And the day before, Los Angeles Times had this: "Documentary examines George Harrison."
When Martin Scorsese and Olivia Harrison first sat down about five years ago to strategize about a documentary on the life of George Harrison, both quickly zeroed in on a letter the young Beatle wrote to his family at the height of Beatlemania.More at the link.
"It was a letter George had written when he was not more than 22," Harrison said of the man to whom she was married for 23 years before his death from cancer a decade ago. "It was in 1965, and the Beatles would have been really cresting at that point. He was writing home and told his family, 'I know that this isn't it. I knew I was going to be famous, but now I know I can reach the real top of what man can achieve, which is self-realization.' He knew then that [material reward] wasn't it."
That letter figures into a pivotal moment in Scorsese's film, "George Harrison: Living in the Material World" (taken from the title of Harrison's 1973 album), which premieres on HBO over two nights Wednesday and Thursday to accommodate its 31/2-hour length.
In the scene, George says how lucky the Beatles were to acquire so many of the material goods early on that most people spend their entire lives yearning for, because they learned relatively young how hollow such things ultimately ring.
Olivia Harrison gave Scorsese and his team virtual carte blanche access to home movies, family photos, audio recordings and other items from her husband's estate for use in the film, which paints a richly detailed and unvarnished picture of the man initially pigeonholed as "the quiet Beatle."
A more accurate sobriquet might have been "the spiritual Beatle" to reflect the inward quest that seemed to capture Harrison early in a life about which he once famously said that his biggest break had been getting into the Beatles; his second biggest, getting out.
Also, "TV review: 'George Harrison: Living in the Material World'," and "George Harrison: A video miscellany."
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