Paul, just Paul. Not “Sir Paul.” Not “Mr. McCartney.”
That’s how the former Beatle prefers to be called when he sits down for an interview, according to filmmaker Morgan Neville, who spent many hours over many months with McCartney for his new documentary Man on the Run.
“I have to say, Paul’s very good at making you forget he’s Paul McCartney,” the Oscar-winning director observes in the new edition of Deadline’s Doc Talk podcast. “He’s just very good at putting you at ease.”
The film will be play in global cinemas for one night only, on Thursday, through Trafalgar Releasing. It premieres on Prime Video on February 27. The documentary explores the least known period of McCartney’s career – after the breakup of the Beatles when he moved to a remote area of Scotland with his wife Linda and faced the daunting task of carving out a new musical identity for himself. He would eventually take flight with Wings, but his initial post-Beatles efforts were largely met with derision (it would take decades for those songs to be reevaluated and given their due).
Paul McCartney’s website notes, “Through stunning archival footage, Linda McCartney’s exceptional photographs, interviews with Paul, Linda, Mary and Stella McCartney, a number of Wings band members, Sean Ono Lennon, Mick Jagger, Chrissie Hynde, and more, the film examines this time through a uniquely vulnerable lens.”
In conversation with Doc Talk hosts John Ridley and Matt Carey, Neville (winner of an Oscar, Grammy and Emmy) explains how the project came about and perhaps the greatest challenge he faced making it – avoiding what could have amounted to a “jukebox of anecdotes” to create something deeply intimate and revealing.
Neville (20 Feet From Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble) tells us about the strategic approach he took to his interviews with McCartney and how the director’s own musical background helped him establish a rapport with his famed protagonist. He also tells us why Man on the Run may be his last music-themed documentary.
That’s on the new episode of Doc Talk hosted by Oscar winner Ridley (12 Years a Slave, Shirley) and Carey, Deadline’s senior documentary editor. The pod is a production of Deadline and Ridley’s Nō Studios.
Listen to the episode above or on major podcast platforms including Spotify, iHeart and Apple.