Hey everyone, I just turned the tv on earlier today and it just happened to be showing on the Directv Pay Per View channels a preview for a movie called The Killing Of John Lennon. It premieres today on Directv Pay Per View, channel 168, and is playing at 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm. I'm sure they'll keep showing it after today, and I'm wondering if it'll come out on DVD eventually. I haven't heard anything at all about it till now, and I wonder why it wasn't even at the theater, as far as I know.

Anyways, sounds interesting, so try to watch it if you have Directv. It's not a documentary or anything like that, it's a movie with actors and everything.

I know! it came out in 2006 in the Uk I think. and in Selected theaters in the US.

I think...

^The tv made it sound like it was new, since it was premiering on Directv Pay Per View today. I guess a lot of fans are really against it, and I'm thinking now that it's a pretty strange topic for the movie. They're all saying that if you're gonna make a movie, at least make it about a happy time in his life, and I agree. Maybe, just maybe, I'll watch it once and that's it.

By the way, I LOVE your signature!  

Is this the one with Lindsy Lohan etc?

A short review of this film on imdb.com:

"I was nobody, until I killed the biggest somebody on earth". The words of Mark David Chapman perfectly sums-up this Andrew Piddington biopic of the estranged murderer of John Lennon. Not only does the film track Chapman's movements in the months leading up to the fateful event, but it also follows what happened to the killer from the moment he shot the infamous Beatle, right through to his committal into a psychiatric hospital. The unknown Jonas Ball's portrayal of Chapman is splendidly subtle and disturbing and combined with the artful and experimental direction of Piddington, 'The Killing of John Lennon' makes for an aesthetically pleasing yet chilling examination into the mind of a killer who just wanted to be famous.

The opening sentence sums up why John's killer (I refuse to use his name) should die in jail. However, having said that, I will probably hire the movie and have a look. It sounds as if the director is not trying to glorify the killer, but objectively examine his life. Anyway, if I have a good cry when John is killed in the movie it will probably do me good. It does sound like a better film than Chapter 27, which is apparently pretty unwatchable.

Quoted from Paul Doherty

Is this the one with Lindsy Lohan etc?

No, that one is Chapter 27.

I won't watch it, simply because that nutter would be so happy if I did.
I don't want to know what happened in hospital. I have a terrible vision of namby-pamby pysciatrists pandering to his visions to extract the truth. I don't want the truth. I want to know that all that has been said to him is "you're a sad little nutter who means nothing."

I know what you mean, but knowledge can be powerful and healing. I don't think any book or film could make me despise the killer any less, but it could help me understand him. I think I could dismiss him from my thoughts more easily then.

I really have to turn off sometimes when it comes to chapman....his name is being remembered too much i think,instead of just being some nut,he is getting all these movies/books/docum' etc........enough i reckon

I'm being a bit hypocritical, because I read a lot about Hitler because his hold on us fascinates me, and I believe its naieve (sp) and dangerous to dismiss such abnormal human behaviour as being due to some almost supernatual sense of "madness." We need to understand why people behave the way they do. To put it down to madness is a copout.
I will watch every movie they make about this once he is dead. Until then I just won't give him the satisfaction of adding myself to the viewing figures.

I want to see it, but I don't know why. I guess to get a better understanding on what happened since I wasn't around when it happened. I wasn't even thought of....

^That is probably the only reason why I would watch it too, IF I do.

I found this review today on the timeout website. Its changed my mind about seeing this movie. I'm going to avoid it like the plague. And now I think of it, the movie title really bothers me. To use John's name as the drawcard for the movie is to give his killer exactly what he wanted when he gunned down John with four freakin' hollow point bullets! Just give this movie a miss, people!

Movie review
From Time Out London

This writer has a number of issues with Andrew Piddington’s mostly stylish and allegedly accurate reconstruction of the days leading up to Mark Chapman’s murder of John Lennon. It’s a little too long, for a start, and occasionally bogged down by a surfeit of psychedelic dream sequences and repeated scenes. The title, too, is sensationalist, while the date of release – timed to coincide with the 27th anniversary of the Beatle’s death on December 8, 1980 – smacks of cynicism. Despite a conscience that was telling me ‘no’, I felt compelled to see this film as an avid Beatles and Lennon fan, if only to understand the machinations within Chapman’s dysfunctional mind. After 114 minutes of uncomfortable voyeurism, I was none the wiser.

There’s very little historical context. Instead, it kicks off only a few weeks earlier in Hawaii where the narcissistic creep (played convincingly by Jonas Ball) first stumbles upon JD Salinger’s novel, ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, and finds himself at one with the book’s angst-ridden, teenage protagonist, Holden Caulfield. Later, Chapman discovers a book on Lennon and comes to the decision that the singer was, using the phraseology of Caulfield, a hypocritical phoney. Taking Lennon’s lyrics (presumably those in the songs ‘Imagine’ and ‘God’) a little too literally, he buys a gun, leaves his meek wife and detached mother, and flies to New York where he performs a dry run before hitting the world headlines. After many unanswered questions put by prison psychologists, we’re left with at least one feasible deduction: Chapman was on a simple, skewed quest for infamy. And he got it. One gathers he’d be chuffed to see this film. And that’s the biggest issue of all.

Author: Derek Adams

Time Out London Issue 1946: December 5-11 2007