Have people read about anything to do with the making of this movie? People not liking it has more to do with how poorly it was done and less to do with it being about Lennon's killer. The director tends to speculate as to what went on in this guys head. It's a fictionalized account of those three days. Where's the truth? It's probably hard to know. You'd be better off watching documentaries or reading old news articles if you want some insight into what went on in those few days. Which is easily done. It's extensively documented. I think you'll find that this guy is a narcissistic liar who identified and obsessed about some famous guy to the point of insanity. He knew the only way he'd ever be anything was to kill him. Read about stalkers if you want to know his state of mind. But really, it will never make sense because there is no sense to it. Some people are just damaged.

I think it's interesting that the director wants to TRY to understand and make sense of why this happened and that's what he's attempting. But really, what's the point. We could all speculate and come up with different things. I don't think it's possible to understand "why."

I don't care that they make a movie about this, but this one's got too much negative baggage to it for me to take it seriously. That's all I'm saying. And it should be taken with a huge grain of salt for those thinking it's accurate. And yes there is a difference when they make a movie on a historical figure and a pop star. The tendency towards sensationalism when making a movie about people like Lennon is much stronger than when making a movie about someone like, say, John Adams. Look at that horrible Doors movie from a few years back. Almost complete fiction.

BTW, I'm only just discussing this as this IS a discussion forum. I'm not trying to annoy anybody just trying to actually use the forum as intended. Debate and discussion. Right? Different points of view and all. Makes it interesting. No?

I agree

I haven't seen this film, but it strikes me that it would be enormously difficult to make a dramatically effective story out of any part of the life of Mark David Chapman. I know little about the man, but the bits I have read suggest that he was of an extraordinarily banal type: an isolated, self-absorbed obsessive with not much of a life. A human failure, in other words, whose sole claim to our attention is the fact that he murdered John Lennon to suit some internal logic perceivable only to himself. There is no inherent drama in this, and all you can do with it is simply exploit the pathos of Lennon's murder, or the fears of the audience, or use it as an excuse to moralize like a TV documentary journalist on the evening news about the lack of adequate "help'' for such people before they explode.

The opening of the synopsis at Rotten Tomatoes reads:

What went on in the mind of the man who felt compelled to assassinate John Lennon? Chapter 27 deftly pilots us into the dark psyche of Mark David Chapman the weekend before the December 8, 1980, shooting. Inspired by Chapman's recollections, and propelled by a haunting, tour-de-force...

This is all dreadful cliche: "dark psyche," "haunting, tour-de-force." I simply can't imagine anyone making something decent after having started with a premise like this. Exploitation, both of John and the film's audience, is all I'd expect.

Quoted from fendertele

omg people it aint setting out to promote anything it as a movie, showing the days leading up to the murder of John Lennon, if people see it as promotion then thats down to them.

there been plenty movies made of days leading up to famous peoples deaths and there will be plenty more, and im sure you have watched them and not batted an eyelid and now because its John Lennon its suddenly all wrong and distasteful.

Hallelujah! Well said mate.

for those who use torrents and still havent seen thsi yet theres a dvd rip on http://www.bitsoup.org

hey why in your signature is paul playing right handed

Quoted from PaulieBear

hey why in your signature is paul playing right handed

when i made they were all facing the same direction as ringo and john, so i had to mirror paul so he could face into john like he was sharing a mic and also the same with george so he was facing in to ringo and the others, so george is playing lefty aswell as paul playing righty

Movie review From The New York Times:


Tracking An Assassin

By MATT ZOLLER SEITZ
Published: March 28, 2008

Any film that dares attempt a nonjudgmental portrait of Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s assassin, would most likely be accused of tastelessness, but in the case of “Chapter 27” — a drama based on Jack Jones’s book “Let Me Take You Down” — the charges are justified.

The film’s writer and director, J. P. Schaefer, switches between a docudrama portrait of Mr. Chapman (overplayed by Jared Leto as if he were Truman Capote’s mouth-breathing cousin); silly flights of fancy (including a never-happened encounter between Mr. Chapman and Sean Lennon); and “Taxi Driver”-inspired subjective filmmaking meant to put us inside Mr. Chapman’s crumbling mind.

