple,
18:44and dismissed the whole submission
18:46because he disliked the color purple.
18:49Now, historians have gently noted that
18:51Heller's treatment was also simply too
18:53dense, too satirically layered, and too
18:56demanding for a 90-minute animated
18:58cartoon aimed at both hippies and
19:01children. The purple cover made the
19:03better story. But the honest truth is
19:05that Catch-22's author and a Beatles
19:07cartoon were never, in any universe,
19:10going to be a natural fit. The folder
19:12just gave everyone a more entertaining
19:14anecdote.
19:18>> [music]
19:18>> Fact 19.
19:20In 1968, a Yale Classics professor named
19:23Erich Segal was not yet famous. He was
19:25an academic recently invited to
19:27collaborate with the legendary composer
19:29Richard Rodgers on a Broadway musical.
19:32Producer Al Brodax, on a flight to
19:34London, read a newspaper article about
19:37Segal, liked what he saw, and flew him
19:39in to help write Yellow Submarine.
19:42Segal's gift for accessible sentiment
19:44and wry, warm humor made him a perfect
19:47fit for the script's distinctive voice.
19:49Two years later, in 1970, the same man
19:52published a slim novel called Love
19:55Story, which became one of the most
19:57commercially successful books of the
19:59decade. Before America wept over the
20:02words love means never having to say
20:04you're sorry, Erich Segal had already
20:06put words into the mouths of animated
20:09Beatles sailing through a psychedelic
20:11sea.
20:11>> A rose, a rose, a rose. A
20:15a rosy nose?
20:16>> Fact 20.
20:18Before Pixar existed, before Toy Story,
20:21before the entire modern era of
20:23animation, there was a moment when
20:25animation was considered strictly a
20:27children's medium, Saturday morning
20:29cartoons, something beneath serious
20:32critical attention. And then Yellow
20:34Submarine arrived. John Lasseter, the
20:37man who co-founded Pixar and served as
20:39chief creative officer of both Pixar and
20:42Disney, has said on the record that
20:44Yellow Submarine changed all of that. He
20:46credits the film with generating
20:48genuine, widespread interest in
20:50animation as a serious art form
20:53deserving adult critical engagement.
20:56Film scholars analyzed it. Critics wrote
20:58thoughtfully about it. Roger Ebert gave
21:00it four stars and placed it on his great
21:02movies list. It didn't just change what
21:04a Beatles film could be. According to
21:07the man who built the house that Woody
21:09and Buzz lived in, it changed what
21:11animation itself was allowed to be. Fact
21:1421, Terry Gilliam was a young, largely
21:17unknown American animator working in
21:19London in 1968 when he saw Yellow
21:22Submarine. Specifically, he saw the
21:25Eleanor Rigby sequence, that graphically
21:27bold, mixed-media journey through gray
21:30Liverpool streets, combining altered
21:32photographs, painted animation, and
21:35rotoscoped live-action footage in a way
21:37that had never appeared in commercial
21:40film before. Something clicked in his
21:42mind immediately. He began developing
21:45his own cut-and-paste style, building
21:47collages of Victorian-era imagery and
21:50absurdist photography that bore a direct
21:53and openly acknowledged debt to what
21:55Charlie Jenkins had done. Gilliam's
21:57animations for Monty Python's Flying
21:59Circus, the surreal, faux-Victorian
22:02visual language that became one of the
22:04most recognizable signatures in British
22:06television history, grew directly out of
22:09what he saw in a cinema in '68.
22:12The Beatles film didn't just influence
22:14comedy, it gave Python its entire visual
22:17vocabulary.
22:23Fact 22, for decades, a significant
22:26portion of the public has attributed the
22:28visual style of Yellow Submarine to
22:30Peter Max, the American psychedelic pop
22:33artist whose swirling, primary-colored
22:36aesthetic was everywhere in the late
22:381960s. The confusion is entirely
22:40understandable. The two visual languages
22:43share obvious DNA, but here's what
22:46actually happened. The media gave Max
22:49the credit first. Publications,
22:51including Sight and Sound, were
22:53misattributing the film's design to him
22:55as early as its original 1968 release,
22:59and Max did little to rush forward and
23:01correct the record. The actual art
23:03director, Heinz Edelmann, a Czech-born
23:06German graphic designer who had built
23:08his own completely independent visual
23:11philosophy, watched from a distance as
23:13someone else's name got attached to his
23:16greatest work. Edelmann passed away in
23:182009. The popular misattribution has
23:21never fully been corrected.
23:23>> If we slip back through time at this
23:24rate, very soon we'll all disappear up
23:26our own existence.
23:27>> Fact 23.
