Interest in John Lennon’s personal life goes back to early ’60s Beatlemania, when a waggish producer on the Ed Sullivan Show captioned a shot of the then-moptop, “Sorry girls, he’s married.”
As we have learned over and over, the emotionally damaged and frequently volatile Lennon was often no picnic as a spouse.
During his second marriage, to the artist Yoko Ono, Lennon had a long and serious affair with May Pang, who had been a personal assistant to the couple in the early 1970s. This sojourn has been nicknamed Lennon’s “lost weekend,” partly because of the drunken acting out he did with Pang in tow. Also because he reunited with Ono in 1975, had a child with her, and entered a period of devoted, near-reclusive domesticity before he was assassinated in 1980.
“I’m May Pang, and this is my story,” narrates the 72-year-old Pang in this documentary, which somehow required three directors — Eve Brandstein, Richard Kaufman and Stuart Samuels — to complete. The film uses a mix of copious archival footage and often melodramatic music to tell it. Oh, and one significant talking-head interview, with Julian Lennon, the musician’s first son, who is a friend of Pang’s to this day.
There’s not a lot of Lennon music heard here, and given how pointedly Pang trashes Ono, it’s no surprise that it was withheld. Still, Pang credibly asserts that she was a significant presence not just for instances of Lennon behaving badly, but for high points of his solo career.
Whatever the truth of Ono’s manipulations in this affair — and Pang’s claims, including that Ono asked Pang to look after Lennon in an especially personal way, are at times hair-raising — they tinge this saga with a resentment that’s off-putting. Still, if you’re up for a montage of Lennon/Pang Polaroids accompanied by the strains of Eddie Money’s “Two Tickets To Paradise,” this movie is just the thing.
The Lost Weekend: A Love Story
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.
