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THE U.S. VS. JOHN LENNON
Lennon as Superior to Nixon


MOVIE REVIEW | By A. O. SCOTT (NY Times)

"The U.S. vs. John Lennon," a new talking-head and archival-video
documentary better suited for VH1 (which helped to produce it) than for the
big screen, makes the case that, in just about every way that counted,
Lennon was a better person than Richard M. Nixon.

That very few people are likely to need persuading on this point is
something of a problem. Lennon's status as one of the most beloved popular
musicians of recent memory, and one of the best-known cultural figures of
the past half-century, leaves the movie with little to do but add its
sometimes sanctimonious voice to the chorus of praise and admiration.
Luckily, even 26 years after his death, Lennon is a lively enough presence
to keep the sentimentality somewhat in check. A great songwriter and a
nimble exploiter of his own celebrity, he was also a pretty terrific
television talk show guest: witty, engaged and passionate about his beliefs
without being pompous about it.

The same cannot be said of all the people called upon to give testimony,
decades later, about Lennon's involvement with the antiwar movement in the
late 1960's and early 70's. It is, for example, odd to see New Left
stalwarts like Angela Davis and Tariq Ali gustily proclaiming Lennon's
radical commitment accompanied by the strains of "Revolution," his highly
ambivalent, explicitly critical assessment of the fashionable militancy of
the time.

But such nuances were hard to sustain then, and they are perhaps difficult
to recall now, as the era and its passions have become encrusted with hazy
mythology. When it is not burnishing the myths and checking in with Noam
Chomsky, Gore Vidal and Bobby Seale, "The U.S. vs. John Lennon," which was
written and directed by David Leaf and John Scheinfeld, does engage in some
interesting historical spadework.

It is aided in this by Jon Weiner, a University of California history
professor who has written extensively about Lennon's run-ins with the F.B.I.
and the Nixon administration. Several operatives assigned to investigate
Lennon - some repentant, some, like the eventual Watergate jailbird G.
Gordon Liddy, decidedly not - recount their versions of the case, which
culminated in the government's attempt to rescind Lennon's visa and send him
back to Britain.

When it concentrates on the particulars of Lennon's activism and on Nixon's
apparent obsession with him, the film offers its clearest window on the
past. The view also takes in some of the era's characteristic excesses and
oddities, as well as its pieties and unexamined assumptions. John Sinclair,
who became a cause célèbre and the subject of a Lennon protest song after he
was imprisoned for giving marijuana to an undercover officer, shows up to
offer some wry hindsight.

"We were proselytizing in favor of the legalization of marijuana, and also
smoking large quantities of it," he says. The wisdom that comes with age has
now convinced him that "you probably shouldn't be doing both things at once
if you want to do either one well." Good advice.

What distinguished Lennon and Yoko Ono from many of their contemporaries was
their ability to capture and make use of the absurdities of their fame. They
come across as canny self-satirists in earnest devotion to a cause, and
their combination of humor and guilelessness still has the power to disarm.
The "bed-ins" they conducted in Amsterdam and Montreal were impish plays for
attention that seemed at once sweetly naïve and cunning, and they raised an
interesting question of tactics in an age of mass media. Can famous people,
just by doing odd things or singing beautiful songs, compel attention to
important issues?

"The U.S. vs. John Lennon" doesn't really answer this question, beyond
restating the notion, which can neither be proven nor dismissed, that
musicians and artists can change the world. They can also, it is clear,
drive presidents and other people in power crazy, in part because the impact
of popular culture can be so hard to measure or to predict.

Nixon and Lennon discovered this in different ways. "Give Peace a Chance"
became a protest-rally anthem, but it could hardly prevent the Republican
landslide of 1972. Nixon may have overreacted wildly in believing that
singers and movie stars could pose a threat to his legitimacy, but his
paranoia was probably based on the sense that he could not compete with
their influence and prestige. On the evidence of this movie, Nixon was
right.
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Publisher's Note: Yoko Ono was the very first 'patron' of fiba - before she met John Lennon. She virtually paid for the printing of the first hard-cover edition of fiba in the spring of 1968: by purchasing 2 full-pages of space for her promotion of a jazz concert she produced iin London's Allbert Hall featuring Ornette Coleman. That summer (1968) Lennon met her and they moved together to Weybridge where they commenced making their own movies together. That fall fiba took their first films ((Smile and Two Virgins) to the 2nd International Film Festival in Chicago where John and Yoko were acclaimed as original cinema artists. Check HERE
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