“It’s ‘American Graffiti’ meets ‘Ben-Hur’”: how George Lucas inspired Robert Zemeckis’ Beatles movie
If there’s one name that exists in the middle of a Venn diagram between George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, then it’s hard to think of anyone who fits the bill better than Robert Zemeckis.
Spielberg had been a staunch supporter of Zemeckis since the very beginning, executive producing his debut feature I Wanna Hold Your Hand and follow-up Used Cars, with the filmmaker and writing partner Bob Gale responding in kind by penning the screenplay for maligned war comedy 1941.
That bond would continue for years, with Spielberg instrumental in getting the screenplay for Back to the Future sold after dozens of rejections, while he’d also back Zemeckis as EP on the entire sci-fi trilogy and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. They were thick as thieves, and with Lucas always in the conversation when Spielberg was involved, the Star Wars creator would inevitably play a part, too.
Not that it came about in the most obvious way, though, with Zemeckis and Gale struggling to come up with a worthwhile way to tell the story of four New Jersey teenagers making a pilgrimage to New York so they could see The Beatles during their iconic Stateside breakthrough performance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
With a quartet of protagonists embarking upon four individual journeys, all interlinked by the same inciting event, Zemeckis struggled to coalesce his narrative idea into a cohesive whole. Fortunately, Lucas had succeeded at much the same thing just a few years previously, which gave the first-timer the bout of inspiration he so desperately needed.
“We’d been impressed by American Graffiti, which has this really intricate screenplay that cuts between these four characters that are involved in parallel stories happening on the same night,” he told Rolling Stone. “We thought, ‘Why couldn’t we do this with Beatlemania?’. It’s four girls, four stories, it all takes place in one day. That was the idea.”
That wasn’t the only touchstone Zemeckis and Gale relied upon, even if the second was a lot less obvious. “Our pitch was always it’s American Graffiti meets Ben-Hur,” which was nothing if not ambitious considering the monumental levels of success the coming-of-age drama and historical epic respectively achieved.
Taking its cues from the most profitable film in history at the time that landed five Academy Award nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ and the all-conquering blockbuster that won a record 11 Oscars from 12 nominations was aiming incredibly high, Zemeckis has never been one to settle for anything less.
Unfortunately, I Wanna Hold Your Hand flopped at the box office after failing to recoup its budget, even if time has been kind to Zemeckis’ debut for capturing a snapshot in pop culture history and refitting a defining moment for everyone involved onstage or in the audience as the backdrop to a rambunctious comic romp, with Spielberg and Lucas once again exerting their influence.
