Beatles’ ‘Get Back’ Documentary Wins Five Emmys
The Beatles documentary series Get Back won five Emmy Awards at a ceremony in Los Angeles last night (Sept. 3).
Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr were named with director Peter Jackson as recipients of the Outstanding Documentary or Nonfiction Series award, alongside fellow producers Yoko Ono, Olivia Harrison, Clare Olssen and Jonathan Clyde. Jackson also won Outstanding Directing for a Documentary or Nonfiction Program, and the production won for picture editing, sound editing and sound mixing.
The three-episode Get Back series was based on film shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for 1970 movie Let It Be. While the original movie as released showed a downbeat aspect to the Beatles’ closing months, the previously unseen material used by Jackson offered a far brighter look at the band’s end times.
“I’d just like to thank everyone who worked on this film, especially our family back home and our second family in London at Apple Corps,” Jackson said in his acceptance speech at the ceremony (via Deadline). “[A] big shout out to the Beatles. Thank you so much for the over 60 years of your positive, exuberant, joyous… Your music is so profound and I think it’s actually embedded in our DNA.”
On accepting his director’s award, he reflected that he’s been “an eight year old in New Zealand, a Boy Scout wearing short pants” when Lindsay-Hogg was making Let It Be. “[A]nd for reasons I don’t quite understand, 50 years later the Beatles entrusted me to take the footage and make a film,” he added. “But to be a tiny part of the Beatles’ story was a dream come true for that eight-year-old kid.”
In July Jackson indicated he and the band may work together again. “I’m talking to the Beatles about another project, something very, very different than Get Back,” he told Deadline. “We’re seeing what the possibilities are, but it’s another project with them. It’s not really a documentary … and that’s all I can really say.”
Watch the 'Get Back' Trailer