2 Movies Directed by David Leaf

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This film tells (using modern day interviews and archival footage and sound tapes) the story of how in 1967, while his band The Beach Boys triumphantly toured abroad, Brian Wilson was trying to push the boundaries of conventional pop music with a new follow-up to the Beach Boys' cutting-edge mega-hit, Pet Sounds. The new album was to be called "SMiLE". SMiLE pushed the envelope both musically and lyrically, and was supposed to out-do the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper record. But Brian wasn't able to sell the project to his band-mates when they returned. The project was shelved and Wilson's well-documented decline into depression, drug abuse, recluseness, and obesity had begun. Thirty-odd years later, Wilson announced that in 2004, SMiLE would be performed live in its entirety in London. This film tells the story of a damaged but healing artist bringing his greatest work to light.

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After background about the childhood and youth of John Lennon (1940-1980) and the birth of Vietnam-War protests, the film plunges into Lennon's quest for world peace: compositions such as "Give Peace a Chance", the lie-in following his marriage to Yoko Ono, appearances at concerts, "War Is Over" posters, and plans for a series of concerts in 1972 in U.S. presidential primary states reach newly-enfranchised young voters. This plan for concerts, in particular, led a prominent Senator, the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover, and Nixon's White House to initiate a concerted and illegal effort to deport Lennon. Thirty talking heads, led by Yoko, comment on Lennon and these events.