American Masters (TV Series) LennoNYC (2010) User Reviews

The last ten years

[dbdumonteil · 9/10 · 28 August 2012]

The title is right:the period goes from 1971 to 1980;some will argue that the artist's best albums ("imagine" and the outstanding "plastic Ono band" )were behind him,but it does not matter ,for it is an excellent biography ,which dwarfs "imagine :the movie" and allows us to watch previously unseen sequences ;every Beatles fan should see it and it's amazing there are only two comments to date .

There are roughly three parts :

The activist,with a FBI file,with absorbing interviews with members of Elephant's Memory;

Then the lost week-end -the role of Harry Nillsson and the "pussy cats "album are almost passed over in silence ;besides they do not tell us why Lennon had to record "rock and roll";ditto for the stint with Bowie.That said ,Lennon's confusion is perfectly depicted and Yoko is frank.

And finally the househusband years ,which shows Lennon had found peace of mind and happiness ,after eventful years;the death of the working class hero is treated with a great sense of decency ,letting us feel what we lost and what they (Sean and Yoko) lost:with hindsight,it is a blessing Lennon retired for five years because his son has memories of his father who shared his life and took care of him for those precious times.(which made the song "beautiful boy" so endearing and so overwhelming :"the monster's gone (!) and your daddy's here") lots of people are featured:Jack Douglas,Elton John,photographer Bob Gruen,May Pang,and many more ;the Beatles appear in short flashbacks but the dream is over and we just have to carry on.

Watch it!

Even if you aren't a fan, there's plenty here to see and enjoy.

[planktonrules · 9/10 · 5 January 2016]

I should mention up front that I am not particularly a John Lennon fan. I don't dislike him but am somewhat indifferent to his work...especially his work post-Beatles. However, I watched this film because I am a huge fan of PBS documentaries...and in "American Masters" is one of my favorites.

The film is about John Lennon and his life when he moved from London to New York in the early 70s. Among the many topics covered in the film is his marriage to Yoko, his anti-war work, the Nixon administration's attempts to deport him, his separation from Yoko (with his subsequent spiral into drinking and being a jerk), his studio work as well as his later years and, once again, fatherhood. The way I see the film, it's a gradual evolution until he became a person most of us could really like...at which point he was murdered.

The documentary is made up of the usual interviews and film clips but what makes this one really neat (and a tad spooky) is that so much audio of Lennon talking and recording and outtakes are spaced out throughout the film. It's interesting to hear alternate versions of his songs, his commentary or even his saying goodnight to his young son. All in all, a very compelling, well made and interesting portrait of the guy from about age 30-40. Well worth seeing.

Decent look at a period in his life.

[jellopuke · 7/10 · 2 July 2019]

More of a biography of his last 9 years but skipping over pretty much anything negative to paint the image of a saint among men.

excellent look at private citizen Lennon

[blanche-2 · 10/10 · 9 December 2010]

"LennonNYC" is a wonderful documentary about John Lennon's life in New York City. It's sad at the same time, because his love of freedom and the Dakota's policy of letting people loiter outside the building cost him his life. Lennon himself took no security precautions, enjoying what he felt was the anonymity of New York. It's true, people are more laid back there about seeing celebrities. But there are always nuts around, and Lennon, alas, met one.

There is lots of footage of Lennon in interviews and also recording - he was on top of the world with his Double Fantasy album. Though no one says it, I think he had been "written out" for a time. And when his son Sean was born, Lennon felt like it was the beginning of a new life for him. Before his death, he was happier than he had ever been - grown up, as he put it, and at peace with his life. That someone could take that away from him is very cruel.

Excellent.

Nice Look at Lennon with Some Good Album Outtakes

[Michael_Elliott · 23 November 2010]

LennonNYC (2010)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

If you want to learn about the life and career of John Lennon then you've got countless ways of doing so. There are countless books, interviews, documentaries and just about everything else out there and easily available. This most recent documentary takes a look at him from the time he moved to New York City until his death, which this documentary was marking the 30th anniversary of. The first portion of the film deals with Lennon's politics as he was treated with deportation and from here we see his break-up with Yoko Ono, which eventually led to an alcohol rage in Los Angeles. Then, the final portion of the film looks at his life with his new son Sean and eventually the Double Fantasy album. Once again, there are countless documentaries out there but this one here at least gives us a lot of outtake footage from his albums as well as plenty of nice and touching interviews. I think fans of Lennon are going to enjoy this because there's so much behind-the-scenes footage from the making of Double Fantasy to some audio clips of various things he did from benefit concerts to his cameo with Elton John at Madison Square Garden. The documentary does a very good job at showing how much Lennon did in this ten-year period, although I do think the stuff with the politics wasn't nearly as interesting as everything else. We get to hear about Lennon's depression from some of his solo albums doing poorly with critics and fans plus his unhappiness over the controversy surround "Woman in the Ni**er of the World." The stuff with Lennon pretty much going into the dumps while in Los Angeles was highly entertaining as was the final bits with him making what was suppose to be comeback album. The death of Lennon has probably been documented more than any other event in rock and roll history but it is told in a rather unique way here. I think documentaries like IMAGINE and THE U.S. VS JOHN LENNON were more entertaining overall but this one here is still a must see for all the outtakes that are featured plus we get nice interviews with Ono, Elton John and countless people who played on Lennon's final few records.

