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I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978)
Starring Nancy Allen, Theresa Saldana, Wendy Jo Sperber, and Eddie Deezen. Cinematography by Donald M. Morgan. Edited by Frank Morriss. Produced by Tamara Asseyev and Alexandra Rose. Written by Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Directed by Robert Zemeckis.
Six high school students from Maplewood, New Jersey are headed to New York to see the Beatles first appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. Each teenager is making the journey for a unique reason; one just happens to be the guy with the car, one is a hardcore Beatles junkie, one wants a photograph of the band to bolster her portfolio, one wants to protest the performance, one is engaged and thinks she really shouldn’t be going, and one wants to sabotage the program. But the show is entirely sold out and they’re all going to have to have to find their own means of getting in.
For many, Sunday February 9th, 1964 was one of the most memorable days from the Sixties. The Beatles first appearance on the “The Ed Sullivan Show” launched the entire nation into whipped up frenzy of “Beatlemania”, making the band the most popular act in rock and roll. But fans were not satiated with their records alone. Items like bed sheets that they slept on, cigarette butts they discarded, and squares of sod that they walked across were bought and sold at unbelievable prices. There were even officially licensed Beatles trading cards, cookie jars, and talcum powder. This forgotten energy was the inspiration for what would be Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’ first full length feature film. The idea for I Wanna Hold Your Hand came one night while the Bobs were listening to Meet the Beatles!, the Beatles premier American album. On the back of the record jacket was a short blurb on the intensity of Beatlemania in the 1960’s. From there a story was developed, fleshed out into a script, and sold to Warner Brothers.
I Wanna Hold Your Hand was not only significant in that it was Robert Zemeckis’ directorial debut, but it also marked the beginning of the professional relationship between Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. Spielberg loved the Bobs’ script and helped support it throughout its progress and acted as its executive producer (his first producer credit). He even found the script a new home at Universal Pictures when Warner Brothers said that they would not hire a first time director to helm a three million dollar project. But despite everyone’s hard work, I Wanna Hold Your Hand never really found its audience. It suffered from poor promotion and subsequently failed in the box office. Since its DVD release, some of us who have been searching for it throughout its VHS obscurity can finally get our greedy little hands on it. If you are fan of Zemeckis, or the Beatles for that matter, you will most likely get a kick out of this picture.
Budget: $2,700,000
Total US Gross: $1,944,682
Genre: Comedy
Runtime: 104 Minutes
US Release Date: April 1978
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Awards: none
Tagline: These Youngsters Are Suffering From A Highly Contagious Disease Called Beatlemania. The Symptoms Are… Screaming, Hysteria, Hyperventilation, Fainting, Fits, Seizures, And Spasmodic Convulsions. It Isn’t Fatal But It Sure Is Fun.
Quote: “Now, I know a lot of you are wondering about tomorrow night’s show. Just who are these youngsters from Liverpool who call themselves the Beatles? Just what can we expect?”
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