Trivia / Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)

• Acting for Two: The Bee Gees as the Henderson Brothers and the voices of Mr. Mustard's fembots.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget: $13 million. Gross: $20,378,470
• Breakaway Pop Hit:
  • The film versions of "Got to Get You Into My Life" and "Come Together" were hits for their performers and still turn up on oldies (and, for the latter, classic rock) radio.
  • These songs were also Breakaway Pop Hits for the soundtrack album, one of the biggest flops in pop music history. Sales were high at first...but then the returns started happening. An estimated four million LPs were returned to the label, who ultimately had to destroy hundreds of thousands of copies and remainder the rest of them. Compare this to Earth, Wind & Fire's "Got to Get You Into My Life" single, which was a Gold-selling top ten hit based on its own merits as a good cover independent of the movie.
• Covered Up: Earth, Wind & Fire's performance of "Got to Get You Into My Life" hit #1 on the Soul charts in the U.S., earned the group a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement, and became a mainstay of their concert performances, with the result that it's almost more identified with them than with the Beatles. Many fans will tell you that theirs is the superior performance.
• Creator-Driven Successor: Producer Robert Stigwood had previously had a huge hit with the 1975 film adaptation of Tommy and was trying to repeat its success.
• Creator Killer: This is one of only two known credits that screenwriter Henry Edwards got; the other was on the obscure 1980 film The Great Skycopter Rescue.
• Disowned Adaptation: None of The Beatles approved of the film. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, who both attended the premiere, subsequently shunned the film, while John Lennon and George Harrison refused to view the film altogether.
• Method Acting: During the filming of Strawberry's funeral, Peter Frampton forced himself to cry by thinking of the then-recent Lynyrd Skynyrd plane crash that claimed the lives of several friends and associates.
• No Export for You: The comic book adaptation is an inversion. Despite being published by Marvel Comics, Marvel Super Special #7 was never published in the US due to the film's abysmal performance, but was released in France, the Netherlands, and (possibly) Japan. Despite what you might expect, instead of simply having the next comic (an adaptation of the pilot of Battlestar Galactica (1978)) marked as #7, they skipped straight to #8.
• Old Shame: For pretty much everyone. In fact, two weeks into production, The Bee Gees tried like hell to get dropped from the film. In VH1's 100 Most Shocking Moments in Rock & Roll miniseries from 2001, Alice Cooper admitted that if he'd have known how the movie would have turned out, he wouldn't have agreed to be cast. The Bee Gees' lampshaded the experience by saying "it was the best of times, but the worst of films."
• Production Posse: This wasn't the first time that Frankie Howerd had worked with The Bee Gees. He was their co-star in 1970's Cucumber Castle TV special, which was an earlier attempt to mix Bee Gees music with comedy and fantasy elements (though Robin had briefly left the band for an abortive solo career, so The Bee Gees were just Barry and Maurice at the time).
• Special Effect Failure: In every scene where the main characters have to cry, it looks suspiciously like someone from the makeup department just splashed some water on their faces with an eye dropper.
• Star-Derailing Role:
  • Many of the musicians and actors involved hit career slumps or derailment in the wake of this movie's failure. Sandy Farina probably came off the worst, never acting on the big or small screen again, and her music not getting a whole lot of attention thereafter. Peter Frampton also never acted in another movie and his extremely successful musical career took a significant downturn after 1978. As far as the actors were concerned, Frankie Howerd seemed to take the brunt of the film's failure, never appearing in another film again and with his TV career mostly hitting the skids in the 80s.
  • For a while, it looked like The Bee Gees would survive appearing the movie. They were the biggest musical act in the world in 1978, and their songs (both their own and songs they wrote for others) dominated radio that year. After the film bombed, the band kept going strong, and had three #1 hits in a row with the singles from their next album Spirits Having Flown. Although the group had a great 1979 as a result, that trio of Spirits hits would be their last chart-toppers. Sgt. Peppers hurt their reputation enough that the Bee Gees struggled to retain their popularity after disco's demise, and they only had one more Top 10 hit after 1980.
  • The only people whose career wasn't killed/nearly killed/affected whatsoever were Steve Martin,^note He was making his film debut in Pepper and was so popular at the time as a standup comedian, that even the poor reception of the movie couldn't kill his film career before it started. The fact that he made The Jerk a year later didn't hurt, either. Earth, Wind & Fire,^note Whose cover of "Got to Get You Into My Life" was the biggest hit on the soundtrack, and they kept on having having hits afterward with no slump. and Robert Stigwood.^note The creative force behind the movie and the Bee Gees' manager, Stigwood could have very easily ruined his career from the failure of Sgt. Pepper. Lucky for him, he was also the producer of Grease, released later in 1978, which was such a blockbuster that it completely erased any losses he or his RSO company had from Pepper.
  • George Burns and Donald Pleasence also managed to get off relatively lightly, mostly because they had other big hits at the same time (Oh, God! and Halloween (1978) respectively).
  • Sadly played straight for Aerosmith, who should have been one of the least embarrassed parties that were involved with the film. Their "Come Together" cover was a hit, but it would be their last Top 40 entry for nine years (Run–D.M.C.'s "Walk This Way" notwithstanding). Around this time, The band was falling apart due to drugs and personality clashes. Needless to say, appearing a historic flop of a movie did not help the band's morale or waning popularity. It got better for them, but it took nearly a decade for them to return to where they were before they made the film.
  • This wound up being Sandy Farina's first and only role in a film, and her ensuing attempt at a singing career wasn't helped by the film's underperformance. Aside from an appearance on Star Search and performing the songs "The Pride is Back" and "Body Talk" for the films Light of Day and The Toxic Avenger, she would make no further forays into film before her death in November 2023.
• Wag the Director: The shooting script called for Peter Frampton's character to kill Steven Tyler's, but when it came time to film this scene, Aerosmith threatened to walk out. "There's no fucking way that Steven is gonna get directly offed by Frampton," commented Joe Perry. "It's gotta be an accident, the way it was in the original script we fucking agreed to." They finally agreed to a compromise, with Tyler's character being accidentally pushed to his death by Sandy Farina.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Supposedly KISS was approached to play Future Villain Band, but they turned it down. Given the then-recent flop of their own movie, KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, it's not surprising. (Considering that KISS has become the living embodiment of Money, Dear Boy, in hindsight it would have been oddly appropriate.)
  • Olivia Newton-John turned down the role of Strawberry Fields.
  • Donna Summer turned down the role of Lucy.
  • Elton John, Barry Manilow and Bob Hope were considered for Mr. Kite.
  • Oliver Reed was considered for the part of Mr. Mustard. But he turned it down because of a falling out with producer Robert Stigwood after making Tommy.
  • Rock Hudson and Doris Day were supposed to play Mr and Mrs Fields.
  • John Travolta was asked by Robert Stigwood to appear during the "Our Guests at Heartland" sequence at the end. He declined as he was busy doing a press tour for Grease.

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