New Macca Doc Shows The High Cost Of Flippant Answers To The Media

anthonyjmiccio | May 7, 2008 10:45 am
In 1965, Paul McCartney told a Ruth Anson, a teenage interviewer, that he’d only have wedding plans in the future “if you’d marry me.” More than 40 years later, Anson, now a married professor with kids, wants to get in touch with the newly single Macca and see if this aside still haunts him as much as it haunts her. Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney, a documentary about her plight, will have its LA debut at the 2008 Mockfest Film Festival on May 18. The trailer reveals a documentary that’s as much as about the attempt to make a movie about Anson as it is about the woman herself, with the filmmakers wrestling with whether to treat her as a crazed stalker or a sympathetic figure.

With photo in hand, Ruth goes to a pitch session on screenwriting and tells her story to a panel of professionals. Their response is initially mixed, until an opportunist director/producer, Marc Cushman, decides to take on the project.

In the spirit of reality TV, he has a camera crew follow Ruth. She goes to her old haunts and tracks down previous interviewees, but no one will allow her in the door or grant her an on camera interview. He decides to set her up with a Paul impersonator, to practice for the big interview, but the Fake Paul thinks she’s crazy. He then goes to his shrink and sends her to a session, just to confirm both of their sanities, but the shrink stops returning his phone calls. He gets her beauty and fashion advice, which she refuses to listen to and, on top of that, they are refused press passes for the Grammy’s where they know McCartney will be in attendance. Faced with mounting production costs, which include paying for the original news clip, Ruth’s unsupportive family, and unable to locate a local address for Sir Paul, Cushman is forced to realize that this documentary is well on its way to becoming a real dud. That is, until he has a brainstorm. He will manipulate it into a real life on-camera embarrassment for Ruth, but in the eleventh hour a ‘larger than life’ character comes to her rescue and helps her to succeed in “Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney.”

Ooh, a larger than life character? I wonder who would have the time to assist this troubled soul. A former Wing? Heather Mills? Ringo?

“Desperately Seeking Paul McCartney” Has Los Angeles Debut at the 2008 Mockfest Film Festival [Beatles Unlimited via I Guess I’m Floating] DESPERATELY SEEKING PAUL MCCARTNEY [YouTube]

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