Just got done watching this documentary.  I went back and forth about putting documentary in quotation marks.  Netflix has it listed under Social and Cultural Documentaries as well as other headings with documentary in the title.  Who am I to argue?

The movie opens with a shot of the studio building where it had been produced.

Fancy right?  Not sure if it comes across in the picture, but it looks totally real and not at all produced in a computer at all.  Not sure if it comes across in the text, but I’m being wicked sarcastic.

Anyway, the subtitle for the movie is The Last Testament of George Harrison, so you know you’re probably going to hear some serious crap from George Harrison.  We are introduced to the level of serious crap that can be conveyed by the words of George Harrison by being shown an interview with him from 1965.  In this, the interviewer asks George if it’s true that he’s none to appreciative of all the jelly beans that are being thrown at the band.  I guess this was a thing at the time.  I don’t know, and the movie does not help to make clear, if this practice was reserved only for The Beatles, or if the teenagers of the mid 60’s just like to throw jelly beans.  That’s one mystery that remains unanswered.

What does not remain unanswered is how George Harrison felt about having jelly beans thrown at him.  He did not like it.  At all.  He says that a jelly bean travelling at 50 mile an hour through the air and hitting you in the eye would leave you “finished” and “blind”.  The exchange has ominous synth music as its background.

This sets up…  Not sure what this sets up.  Some anti-confection subtext for the rest of the movie?  I still don’t know.

After the jelly bean thing, we meet the producer and director of the film, Joel GILBERT.  You know.  Joel Gilbert from Highway 61 Entertainment?  Remember the picture of the building.  That’s HIS building.  Whew.

He tells us that in 2005, he received a manila envelope with a bunch of stamps on it post marked from England.  This was an unsolicited package.  Unsolicited.  Apparently that’s really important.  The package was delivered to the offices of Highway 61 Entertainment.

Somewhere in here there are offices, presumably.

You can tell it’s all real because they show you the envelope and it indeed has stamps on it and the stamps have picture of the Queen on them.  So… you know.  England.  London, England.  But, there was no return address.  More ominous synth music.  It made more sense here than behind the jelly bean exchange, to be honest.

Inside the envelope was a miniature tape recorder and two cassette-ettes. 

“On the tapes was the voice of a man claiming to be Beatle, George Harrison.”  These are the words of director/producer Joel Gilbert.  He picks his words carefully, then not.  In his next sentence, he seems to readily accept the identity of the speaker when he says, “George told an incredible story.” 

Then he goes back to careful again when he adds, “For five years we tried to authenticate these tapes using three different forensic labs.”  He even holds three fingers up to emphasize the number of forensic labs they used. “But each test proved inconclusive.”  Oh.  So it’s not George Harrison.

“During this time, our researchers, using information on these tapes, unearthed shocking new evidence…”  Wait.  You can’t prove who’s on the tapes but the tapes provided shocking new evidence?  Isn’t that like saying you’re not sure who these fingerprints belong to, but they led you to the murderer? 

Okay.  So I said he chose his words carefully.  Let me finish what he says.  See if you can figure out what he’s really saying.  ”During this time, our researchers, using information on these tapes, unearthed shocking new evidence, which is included in this film, and presented alongside George Harrison’s narrative, to tell an incredible story, in what may prove to be the most important document in rock and roll history.”

What’s he saying, now?

As the movie continues, we’re shown footage of spinning reels on miniature cassette tapes with the words, The Last Testament of George Harrison written on them. 

This fellow did a better George Harrison voice than whoever they got to do the George Harrison voice for the last Testament of George Harrison.

Here’s the deal.  The movie presents a story that supposedly was recorded by George Harrison while he was “in hospital” after having been attacked in his home.  He was attacked in his home, because he had decided enough time had gone by and was going to expose the fake Paul McCartney that has been running around as Paul McCartney for much longer than the real Paul McCartney would have been alive had he died.

He decided to come out about the story even though he knew that John Lennon had stated he was going to come out about the story and was, therefore, shot by a crazy man who had been influenced by MI5.

MI5 had convinced all the Beatles to find a fake Paul when Paul died in a car crash because if they didn’t, and the crazed fans (the jelly bean throwers) found out about it, there would be a rash of suicides and riots and stuff.

So they found some guy, who sort of looked like Paul, in a Bandstand contest, then gave him a bunch of surgery, a bunch of times, to make him look more like Paul.  The band were in a difficult situation.  They were mourning Paul, but didn’t want a rash of suicides on their heads and MI5 had them up against the wall, threatening to, like, kill them and stuff if they said anything.  Also, if the fans eventually found out that Paul WAS dead, they would be mad as heck at the remaining Beatles for not telling them.  SO, they decided to put all the clues all the album covers and songs so that, should the fans ever find out that Paul was dead they could fall back on, “Well, we tried to tell you.”, while still not irking MI5 into killing them.

Makes sense, right?

75% of the movie goes over all the clues that you’ve heard about before.  The rest of it is new to me.  Seems like they’re doing a George Lucas with the story.  Going back in time and creating connections where there were never mentioned connections before.  Like, do you know who was with Paul in the car crash, but ran to get help and returned just in time to see the car explode?  Rita.  Guess what her job was.  Go on.  Guess.

A number of people and circumstances are exposed and you go, “Oh.  That’s why that lyric was in the song.” Or, “Oh, that’s who that person named in that song really is.”

This is the part of the movie that is making me nuts.  Their adversary at MI5, the guy who threatens them with death, the guy who made them get the fake Paul in the first place, the guy who beats them up or has them beaten up several times.  His name?  His name is Maxwell.  The name Maxwell is said 40 or 50 times.  

But there is no mention of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.  At all.  Even when the movie goes into excruciating detail about the clues on the cover of Abbey Road and in the songs.  Even after it calls out the fact that apparently there is a man on the cover playing the role of Maxwell, there is no mention of the song at all.  Infuriating.

Oh.  Remember Rita?  Guess who Rita turned out to be?  Get this.  In August of 1993, “George” received a call from “Paul”.  ”Paul” said that “Rita” had contacted him.  She demanded he divorce Linda McCartney and marry her in exchange for continued silence about what she knew.  Because she was there when Paul really died and MI5 gave her a new identity… because… uh…  Anyway.

“George” told “Paul” to ring “Maxwell” for advice.  Surprisingly, soon after this conversation “Rita” was hit by a “motorbike”.  MI5 attempted to kill her.  Because, this is how English military intelligence would accomplish the knocking off of a stool pigeon.  I tend to think they’d use a “lorry”.

However, she did not die.  But she had one leg amputated.  Guess who she is yet?  That’s right.  MI5 gave her the new identity of Heather Mills.

One of the last things in the movie is a shot of Heather Mills, on the set of what appears to be the Today Show, or something like it.  She is saying that she has a box full of evidence about the truth and how one certain party is very concerned about the truth coming out, but that if you “top her off?” the truth will come out.

Pretty convincing, right?  She’s talking about the box of evidence she has about Paul being “Paul”.

Unfortunately, five seconds of Googling shows that those words were about Heather fearing for her life from people who were upset at her for divorcing Paul.

The following is an excerpt from katu.com

Breaking her recent silence about issues surrounding their divorce case, Mills McCartney gave two television interviews Wednesday. She also announced that she would seek European legislation to compel newspapers to apologize for untruthful stories.

“Do you fear for your life?” she was asked in a British Broadcasting Corp. television interview.

“Yes I do, yes I do,” she said.

“And you are saying that Paul McCartney does not protect you and your child?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mills McCartney said.

She also appeared earlier in the day on an ITV television morning show, saying she had taken precautions because of death threats.

”I have a box of evidence that’s going to a certain person, should anything happen to me, so if you top me off it’s still going to that person, and the truth will come out,” she said.

“There is so much fear from a certain party of the truth coming out that lots of things have been put out and done, so the police came ‘round and said, `You have had serious death threats from an underground movement.”’

On the BBC, she was asked if the tabloid newspapers were at fault.

“It’s the tabloids and a certain party, but it is so extreme and so abusive … I mean, I’ve been called monster, whore, gold digger, fantasist, liar.”

So.  This does not lend a hell of a lot of credence to the rest of the tail.

Still,  if they made it all up, how could they not include a reference to Maxwell’s Silver Hammer??  That really aggravates me!