The film also acknowledges pop culture touchstones that supposedly drove Mr. Chapman to homicide, including Beatles songs and J. D. Salinger’s novel “The Catcher in the Rye” (referred to through quotations, borrowed situations, impressionistic cutaways to rye fields and in the film’s title, which refers to a nonexistent final chapter of Mr. Salinger’s book).

None of these elements are integrated coherently enough to seem like more than postmodern noodling. And except for Judah Friedlander’s earthy, funny work as a paparazzo, most of the performances are vague and dull, including Lindsay Lohan’s supporting turn as a fictional Beatles fan who befriends Mr. Chapman. The character’s name is Jude. Care to guess how Chapman greets her?


http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/movies/28chap.html?ref=movies

Thanks, Geoff. I'm going to have to rush right out and see this-- NOT.

Quoted from harihead

Thanks, Geoff. I'm going to have to rush right out and see this-- NOT.

Exactly; I wouldn't waste my time with this sucker if a free DVD copy turned up in my mailbox. This is exploitation, not film making. Nobody would have the slightest interest in Chapman were it not for the fact that he murdered John Lennon.

Quoted from Geoff

Exactly; I wouldn't waste my time with this sucker if a free DVD copy turned up in my mailbox. This is exploitation, not film making. Nobody would have the slightest interest in Chapman were it not for the fact that he murdered John Lennon.

Exactly, that's how people get famous!! You might as well say that nobody would give a damn about Lee Harvey Oswald if he hadn't shot JFK!

The reviews of this movie that I've read have been generally good. Step away from the personal issues and you might find a good movie. You never know.

Quoted from BlueMeanie

Exactly, that's how people get famous!! You might as well say that nobody would give a damn about Lee Harvey Oswald if he hadn't shot JFK!

The reviews of this movie that I've read have been generally good. Step away from the personal issues and you might find a good movie. You never know.

yeah watch it as a movie lover and not as a beatles/lennon lover and you might actually enjoy it,

Why are people still stuck on the: you don't like this because it's about John thing? And what good reviews? I've only read ones similar to the one Geoff posted. It's inaccurate, overblown, poorly acted, and highly fictionalized. Sean and Yoko both found it distasteful and tacky. Not that that has to mean anything to anybody. Just saying. I could easily watch a movie about Lennon's murderer and not be offended IF it were actually done tastefully and accurately. I could not care less about some director's fantasies about what Chapman was thinking or doing in those days leading up to the murder. Jeez, just naming the fictionalized fan he meets Jude should tell you something about the quality of this film. Really. Come on. But I'll have to eventually watch this so I can justify my railings against it I guess. Darn.



Oh, and you remind me of something bringing up JFK and why I dislike films like this. That Oliver Stone movie about JFK, while very well done and interesting, was HIGHLY inaccurate. But the thing that bothers me about that is that he now has how many people believing it's the truth?? And this wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't  believe that most people don't read/study enough to figure out what was true and what was fabricated. Watching a movie to learn about history is so much easier I guess. Anyway, I have the same feeling about this movie. People are going to take it as truth when it has so little of that in it. Apparently.

I think my point here has been a bit misconstrued: I don't object to this film because of my personal feelings about John, I object to it simply because it sounds like a bad movie. The single interesting fact about Chapman's life (granted I'm no expert here) is the fact that he shot John; apart from that, the man's a sad nonentity. There's no interesting dramatic material there. If he'd shot, say me [all right, shut up you in the back], no one would have dreamed of making a movie about him. In my experience, these what-goes-on-in-the-mind-of-a-killer movies consist of either journalistic moralizing or pseudo romantic melodrama; they're bad drama that merely exploits pathos.  That bit about "Jude," for example, suggests a desperately amateurish screenwriter.

For what it's worth, you probably couldn't drag me to a movie about Lee Harvey Oswald, either (and you'd have to knock me out cold if Oliver Stone directs). This sort of thing never interests me.

OK?

I read that they were releasing it again and I though "Give Up Already! No one wants to see it!" I never understood how people would want to see movies like this, it absolutely grosses me out. The only ones I can slightly understand would be like Jack the Ripper because that is sort of a mystery, they never identified who he was. But to give recognition to people who killed other people, they don't deserve it in any way, shape or form. And I don't get how actors would want to play someone like that.

And Lee Harvey Oswald was never proven as the killer of JFK.

This movie just disgusts me to no end!