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Chris Higgins
Required Viewing: I Met the Walrus
by Chris Higgins - April 22, 2008 - 4:11 PM

Required Viewing

In 1969, 14-year-old Jerry Levitan managed to snag a brief interview with John Lennon in his hotel room in Toronto. Using his reel-to-reel tape recorder, Levitan asked Lennon a series of questions about peace, popularity, and messages in music. The answers give us a portrait of Lennon at the end of his involvement with The Beatles.

In 2007, Levitan collaborated with director Josh Raskin, illustrator James Braithwaite, and animator Alex Kurina to produce I Met the Walrus, a short animated film featuring a condensed version of the Lennon-Levitan interview set to sprawling stream-of-consciousness animation. The resulting film has won an AFI Award and was nominated for an Academy Award.

It’s a strange little piece — five minutes of psychedelic rambling that, in the end, carries a message of hope. The advice Lennon gives Levitan here is simple: peace. Have a look:

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Comments (7)

  1. This is currently playing in the Shorts section of the River Run Film Festival, here in Winston Salem, NC.

    Y’all come out and see it!

    posted by jenny on 4-22-2008 at 4:25 pm

  2. I hate to say it, but haven’t most of us, as hippies or children of hippies, been exposed to *enough* John Lennon/Beatlemania? I dunno about any of you, but I had so much of John Lennon crammed down my throat growing up that I almost instantly tune this kind of thing out. The man was an average guitar player and average singer, not some peace prophet or shaman.

    I’m sure he was a nice guy – and I won’t turn off a Beatles tune if it comes on the radio – and I’m sure these animators smoke great pot, but come on. I see Lennon and see just another self-important dead rich white guy on drugs who has been elevated to some cultural deity….and I’ll never understand why.

    Yes, I am aware I have issues and aware of my bullshit.

    posted by Slide on 4-22-2008 at 5:12 pm

  3. yaaaayyyyyyy Josh Raskin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    posted by Krista on 4-22-2008 at 5:24 pm

  4. I loved this! Thank you for showing it to me.

    posted by Mary on 4-22-2008 at 10:16 pm

  5. i love john lennon. i love mental floss. thank you for posting this.

    posted by bob miknob on 4-22-2008 at 11:26 pm

  6. I’m with you, Slide (and yes, I have issues, too!) I saw the movie at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and at another film festival in town and didn’t like it either time.

    posted by TeacherPatti on 4-23-2008 at 8:47 pm

  7. I really like Lennon’s point about not blaming the government for “putting us in war” because, like he said, we put them there. Therefore, we should be blamed. Right on, man. This is still applicable today, which is surprising, considering that I’m not even very fond of John Lennon.

    posted by Kristi Marie on 4-30-2008 at 9:42 am

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