Inside The U.S. vs. John Lennon

By David Leaf and John Scheinfeld

The U.S. vs. John Lennon is the compelling story of what happens when one of the most beloved artists of all time makes a conscious decision to use his fame and fortune to challenge authority, "imagining" that the most powerful nation on earth might finally bring a peaceful end to the Vietnam War.

John's courage, his desire to use his "celebrity" to make the world a better place, his willingness to speak his mind, his determination not to be silenced are all illustrated throughout the film, often in "first person" archival audio and video of John.

This is a documentary we have had our hearts set on making (and have been pitching) for the last decade. Now, in the final stages of post-production (Lions Gate plans to have it in theaters later this year, the 30th anniversary of John getting his "green card"), we look
back on what we set out to do, what we hope the film says and how it (and our body of work) relates to this "Icons" issue.

Going back to our first project together (The Unknown Marx Brothers), we have been fortunate to make programs and films we would want to see, tell stories that are important to us, celebrate the iconic figures who were so influential in our lives, and hope that others will feel the same way and want to watch. We attempt to do that by putting the artist's legacy into both a personal and larger cultural and historical context.

In a series of retrospectives on comedy heroes (e.g., The Marxes, Jonathan Winters, Peter Sellers) and musical legends (Frank Sinatra, Nat "King" Cole, Dean Martin, the Bee Gees, et al.) we've created what might be called a "personal scrapbook" style, enlisting the artists or (if they're deceased) their immediate family and closest friends to reveal
the person behind the art - not by exploiting the artist's human foibles but by revealing "the heart behind the art."

In the last two years, we believe our films have become even more ambitious. With No Fighting in the War Room or Dr. Strangelove and the Nuclear Threat, we posited the question, "What was it really like in the war room when Dr. Strangelove was originally produced?" and then persuaded former Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, to tell us.

With Beautiful Dreamer: Brian Wilson and the Story of ‘Smile', one challenge we faced was to say something new about an artist who had previously been the focus of nearly a dozen other programs. We were able to do that because the third act of the film unfolded with our cameras rolling, the artist creating his own "happy ending," delivering an inspirational message to the audience that no dreams are ever out of reach.

For our most recent feature documentary, Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him?), despite our subject being dead, we were graced with an oral autobiography that Harry had recorded, an amazing artifact that enabled us to have our deceased title character narrate his own life story. .

With The U.S. vs. John Lennon, almost everybody thinks they know who John Lennon is and why he matters. What did we have to say that was new, worthy of ours (and the audience's) time and attention, not to mention the significant investment made in the film by our distributors?

To us, the answer could be described in one word - context. To understand what John did and what happened to him, we needed to understand the era, to place Lennon's story against the social, political and cultural landscape of the times.

To do that, we chose not to examine the minutia of the legal briefs in the U.S. Government's deportation case but to place John's story into a much larger story - the political maelstrom in the U.S. when John began his campaign for peace, a time that former Senator (and presidential candidate) George McGovern describes as the closest our country had come to civil war since...the Civil War.

To get at the "truths" of the story...both large and small...our research and production basically took a four-pronged approach:

1. We took a thorough look at the existing material on John Lennon (books, articles, documentaries, etc.).

2. We held extensive new interviews with key participants: activists like Angela Davis, journalists who reported in that era (including Walter Cronkite, Carl Bernstein and Geraldo Rivera), friends, colleagues, a distinguished group of commentators (e.g. Noam
Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Governor Mario Cuomo), former Nixon administration officials (John Dean and G. Gordon Liddy), and former F.B.I. agents who explain the bureau's regard (and disregard) for the constitution.

3. From the world's archives, we gathered every relevant piece of audio or video of John Lennon from 1965 until his death, and, with unprecedented access to John and Yoko's private archives, the film features never-been-seen-before material (e.g., John and Yoko's
performance at the pivotal John Sinclair concert). There is also extensive archival footage and photography from the era, including revealing moments from Presidents Johnson and Nixon and F.B.I. Director Hoover.

4. To get at the emotional truth of this "political" story, we talked to the only person alive with intimate knowledge of what happened and how it privately impacted John and his work. Over a period of eight months, we taped three exhaustive interviews with Yoko Ono, who told us of events that only she - as John's partner before, during and after
their campaign for peace - could reveal.

Unlike previous documentaries we've made, this film is not solely about John's artistic legacy but also focuses on how and why his art turned him into a target of the Nixon administration. His music plays an integral part in the movie. In our other musical portraits, we've almost exclusively used the music of our subject, giving the viewer a truly aural and artistic autobiography.

In The U.S. vs. John Lennon, this approach became vital. Using John's songs to underscore 1960s America allows his "voice" to be heard as the parallel story lines unfold. As John's lyrical passion plays out on film, it truly feels as if the songs were written for this movie.

Besides an in-depth telling of an important story that has received little attention, we think the film can be a litmus test. The same issues that John Lennon faced: