Everyone knows who The Beatles are. But a new biopic playing at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival takes a closer look at the man behind the phenomenon.
“Midas Man” follows music manager Brian Epstein from the moment he first discovered The Beatles in 1961 to his untimely death at the age of 32 just six years later. Despite his lack of music management experience, Epstein signed The Beatles and is responsible for creating the image of the band that first made them superstars.
“Midas Man” not only deals with Epstein’s relationship to The Beatles, but also with his sexuality. Epstein was gay, and that was something he struggled with throughout his life. The film attempts to show how such a secret would have impacted someone at Epstein’s level of success, particularly when The Beatles really started to take off.
Rough Draft recently spoke with “Midas Man” director Joe Stephenson about the making of the film. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
I know this movie had a bit of a long and complex production history. Could you talk a bit about how you eventually came on board?
Joe Stephenson: [When] I came on to it, it had already been through quite a lot of issues. A director had left, it had stopped as a production. When they came to me, they finally had sorted out their background money things, and were like – we’re ready to shoot. We need to start shooting … on this date, which led to a certain amount of prep. If I remember correctly, that was mostly driven by the fact that we shot in the real Abbey Road. But getting into Abbey Road to shoot it is quite complicated, and quite hard work. So they got [shooting] moved to these dates, and they had to make those dates, which meant we had to have a restricted prep period.
When I came on, it was a different beast of a film, because it had been through a journey. One of the things that I had to do very quickly was rely very heavily on the writer, Brigit’s [Grant] research. Also, Jacob [Fortune-Lloyd, who plays Brian Epstein] had already done a lot of research, of course. So I relied on them for research … I was able to bring in all my own crew, so that was really helpful, because it meant I had a shorthand with everybody. We sort of just bowled away, rolled into a shoot that then went really well. It was a lovely shoot. But, it was hard, it was hard work. Coming on to a project late in the day, somebody’s already done some stuff – a lot of which, in the script changes that I did with Brigit when I came in, a lot of the stuff that had already been shot was no longer relevant, which was helpful.
So you did have some time to go in and rework the script a little bit, then?
Stephenson: A little bit, yeah. It’s on its way, it’s already started its journey. It’s not like you’ve suddenly got the freedom to be able to do what you want. But there was an opportunity to go, okay – if I’m doing this, I feel like this needs to change, or that this is too much, we don’t have the resources to do that properly, we have to do this. You know, it’s all part of a negotiation process that there was some space for.
How much were you aware of Brian Epstein and his role in breaking The Beatles before you came onto this project?
Stephenson: I knew the name, but I didn’t really know a hell of a lot else, which I think is the case with a lot of people. I think that’s one of the things that was most appealing about it. As soon as you realize who he is, and exactly what he did and what his history was, and the other parts of his life that are more complex and tragic, it felt very much like a story that needed to be told. Because if I’m coming to it and I don’t know, then there are a lot of people who don’t know about him. Obviously people who are hardcore Beatles fans know more than most people about Brian, but I think the general public probably just remember his face in a group photo of The Beatles, or don’t really know much about his actual life. I was very much in that camp, and that’s why I had to rely so heavily on Brigit and Jacob’s research to catch up.
Jumping off of that, one of the devices in the movie that helps with the history of Brian Epstein, because the movie only covers a short period of his life, isn’t just narration, but this kind of “Fleabag”-esque turn to camera, breaking the fourth wall-type thing. Was that something that was in the script before you came on board? Or if it wasn’t, how did you play with that idea as a director and why did you make that decision?
Stephenson: That was in the script, but it was used in different ways. I thought it was a helpful device, because a lot of the issues that Brian had, he didn’t really have anyone to talk to about. So we couldn’t just invent a conversation just to let people know what’s going on by having him talk to Cilla Black, or talk to one of The Beatles. He just didn’t have that dialogue. So we needed to be able to be let into a part of his life that was incredibly private, incredibly secret. I felt like it would be useful to take that device as it was currently in the script and give it a different purpose, and hopefully allow people into his inner life in a way that he wasn’t doing in real life.
On top of that, we’ve got the whole issue of doing things like the tours. There’s just so much. So much happened in a short period of time that as a film, to be able to show those things – which is what you always want to do – we just didn’t have the resources. There was no way we were going to be able to create a montage of the tours. So I was like, “Well, if we’re doing this fourth wall break, we should perhaps continue that through, and use that to help us on that journey as well.” So, it was already there in the script, but I had some different ways in which I wanted to use it.
That makes sense. I read something about there being trouble as far as the music rights, so showing the tours in that respect would have been difficult as well.
Stephenson: There is that as well. We had to do a lot of things where we tried to be as careful as possible. Obviously, all the songs that our Beatles play are songs that The Beatles played. That was like, well look – we’re gonna have to do that. That’s the safest thing to do, and hopefully you get a sense of the early part of their journey. That’s what they were doing, and that’s what got a lot of people going. So let’s do that and focus on that, and then once things really kick off with the tours and things, we need to go on to Brian’s story. Because you’ve got a constant balance when you’re making this film, of making sure that it doesn’t become a Beatles movie. Naturally, they play a large part in his story, and you want to satisfy the audience’s expectations as well to a certain degree, hopefully without taking away from this being about Brian. That was a big challenge.
Speaking to the early part of The Beatles journey – there have been a lot of movies about The Beatles and dealing with The Beatles, but I think what is really striking about this one is how young everyone comes across. Brian, I think, comes across much older in a way that’s sort of necessary, but then you get to the end and learn he was only 32 when he died. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about portraying that difference in the relationship between them, but still keeping in mind that Brian wasn’t that much older.
Stephenson: The thing is that The Beatles in our story are very early days – we’re talking about them being, what… 19 or something? Brian was a little bit older, but he was an older soul. He was also from a very different world. He was not the working class lad, which is what The Beatles were. They were all working class, and it’s a very different type of energy. Brian came from this very buttoned up, very presented – you know, he made his accent incredibly RP [Received Pronunciation]. He just kind of came across as the adult in the room a lot of the time. He just was that way, even though he was not far from them in age. That sort of presence, you want him to feel like he was sort of an older brother, almost – that he would be that guiding figure, that person who they could trust, because he came from what they perceived to be money and to be proper, I suppose. The boys are younger and they’re far more immature. They want to have fun. They’re enjoying what they’re doing, and they don’t necessarily even have their sights on the stuff that Brian has his sights on. Obviously, they’re ambitious. But it’s Brian who kind of goes, what works here in Liverpool, it can work anywhere.
The age thing is really interesting. Really, we don’t show Brian aging physically at all. Because it felt like, well, he is 32, and we’re not going to make him look particularly young at the beginning. It is only like, a seven-year period. He’s just that old soul. He’s an old soul and an older brother.
It is sort of interesting watching him try to convince people that The Beatles are good. I don’t know if you’ve seen the Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown” yet, but I had a similar feeling with that movie when he plays “Like a Rolling Stone.” Watching people be upset at that is a weird thing in your brain, because it so obviously rocks. And it’s hard to conceive of how people couldn’t have realized that.
Stephenson: The thing is, so much of the industry was based in London, in and around London, in the U.K. I think first off, there was this prejudice to anybody outside of that world. So Brian comes in with these Liverpudlian lads, and everyone’s like – what? What do we do with this? That was one of the great things that Brian did, was make opportunities for people who weren’t from that world. All of his roster of clients were Liverpool. They weren’t part of the music world that existed at that time, and he showed everybody that more than one type of person can make a success in that industry. It’s quite wonderful. And it is amazing – it’s very hard to grasp quite what’s going through the minds of these people. That’s, I suppose, hindsight for you.
I want to talk a bit about the Tex character who comes in and upends Brian’s life. The way I took it, he serves as this kind of manifestation of Brian’s hang-ups between the control he has in his professional life and the lack thereof in his personal one. I read somewhere that the character was not based on a real person, but sort of an amalgamation – I wondered if you could talk about how that character functions within the story of Brian’s life.
Stephenson: Yeah, because there is a bit of a lack of understanding of what he is. It is worth saying that he is based on a real person, but we’ve changed his name. We changed the name because the guy’s still alive. But everything that he does in the film is what he did. This character wanted to be an actor … he’s everything in the film. The film is incredibly factual. It’s a shame, really, we had to change his name. I think it was more of a respect thing than a legal thing, because this guy is going to be in his 80s, and perhaps doesn’t want his past all dragged up. We don’t know. But, he was caught, and he was arrested, for the things he does in the last part.
It’s a representation of the sort of relationships that gay men got into at that time. Because really, it was about who would stay around in the morning. It wasn’t really about anything else, because most of the time, the culture was to go have an experience with somebody, and then you would never see them again, because it would be too dangerous, too scary. People would just satisfy a need and leave. So in Brian’s case, it was like, who would stay? Who would stay, or who would come back? The people who did would often be people who would want to take advantage of him once he reached that point in his life. That’s certainly what happened here.
It’s difficult, because you kind of want everybody to know who the real person is, so they know that you haven’t created him out of nothing. He is based on a real person, and everything he does is true.
This movie is playing at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, and there is a good bit of attention paid to Brian’s Jewish life. It’s not super overt, but things like wedding and funeral rituals, temple, etc. I wondered if you could discuss the importance of getting that into the movie, and considering how his Judaism would have affected his life as well.
Stephenson: He was very proud of his Jewish background and his family. I’m not Jewish, but a lot of what I’ve learned – our writer, Brigit, is Jewish – and what she was saying is that he would carry around a lot of the way that the family works, and the connection that is made there, the strength of the family unit, and about pride – so much of that led his life. What we tried to show in the film, even though it’s quite subtle, I guess, is the reason why he doesn’t want anyone to know [about his queerness] half the time is because he doesn’t want to bring shame on the family in any way.
It’s a massively important thing. In his will, he left money to Israel. It was a huge part of him, and he suffered a lot of antisemitism when he was younger. He went to a lot of different schools when he was younger, and he suffered bullying for his Jewishness. So it affected him, and it was a huge part of him. I think there was obviously a complicated relationship there with it, especially as a gay man. When you’re doing a biopic of somebody who is real, you’ve got to pinpoint the things that are incredibly formative, both positive and negative. Obviously, society was negative particularly on his sexuality, but his Judaism and his relationship with both the religion and his family was incredibly important, incredibly strong. His loyalty and generosity, I think, it all spins out of that.