tMF | The Movie-Fanatic

John Lennon (played by Aaron Johnson) is an ordinary 15 year old boy on the streets of Liverpool. Funny, smart, naughty, a real edge to him. But life is not simple for John - he grew up in a family of secrets and was raised by his Aunt Mimi from the age of five. When he is suddenly reacquainted with his mother, Julia, they form an unbreakable bond. A bitter war rages between the two sisters for John's love. Faced with bringing it to an end, he learns the secret heartbreak of his past. But his mother gives him one great gift - music. A wayward boy finds his voice, and walks into The Beatles.

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That's the official synopsis of the new movie entitled Nowhere Boy. It was actually based on the book written by John Lennon's half-sister, Julia Baird. Entitled Imagine This: Growing Up with My Brother John Lennon.

tMF tries to gather all you need to know about the movie and the book were it was adapted. Some photos were also taken from various sites to illustrate some points. More after the jump!

About the Book: Here's the book description for more details:

Until now, the true story of John Lennon's childhood has never been told. John's sister Julia has herself been on a personal journey that has made it possible only now to reveal the full extent of the pain and difficulties -- as well as the happier times -- living inside John Lennon's family brought. Julia reveals the various strong, self-willed and selfish women who surrounded John as he grew up. John was removed from his mother at the age of 5 to live with his Aunt Mimi, and here Julia shows for the first time the cruelty of this decision -- to both mother and son, she sheds a new light on his upbringing with Mimi which is often at dramatic odds with the accepted tale. John's frequent visits to his mother and sisters gave him the liveliness, freedom and love he sought and allowed him to develop his musical talents. The tragic death of their mother, knocked down outside Aunt Mimi's house by a speeding car when John was 17, meant that life for him and his sisters would never be the same again. Poignant, raw and beautifully written, IMAGINE THIS casts John Lennon's life in a new light and reveals the source of his emotional fragility and musical genius. It is also one family's extraordinary story of how it dealt with fame and tragedy beyond all imagining.

I have not read the book yet, but I'm definitely planning to. However, there is a review written by a Beatles fan posted in one of the band's most popular fansites, Beatlelinks. I love how the reviewer sums up the book, excerpts follow:

Her book is an act of worship to a brother she clearly adored, but is also a tenderly evoked memoir of a Liverpool childhood - the noise, the music, the skipping, the Meeting Tree, the jam-buttie picnics, the street games they played - and a glowing tribute to her sainted mother, who seems to become younger and lovelier as Baird describes her role in teasing out the teenage John's interest in music. Julia taught him to play his first instrument, the banjo, standing behind him with her hands on his. She played the ukulele (she did a good George Formby impression) and the piano accordion, and, in the music explosion that followed the appearance of Lonnie Donegan and Elvis, she welcomed into the house umpteen friends bearing drums, washboards and rudimentary bass guitars.

Baird's book is full of lovely vignettes about the pre-Beatles period: John singing the lachrymose "Nobody's Child", the rise of The Blackjacks in their monochrome shirts and pants, the famous back-of-a-lorry gig at Woolton fête when, "The Quarrymen arrived on a lorry, and would leave that evening as half the Beatles"; the first Quarrymen gig at the Cavern, which Paul McCartney missed because he had to be at Scout camp in north Wales. Lennon's adored mother features so centrally in this chronicle of growing success that when the defining event of Lennon's life occurs - Julia was run over by a car outside Mimi's house and killed when he was 17 and his sister 11 - we feel a corresponding ache and loss, and a furious sympathy for the author and her little sister, who were kept from the funeral and not told of their mother's death for 10 weeks because they were illegitimate and shamed the family. [ read more ]

About the Movie: Here's a major article about Aaron Johnson, who was chosen among hundreds of hopefuls, to play John Lennon. Baz Barnigboye writes:

Fast-rising newcomer Aaron Johnson will portray John Lennon in a film about his teenage years, and the two women who dominated and shaped his early life - his mother and his aunt - will be played by Anne-Marie Duff and Kristin Scott Thomas.

Aaron, 18, has signed a contract to portray one of the world's most celebrated and influential rock artists. Hundreds of teens were auditioned the length and breadth of the country but it was felt that Aaron, who sings and plays guitar, had the acting talent to bring the Lennon depicted in Matt Greenhalgh's screenplay to life. Greenhalgh wrote his script from a memoir by Julia Baird, Lennon's stepsister. The actor has just completed Matthew Vaughn's film Kick-Ass and last summer enjoyed some 'heat' from playing the teenage hunk in Gurinder Chadha's Angus, Thongs And Perfect Snogging.

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Elizabeth Ranzetti's article where she dwells into the actual filming of the movie was way beyond awesome! Here's a good part that made me even more excited about the movie:

"Cut" orders director Sam Taylor-Wood, and Aaron Johnson's shoulders sag a little. The actor, (who plays Lennon), is only 19, and mainly famous to legions of love-struck teenage girls for his role in last year's hit Irish comedy Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging (the screaming girls are something he has in common with Lennon, at least.) The success or failure of this film, Nowhere Boy , is essentially his burden. When he took the part, he couldn't sing or play guitar; he is from a town near London called High Wycombe, which is a very long way, economically and by train, from Liverpool.

Johnson, with lanky body and angular face, has the look of a young Lennon.

The chip on the shoulder and ugly glasses from the National Health Service, both so central to the myth, are present but concealed (the teenaged Lennon loathed wearing his glasses). A makeup woman comes over to adjust his architecturally-impressive hair, known as a duck's ass to North American proto-rockers and a duck's arse to the skiffle-mad boys of Lennon's childhood who imported the rockabilly influenced sound.

"Aaron's going to be a star," says Nowhere Boy 's producer, Kevin Loader, watching from the side of the set, echoing producers' pronouncements since the first clapboard clapped shut. It is, to say the least, a challenging role. Loader says, "He's playing someone we all think we know everything about. He's got to have a confidence and sense of destiny, but he's also a mixed-up teenager whose family is throwing him all over the place. Aaron's got an emotional understanding, for his age, that's just mind-blowing. And he does stillness very well."

At first, the thing Johnson didn't do very well was sing. "We knew we had to get the best actor," says Loader. "The rest could be learned." [ read more ]