"American Masters: LennoNYC" is a fine chronicle of John Lennon's years after The Beatles

[tavm · 10/10 · 16 October 2013]

Just watched this on the DVR about three years after recording there. It chronicles former Beatle John Lennon's life and career after moving to New York with wife Yoko Ono. From their recording sessions to his outspoken rallies which led to deportation threats to his lost times in Los Angeles solo to a sabbatical while taking care of newborn Sean to a comeback with Ono just before his tragic fate. Quite insightful with many Lennon comments spread throughout and latter-day interviews with Yoko, Dick Cavett, Elton John, and many of the musicians who worked with him during those final years. So on that note, "American Masters: LennoNYC" is well worth seeing.

Disappointingly Rote

[winstonengle · 6/10 · 29 May 2019]

When I first saw the title "LennoNYC," I thought, "Cool! An in-depth look at Lennon's years in New York, his involvement in the art scene and all that. That's new." But while the film makes an initial stab in that direction, by the half-hour point it's fully in the mode of "Standard Lennon Biography, Years 1971-80." No mention at all, for instance, of John and Yoko's film work with Adolfas Mekas (who only appears for a few seconds of interview footage). But the film does follow Lennon through his "Lost Weekend" in Los Angeles - about as far from the promise of "LennoNYC" as it could get. It's a solid production, and the recording session outtakes are fun to hear, but there's very little here that's news to all but the most casual Lennon fan. It's easy to imagine the filmmakers having made a much more original and insightful film with the same material.

Marginal.

[henryonhillside · 5/10 · 12 April 2014]

The movie has some good moments but overall is historically dishonest.

The film was financed by a woman named Yoko Ono. She's John's widow. She lives in Manhattan. (I realize that no one under age 30 will recognize the name. She's an elderly person living in a luxury apartment, eating sushi, casting spells on people she doesn't like, and spending money made by John Lennon many years earlier. In the early '60s she worked on the margins of the New York art scene. She was widely dismissed as corny.)

She's a shrewd public relations manager, no question about it. She's got money to work with (from John's Beatle royalties) and she's got access to a lot of hungry young filmmakers eager for a paycheck. Hence this movie.

The movie whitewashes John's self-destructiveness. Very canny how it does this. It delves into his craziness during the L. A. years of 1972-74. These were the years when he dismissed Yoko from his life. The movie says, "Oh, look! We're being honest in this film! We're delving into his madness!" But the film avoids examining Part II of his craziness, when Yoko accepted him back (1974 to '80). He was back in her arms but he was still crazy. Whitewashing.

Another example of whitewashing (this is frickin' brilliant) - the film presents May Pang, his girlfriend, as a talking head, briefly. ("Hey, this film is honest!") But the film doesn't give May space to say any of the awful stuff about John that's in her book. Yoko paid May to appear in the movie and then mostly cut May out of the movie. This is public relations genius.

Essentially the film is a rebuttal to Albert Goldman's biography of John which depicts the man during the second half of the '70s as a dork, extremely impatient with his son Sean (the film, by contrast, shows John as a dream of a father), sealing himself off alone in his room with his books, TV and pot, starving himself to maintain the skinny rock star look, sermonizing naked ad nauseum to the servants, moping around, yelling at his cats, yelling at the kid, and being generally depressed, and doing a lot of coke to get "Double Fantasy" made (the guy had all the marks of a cokehead in the studio in '80). I will grant you that Albert Goldman's book has holes in it. I will grant you that Goldman does not understand the life energy of rock music. I will also grant you that connecting to the music of the spheres requires heavy consciousness and that Goldman doesn't remotely understand this. But I think Goldman's book is well-reported. I think it's more accurate about the Manhattan life of John Lennon than a lot of people with vested interests claim it to be (Yoko Ono, Jann Wenner, etc.). Wenner, and Rolling Stone magazine, have been in bed with Lennon, metaphorically speaking, for 50 years now. In the early '70s, Wenner's attempt to jack up Lennon, and blantant attempt to destroy Paul McCartney (aided and abetted by reviewer Jon Landau) is one of the bleakest chapters in American journalism.

I will add, for the record, that Sean Lennon, circa the 2020s, appears to be one of the most depressed and hostile persons on the Eastern Seaboard. I base that thought on the vibe he gives off, which is a vibe of "I AM cool, damn you." I may be wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I think he should probably not allow people to film him.

The movie is well made technically. It provides nice glimpses of John in the studio.