Beatles draw crowds with ‘Eight Days’ film
Tribune News Service
A modestly budgeted independent film documentary about a pop-culture phenomenon that played out half a century ago is out-grossing multimillion-dollar major studio feature films, proving anew a time-honored music industry adage, “Never underestimate the power of The Beatles.”
Ron Howard’s new documentary, “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years,” has played so strongly during its first week in theaters that virtually all are holding it over for at least a second week, and the film’s distributor is nearly doubling the number of screens it will be shown on.
“Any day when this little film can out-gross studio films in 48 of the top 50 theaters is a good day,” Richard Abramowitz, president of the film’s distributor, Abramorama, told the Los Angeles Times last week.
“Eight Days a Week” also has generated generally positive reviews, scoring a 97 percent positive rating at RottenTomatoes.com and 72 percent at Metacritic.com.
Abramowitz said audiences are often responding tangibly to the section of the film that outlines The Beatles’ contract rider specifying the group would not play to segregated audiences, a fact of life in many parts of the U.S. when the band toured between 1964 and 1966.
“That’s been particularly gratifying,” Abramowitz said. “There’s a line where one of them says something like ’We just play to people,’ and I’ve heard spontaneous applause in response, because it’s a particularly sensitive time in this country’s history right now.
“You think back to how evolved these guys were, socially and politically,” he said. “When we think about all the changes they generated in our culture, it’s usually about music and fashion and things like that. So to think that 50 years ago they took a stand like that, when it clearly did not have any commercial value to them, it’s quite remarkable.”