23:28Here's the quiet irony at the heart of
23:30this film's creation story. The Beatles
23:33barely showed up. They handed everything
23:35to strangers, contributed reject tracks,
23:38and went to India. And yet, in a 1980
23:41interview, just months before his death,
23:44John Lennon told a journalist that
23:45Yellow Submarine was his favorite
23:48Beatles film. Not A Hard Day's Night,
23:50which the critics adored. Not Help,
23:53which he actually worked on. The
23:54animated feature made almost entirely
23:57without them.
23:58He said his son Sean had recently
24:00discovered it and become completely
24:02obsessed. And that watching it through
24:04his child's eyes had made him fall in
24:06love with it all over again. There is
24:09something quietly devastating about
24:11that. The film the Beatles barely wanted
24:13to make became the one Lennon held
24:15closest at the end.
24:17>> When I get older, losing my head,
24:20>> [music]
24:20>> many years from now.
24:23>> Fact 24. In August of 2009, Variety
24:26reported that Walt Disney Pictures and
24:28director Robert Zemeckis, fresh off
24:31Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, were in
24:33serious negotiations to produce a
24:35motion-capture remake of Yellow
24:37Submarine. Disney and Apple Corps
24:39officially announced the project at the
24:41inaugural D23 Expo on the 11th of
24:44September, 2009. A full cast was
24:47assembled. Peter Serafinowicz was set to
24:50voice Paul. Dean Lennox Kelly would play
24:53John. Cary Elwes was cast as George.
24:56David Tennant, then at the height of his
24:58Doctor Who fame, was in active talks to
25:00voice the Chief Blue Meanie. Disney
25:02planned to release it for the 2012
25:05London Olympics. Then Zemeckis' next
25:07motion capture film, Mars Needs Moms,
25:10failed catastrophically at the box
25:12office. The remake was shelved. The
25:14original remains, as it should be,
25:16untouched. Fact 25, when the restoration
25:19team prepared Yellow Submarine for its
25:211999 re-release and needed a proper
25:25surround sound audio track, they faced
25:27what looked like an impossible problem.
25:29The original songs had been recorded in
25:311966,
25:32'67, and '68 on four-track tape
25:36machines, the standard technology of the
25:38era. A modern 5.1 surround mix seemed
25:41technically out of reach. Then engineer
25:44Peter Cobbin did something
25:46extraordinary. He went back to the
25:48original four-track work tapes, the
25:50actual Abbey Road session recordings,
25:52and painstakingly assembled true
25:55multi-track masters for all 15 songs in
25:58the film. He separated instruments and
26:00vocals in ways the original technology
26:02had never permitted. He achieved a
26:04clarity of sound that had never existed
26:06in any prior release. Paul McCartney,
26:09Ringo Starr, and George Harrison
26:11listened to the results and personally
26:13approved them. For the first time, the
26:15music of Yellow Submarine sounded
26:17exactly the way it was always meant to.
26:20>> He was not [music and singing] where he
26:22is going to.
26:24>> Fact 26, director George Dunning was
26:26given 11 months to complete Yellow
26:29Submarine. At that exact moment in
26:31history, Disney was taking an average of
26:34four years to make a single animated
26:36feature. Dunning had 11 months. He
26:40quadrupled his studio staff almost
26:43overnight, assembling over 200 artists
26:46from across Britain, the United States,
26:48and Europe. They animated sequences
26:50before the script accompanying those
26:52sequences had been finalized. They
26:54designed characters before anyone had
26:56decided what those characters would do.
26:5814 complete script drafts were produced
27:01in parallel. The corridors of TVC London
27:04became a kind of organized, beautiful,
27:07exhausting creative emergency. And here
27:10is what makes that wild. The impossible
27:12deadline was almost certainly the reason
27:15the film looks the way it does.
27:17Four years of careful planning by every
27:20account probably would not have produced
27:22this.
27:22>> He'll agree I'm multi.
27:24>> Won't he though, won't he?
27:25>> Won't he though?
27:25>> Won't he though?
27:26>> Won't he?
27:27>> Fact 27. George Dunning pulled off the
27:29impossible and paid for it with
27:31everything he had.
27:33Yellow Submarine was a critical triumph
27:35and a commercial success.
27:37It brought him a special award from the
27:39National Society of Film Critics in the
27:41United States.
27:43The band was so moved by the finished
27:45film, they agreed at the last minute to
27:47appear in a live-action epilogue nobody
27:50had planned. And yet Dunning himself saw
27:52almost none of the profits. He had
27:54agreed to direct for a flat fee. When
27:57production ran over budget, he did not
27:59ask for more money. He put his own
28:01personal savings back into the film just
28:03to keep it alive.
28:05He poured everything he had into
28:07completing it. When the profits rolled
28:09in for United Artists and Apple Corps
28:11and everyone around him, Dunning went
28:13home with less than he started with. He
28:16never directed another feature-length
28:18film. He gave the world one of the most
28:20celebrated animated movies ever made and
28:22quietly disappeared.
