A HARD DAY'S NIGHT (1964) GEORGE 1964
(just before the premiere)
Q: "George, you are going back to England and to Liverpool to see your film. Have you actually seen the film yet?"
GEORGE: "Yeah, we saw it just before we came away. It wasn't completely finished. It was more or less finished. They had the very first opening shot missing, and alot of the sound effects and background weren't there."
Q: "Were you impressed by The Beatles' acting?"
GEORGE: "I don't know. It's hard to look at it from a bit of different view, you know. It's actually... It's us, so we can't... None of us think we're good actors, but we're quite happy with the film considering it's our first. It could have been alot worse."
RINGO 1964
(on making the movie: 'A Hard Day's Night')
RINGO: "At first it was hard, because we wouldn't learn the lines like you're supposed to. We'd learn them on the way to the studio. In a way it might have been better because it was more natural."
JOHN AND GEORGE 1964
(interviewed in Sydney , before the film's release)
Q: "Do you ever go to the barbers, John?"
JOHN: "No, you know. I haven't had a haircut since the film. The woman on the film cut it good, but I don't trust anybody else."
Q: "This is the film 'Beatlemania,' is it?"
GEORGE: "No. 'A Hard Day's Night.'"
JOHN: "'A Hard Day's Night' it's called."
Q: "Are you satisfied with the finished product?"
JOHN: "Well, it's as good as anybody that makes a film who can't act, you know."
(laughter)
RINGO, PAUL AND GEORGE 1964
(promotion interview for the movie)
Q: "Ringo, was it really a hard day's night to make this first big one?"
RINGO: "Well, it was a hard two months. It took two months actually to make this film. But, umm, I think I found the biggest drag was when we were just sitting 'round doing nothing."
PAUL: "And getting up early. That was one of those things. We had to get up about six o'clock in the morning, you know, sometimes. Which is-- oh-- I'm sure it's not good for anyone, that. It's very bad for your health."
Q: "George, how about you? Did you find it an easy thing to do?"
GEORGE: "Oh no. In fact, you see, we're night owls, folks."
PAUL: (hoots like an owl, and laughs)
GEORGE: "You mightn't have noticed. No, but-- you know, we all go out at night. And then suddenly our day was reversed, so that we had to be up at six in the morning, but we still couldn't get the hang of going to bed at night. So we were going out at night AND getting up in the morning for the first week or so, and I just couldn't believe it. Six o'clock, somebody dragging me out of bed."
Q: "Ringo, at six in the morning what did you do about the bags under your eyes?"
RINGO: "Umm, well, I've always had 'em. I just filled them up a bit more."
(laughter)
JOHN AND RINGO 1964
(regarding the word Cheeky)
JOHN: "I thought 'Cheeky' was universal. I thought it was English, and the other day I got a couple of letters saying, 'From your film, John... what does Cheeky mean?' And I thought it was obvious it just means sort of hard-faced, only light-heartertedly. You know, sort of 'the nerve of that fellow.'"
RINGO: "It's like, it's a lighthearted 'get lost,' I'd say."
JOHN: "I say to him 'gear costume,' which means 'I admire your costume greatly.' And he says 'Swap' in a rather effeminate voice, meaning exchange (costumes). And I says to him 'cheeky' meaning hard-faced naughty boy, you see. Because he is isn't he? I mean you could tell by the way he looked at him."
RINGO: "Oh! Oh, a very bad boy."
PAUL AND RINGO 1964
(on a deleted scene from the movie)
Q: "Were there any scenes from 'A Hard Day's Night' that did not make it into the final picture?"
PAUL: "There was a scene where I'm supposed to be picking on Ringo and saying, 'It's all your fault.' And as I was saying it, I kept flapping my arms up and down... I don't know why. I must've thought I was a good actor. (laughs) I was just sort of flapping my arms around and saying, 'It's all your fault.' And he couldn't stand it... he was giggling away. So then I started laughing and we just collapsed. We did so many takes of it."
RINGO: "Twelve takes on that one."
PAUL: (giggles) "...and they cut the bit in the end."
JOHN 1964
(regarding his favorite scene in 'A Hard Day's Night')
Q: "What's your favorite part of the film?
JOHN: "All of us liked the bit in the field where we all jump about like lunatics because that's pure film, as the director (Dick Lester) told us, you know, it's pure filming and we could've been anybody, but we enjoyed it."
RINGO 1964
(on the movie title)
RINGO: "We went to do a job, and we'd worked all day and we happened to work all night. I came up still thinking it was day I suppose, and I said, 'It's been a hard day...' and I looked around and saw it was dark so I said, '...night!' So we came to 'A Hard Day's Night.'"
JOHN 1980
(regarding the inspiration to make movies)
JOHN: "At one time or another everyone has imagined themselves starring in either a rock film or a James Bond movie. We weren't any different, except suddenly we got the opportunity to do it. But what'd we know about making movies? Absolutely nothing, except that we instinctively knew if something was crap. And there were alot of crap rock movies about. We'd made it clear to Brian that we weren't interested in being stuck in one of those typical 'nobody understands our music' plots where the local dignitaries are trying to ban something as terrible as the Saturday night hop. The kind of thing where we'd just pop up a couple of times between the action... How could we have faced each other if we had allowed ourselves to be involved in that kind of movie?"
PAUL 1994
(on a deleted scene from the movie)
PAUL: "There was a sequence that I was going to do, and to this day whenever I go past the pub in Shepherd's Bush I remember going in with Isla Blair and filming on the second floor. She was supposed to be the object of my desire, or I was of her's. That was the idea behind this little scene-ette. I had to sort of wander around her with the camera going round and round in circles-- all very sixties, all very French-- and I had to repeat these very quirky lines. We had a whole day of doing that, but it didn't work because it wasn't the kind of thing we would have done in everyday life. It was all a little bit too contrived."
RINGO 1995
(regarding his solo scene)
RINGO: "The scene in 'A Hard Day's Night,' the one I got all the credit for was the walking by the canal with the camera-- the lonely guy scene-- That came about because I came to work, very unprofessionally, straight from a nightclub. And I was a little hungover to say the least, you know. I was just so out of it so they said, 'Let's do anything.' So my version of it was 'Just let me walk around and film me.' And why I look so cold and dejected is because I felt like shit. So, no acting going on there. I just felt so bad."
