Book Review: ACT NATURALLY: THE BEATLES ON FILM: Tediously Interesting

One might wonder when cracking open Steve Matteo‘s newly published work, “Why do we need another book on The Beatles? Aren’t there hundreds, maybe thousands of them already? What new information about the legendary band could possibly be told that hasn’t been told a thousand times?” Well, Steve Matteo has a certain level of self-awareness as the introduction to Act Naturally: The Beatles On Film begins with him asking similar questions. Now, does he justify these questions with valuable answers and justify the book as a whole’s purpose for existing? Well… yes and no.

The book, which took its author roughly three years to conceive, research, and write, chronicles in depth the short but influential film careers of The Beatles. It catalogues the making and release, primarily, of A Hard Day’s Night, Help!, Magical Mystery Tour, Yellow Submarine, and Let It Be. The book also touches on Peter Jackson‘s monumental docu-series on the band, The Beatles: Get Back, Ron Howard‘s Eight Days A Week, and a few solo projects that individual Beatles starred in in the 60s and 70s such as John Lennon‘s role in Richard Lester‘s How I Won The War.

The level of detail on display is often dense and genuinely impressive and it’s more than obvious that author Steve Matteo knows what he’s talking to when it comes to The Beatles and their influence on pop culture and our society as a whole. However, as a compelling writer, I’m not so sure. The book, as fascinating as it sometimes is, lacks a narrative framework for the most part which causes it to often feel more like a textbook than any compelling novel. And despite its loose efforts of providing one, perhaps some sort of clearer narrative structure would have helped it stand out among the crowd of Beatles material and cause the book to have more of potency or personality to it (See Sam Wasson‘s remarkable The Big Goodbye for a nonfiction work with a brilliant narrative framework: on the surface, it’s the story of the making Chinatown yet it is actually a fascinating tale that interweaves the story of four guilt-ridden, traumatized men who came together to make one of the definitive films of its century. That book has a bevy of information as well as a fascinating, near-novelistic approach to its storytelling). As is, this book is a pretty great way to learn about these important chapters in The Beatles canon but rarely offers much else.

Rubber Soul

The book, after a decently lengthy introduction, opens with the premiere of A Hard Day’s Night in London before going on to detail its Liverpool  (where the band got its start) premiere before jumping back. This section gives a nice insight into what the emotions were like that night, how each of the Beatles was feeling about becoming movie stars and actors, and illustrates just how much they were blowing up in this time: this was the height of Beatle-mania and Matteo wants you to know it. This extended opening harkens back, intentionally or not, to Robert Evans‘ famous memoir, The Kid Stays In The Picture (a book with an excellent first half that sort of devolves into the pessimistic, self-absorbed blame game of a rich Hollywood producer as it goes along). Evans‘ book starts with the premiere of The Godfather, a night he sees as the peak of his life, and then goes on to detail his life before and after, his rise and fall. Once again, that book has a sort of narrative, even if it is a memoir, and often, like Wasson‘s book, reads more like a novel whereas Matteo‘s so often reads more like a Wikipedia page, a straight arrow of events and facts, a timeline.

It is pretty admirable, still, that Matteo clearly knew he was out of his element when writing a book about the cinema considering his specialty is music theory and biography. Once again, Matteo demonstrates a considerable level of self-awareness to this point as he also acknowledges this and goes on to give a brief history of the British new wave movement of films in the early 60s, kitchen-sink dramas, and how the growth of this movement coincided with the rise of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. He gives a concise but surprisingly tactful chronicle of this movement and touches on many of the major films and faces involved in this movement, especially Richard Lester who would go on to direct A Hard Day’s Night and Help!. He clearly wanted to have a palpable understanding of the cinema before writing a book about it, as evidenced by his mountains of research described in the introduction, interviewing and researching some prolific figures involved in The Beatles’ film productions, and even interviewing directors like Cameron Crowe and Ralph Bakshi to get more insight into the world of film, animation, and how music relates to both mediums.

Come Together

The book is split into six parts, each sort of detailing a specific production or era while diverting to various other topics to give the piece some meat on its bones. This method of laying down the facts and events, despite my reservations, works fairly well structurally and some of the most interesting parts of the book come from little, seemingly unrelated yarns. Matteo has a good eye for little moments, moments that humanize these gods among men, as well as ones that pay tribute to the so often criminally under-looked people involved in productions (your art department people, your sound techs, and so, so many more). That’s such an admirable trait of this novel and oftentimes I wish it would focus even more on those aspects, of those little challenges that the crew and cast had to overcome to get these films and productions done.

Calling Steve Matteo‘s book something like “uninspired” seems too harsh and even hypocritical because all evidence points to the fact that he had nothing but absolute passion and wonderful intentions with Act Naturally and that even comes across in some great bits. As a whole though, it does tend to feel dry in many places and lacks the narrative or personal examination that other great books on show business provide. At the end of the day, this is a book that will no doubt scratch an itch if your particular itch is to learn about The Beatles’ history on film (as I said, an often fascinating subject) but it unfortunately fails to deliver or leave you with much more to chew on besides a series of facts and events.