The Rutles were a rock band that performed visual and aural pastiches and parodies of the Beatles. This originally fictional band, created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes for a sketch in Idle's mid-1970s BBC television comedy series Rutland Weekend Television, later toured and recorded, releasing two studio albums and garnering two UK chart hits. The band toured again from 2002 until Innes' death in 2019.
A mockumentary is one type of film or television show depicting fictional events, but presented as a documentary which in itself is a subset of a faux-documentary style of film-making.
The Beatles Anthology is a multimedia retrospective project consisting of a television documentary, a three-volume set of double albums, and a book describing the history of the Beatles. Beatles members Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr participated in the making of the works, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the Anthology project, while John Lennon appears in archival interviews.
A Hard Day's Night is a 1964 musical comedy film directed by Richard Lester and starring the English rock band the Beatles—John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr—during the height of Beatlemania. It was written by Alun Owen and originally released by United Artists. The film portrays 36 hours in the lives of the group as they prepare for a television performance.
An interactive film is a video game or other interactive media that has characteristics of a cinematic film. In the video game industry, the term refers to a movie game, a video game that presents its gameplay in a cinematic, scripted manner, often through the use of full-motion video of either animated or live-action footage.
The Compleat Al is a mockumentary about the life of "Weird Al" Yankovic, from his birth in 1959, to 1985. It was partially written by Yankovic and directed by Jay Levey. An abbreviated version premiered on August 7, 1985 on the Showtime network before the full film was released on video on September 25, 1985. The title of the film is a parody from the 1982 documentary The Compleat Beatles.
Comic Book Confidential is an American/Canadian documentary film, released in 1988. Directed by Ron Mann and written by Mann and Charley Lippincott, the film is a survey of the history of the comic book medium in the United States from the 1930s to the 1980s, as an art form and in social context.
The Making of Star Wars is a television special produced by 20th Century Fox, which aired on the ABC Television Network on September 16, 1977. It was written by Richard Schickel and directed and produced by Robert Guenette.
Help! is a 1965 British musical comedy-adventure film directed by Richard Lester, starring The Beatles and featuring Leo McKern, Eleanor Bron, Victor Spinetti, John Bluthal, Roy Kinnear and Patrick Cargill. The second film starring the Beatles following Lester's A Hard Day's Night, Help! sees the group struggle to protect Ringo Starr from a sinister eastern cult and a pair of mad scientists, all of whom are obsessed with obtaining a sacrificial ring sent to him by a fan. The soundtrack was released as the band's fifth studio album under the same name.
The Times of Harvey Milk is a 1984 American documentary film that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival, the New York Film Festival, and then on November 1, 1984, at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. The film was directed by Rob Epstein, produced by Richard Schmiechen, and narrated by Harvey Fierstein, with an original score by Mark Isham.
12 Wasted Years is a video documentary of heavy metal band Iron Maiden, focusing on the history of the band from 1975 to 1987. It includes several rare videos and interviews from the band's career, some of which were later included on the 2004 documentary The Early Days.
The Beatles Anthology is a documentary television series on the career of the Beatles. It was broadcast on UK television in eight parts on ITV between 26 November and 31 December 1995, while in the United States it was seen as three feature-length episodes on ABC between 19 and 23 November 1995. It was released in greatly expanded form as an eight-volume VHS set and an eight-disc LaserDisc set on 5 September 1996. The series was re-released on DVD in 2003, with an 81-minute special-features disc.
Imagine: John Lennon is a 1988 documentary film about English musician John Lennon. It was released on 7 October 1988, two days before Lennon's 48th birthday.
Ron Furmanek is an American Grammy nominated music producer and filmographer who has produced over 200 CDs. His most recent work, which includes six Kingston Trio titles, is currently released on RichKat Records, through Collectors Choice Music in the United States.
The Beatles at Shea Stadium is a fifty-minute-long documentary of the Beatles' concert at Shea Stadium in New York City on 15 August 1965, the highlight of the group's 1965 tour. The documentary was directed and produced by Bob Precht, NEMS Enterprises, and the Beatles company Subafilms. The project, placed under the direction of manager of production operations M. Clay Adams, was filmed by a large crew led by cinematographer Andrew Laszlo. Fourteen cameras were used to capture the euphoria and mass hysteria that was Beatlemania in America in 1965. The documentary first aired on BBC1 on 1 March 1966. In West Germany, it aired on 2 August that year. It aired in the United States on ABC on 10 January 1967.
Scenes from the Big Chair is a documentary film about the British band Tears for Fears. Released on home video in 1985, the 75 minute documentary was made at the height of the band's global success following the release of their multi-platinum selling album Songs from the Big Chair.
The Toronto Rock and Roll Revival was a one-day, twelve-hour music festival held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on September 13, 1969. It featured a number of popular musical acts from the 1950s and 1960s. The festival is particularly notable as featuring an appearance by John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Eric Clapton as the Plastic Ono Band, which resulted in the release of their Live Peace in Toronto 1969 album. The festival was also the subject of two films: D.A. Pennebaker film Sweet Toronto and the 2022 Ron Chapman film Revival 69: The Concert That Rocked the World.
SP FX: The Empire Strikes Back is a television documentary special which originally aired on CBS on September 22, 1980. Hosted by actor Mark Hamill, it is a behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the special effects in the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, which was released that year. The special was written by Richard Schickel and directed by Robert Guenette, who had both previously worked on the 1977 special The Making of Star Wars.
Patrick Montgomery is an American documentary producer/director and film and photo archivist. He has specialized in making films using archival materials, most notably The Man You Loved to Hate (1979) about the legendary actor/director Erich Von Stroheim and The Compleat Beatles (1982) a two-hour documentary about the rise and fall of the world's most famous rock group. He also founded and ran Archive Films/Archive Photos, the largest independent commercial film and photo archive in the U.S. until its acquisition by The Image Bank, a division of Eastman Kodak, in 1997.
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years is a 2016 documentary film directed by Ron Howard about the Beatles' career during their touring years from 1962 to 1966, from their performances at the Cavern Club in Liverpool to their final concert in San Francisco in 1966.