28:24>> Okay, man, all aboard. Let's go [music]
28:26somewhere. What about him?
28:28>> Fact 28. The screenplay of Yellow
28:30Submarine went through 14 complete
28:33drafts over the course of production. At
28:35various points, reportedly around 20
28:38different versions were in circulation
28:40simultaneously. Different writers,
28:42different visions, different ideas about
28:45what Pepperland even was. Animators were
28:48drawing sequences for scenes that had
28:50not yet been written. Directors were
28:52making detailed visual decisions about
28:54characters whose motivations were still
28:56being debated in a different room down
28:58the corridor. The entire film was
29:01assembled piece by piece with Heinz
29:03Edelmann's visual invention deployed as
29:05a kind of narrative mortar to fill the
29:07gaps. Edelmann described his own
29:09strategy plainly.
29:11Visual overload.
29:13Fill every frame so completely, so
29:16dazzlingly that nobody notices the story
29:19doesn't quite hold together. As
29:21strategies go, this one worked beyond
29:24anyone's expectations. It worked so
29:26well, most people never even noticed
29:29there was a problem.
29:30>> Pepperland goes blue.
29:34>> Fact 29.
29:35Yellow Submarine cost less than $1
29:37million to produce. In British pounds of
29:40the era, the budget was approximately
29:42250,000.
29:44Roughly 1/4 of what a properly planned
29:47and funded animated feature would have
29:49cost at the time. Disney's The Jungle
29:52Book, released the previous year, had
29:54cost somewhere around $4 million
29:57and took years to complete with a full
29:59studio behind it. Yellow Submarine was
30:01built in 11 months for a fraction of
30:04that money by a team that had to invent
30:06techniques from scratch because they
30:08could not afford the standard ones. The
30:10rotoscoping, the mixed media sequences,
30:13the Magical Mystery Bench, the
30:15photographically altered backgrounds of
30:17Liverpool, none of it was born purely
30:20from artistic ambition. It was born from
30:22the creative desperation of people who
30:24had no money, no time, and still had to
30:28fill 132,000
30:30frames.
30:31Poverty, in this particular case, was
30:34the mother of psychedelia.
30:36>> Did you bring help?
30:38>> Yes. Yes, look.
30:39>> Fact 30.
30:41Much of what makes Yellow Submarine feel
30:43genuinely alive, the wordplay, the
30:46Liverpudlian puns, the dry wit threaded
30:49through every single scene, came from a
30:51man who received no screen credit at
30:53all. Roger McGough was a celebrated
30:56Liverpool poet, part of the vibrant
30:58literary scene that ran alongside the
30:59city's music explosion in the 1960s.
31:03He was brought in specifically to give
31:05the script its authentic, punchy,
31:07genuinely Beatles-shaped voice. The
31:10bycyclops joke, the layered double
31:12meanings, the rhythm of the dialogue
31:15that makes the film feel like it was
31:16actually written by people from
31:18Liverpool. For all of this, McGough
31:21received £500
31:23and no credit. Four other writers' names
31:26appeared on the screenplay. McGough's
31:27name appeared nowhere. The audience who
31:30laughed at every perfectly timed line
31:32never knew who had written them, and the
31:34man who wrote them had no way to tell
31:36them. Bonus fact. And here's that bonus
31:39fact I promised you. After John Lennon's
31:42son, Sean, saw Yellow Submarine for the
31:44first time as a small child, he came to
31:47his father with a very simple question.
31:50He had noticed one of the cartoon
31:51characters on screen.
31:53He recognized the face, and he asked
31:55John Lennon, quietly and sincerely, why
31:58he was a cartoon.
32:00Sean Lennon had not yet understood that
32:01his father was one of the Beatles.
32:04He did not know what the Beatles were.
32:06He just knew that the man in his living
32:08room looked exactly like the little
32:09animated figure sailing through
32:11Pepperland.
32:13And Lennon, the same man who later
32:15called this film his favorite Beatles
32:16movie, had to sit down and explain to
32:19his own child who he was.
32:22Of all the stories hiding behind Yellow
32:24Submarine, that small, tender moment may
32:27be the most quietly perfect one of all.
32:30Yellow Submarine was built under
32:31impossible conditions by artists who
32:34poured themselves into every single
32:36painted frame.
32:37Nobody in the world expected it. The
32:39Beatles barely wanted it. The director
32:42lost everything making it. And yet, here
32:45it is, still glowing, still strange,
32:48still somehow more alive than nearly
32:51everything made after it.
32:53It is a film that exists because people
32:55refused to take the easy way out. And 60
32:58years on, it still feels like the most
33:01beautiful accident in the history of
33:02animation.
33:04If it brought something back for you
33:05today, drop it in the comments. I would
33:07genuinely love to know.

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