Original director Michael Lindsay-Hogg confirms that the shivering little hair on the microphone as John Lennon sings “Across the Universe” in the new Disney+ remaster of Let It Be was meant to be there. This potentially distracting moment arrives about 17 minutes into the Beatles film.
“At the beginning, we talked about taking that out – because they can take it out,” Lindsay-Hogg tells Variety. “We talked about taking that out and then we thought, no, it actually was there – this little funny bug of hair, which is on the kind of felt of the mic or whatever the covering of the mic is. So, leave it as an eccentricity.”
Lindsay-Hogg filmed the Beatles in January 1969 as they rehearsed at Twickenham Film Studios with the idea of creating a television special. Sessions later moved to the Apple headquarters, where the group staged a triumphant final concert.
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But Let It Be didn’t come out until the Beatles had already broken up, casting a pall over the entire production. Issues with transferring the print for use in theaters also gave the film a blurry, washed-out feel.
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Peter Jackson used the original footage a couple of years ago to recast the project as The Beatles: Get Back. Different scenes seemed to paint the era in a new light, while today’s artificial learning software helped bring everything into sharper focus.
The same tech was employed to shine up Lindsay-Hogg’s original Let It Be, which had been out of print for decades before returning to Disney+ this week. That’s the upside. The downside is now little details like fuzz on the covering of Lennon’s microphone (often referred to as a windscreen or a pop filter) can be seen in the finest of annoying detail.
Ultimately, Lindsay-Hogg said he wanted to safeguard the reality of the situation – even if it got hairy. “So, that was a decision,” he said. “I mean, in the history of major world artistic decisions, I don’t think it was a major one – but it was one [where] we thought, ‘Leave it because that’s what it really was.'”
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Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
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