This screenplay battle regarding the movie, “Yesterday,” has become an international story. Today, I review the original draft that led to the drama!
Genre: Drama/Fantasy
Premise: When a struggling musician realizes that he’s the only person on the planet to remember the Beatles, he starts passing the band’s songs off as his own. Only, they don’t create the stir he expected.
About: Jack Barth was a 62 year old screenwriter who had been trying to get his scripts made for over 20 years. The dream finally happened when Richard Curtis heard his pitch for a Beatles-inspired concept about a singer who wakes up one day as the only person on the planet who remembers the Beatles. Curtis supposedly (this is where the story gets murky depending on who you talk to) refused to read the script and went off to write his own version of the idea. Long story short, Curtis took the big writing credit, Barth got stuck with the smaller “Story By” credit, despite the fact that the two screenplays are [supposedly] very similar. Now Barth is taking his argument to the streets because he wants it known who really wrote this movie. You can read more about it here in this Uproxx article. Today, I’ll be reviewing Barth’s original screenplay, the one that would eventually become “Yesterday.” His script is called “Cover Version.”
Writer: Jack Barth
Details: 103 pages, Version 10b 01 July 2016 (posted by Jack Barth on Twitter)
There’s a romanticization about the “unmade” draft of a script. That was one of the reasons I was inspired to create Scriptshadow. I wanted to read all of those famous unused drafts that were so much better than the movies that made it to the big screen.
But what I found was that, 99% of the time, it was b.s. It certainly made for a good story – these unused genius screenplays. But they were always worse than the finished product. And most of the time, a lot worse. The best of these unused scripts were simply different. Same general story. Different choices. But none of them were genius.
That’s because, as fun as it is to claim, “The studio ignored a genius script to make an AWFUL film,” the reality is, it’s in the studio’s best interest to make the best movie they can. So given the choice between a good and bad draft, they almost always pick the good one.
If you disagree with this, show me the receipts. Name the movie that was terrible and the genius script that they overlooked.
Sure, there’s stuff like Source Code. I’m notorious for how much I loved that script. But even though I didn’t love Duncan Jones’ interpretation, I’m not going to sit here and tell you it was that different from the screenplay.
And, to be honest, I’m not even sure that’s what I’m looking for today. It seems like Barth is more interested in getting the credit he deserves for “Yesterday,” instead of being treated like this second hand leper who was only good enough to come up with the idea. I’ve always loved this concept so I’m curious to see what he did with it. Let’s take a look.
The year is 2016. Dan, the lead singer of Clay Enema, is in his 30s. His band mates, girlfriend Ella, Cesar, and Sykes, still enjoy jamming and getting the occasional gig. But the future isn’t looking good. It seems that no matter what Dan does, Clay Enema can’t breakthrough.
Then one day, Dan walks into a rehearsal and, to get warmed up, strums a few chords of the Beatles’ song, “Yesterday.” Curious, Ella comes over and asks him what the song is. He plays along. “Ha ha. Just something I’ve been working on.” Cool, she says, let’s try it out. He laughs her off and gets down to business. He’s got this new song he’s positive will be a hit and he wants to practice. But the band keeps telling him, no, we want to play that other song you were working on.
Naturally, he thinks they’re messing with him so the whole thing turns into a fight and he storms off. But there was something about their conviction that they’d never heard the song before that piques Dan’s curiosity. So he looks online. And he goes to the record store. And he checks his CD collection. There is no mention of the Beatles ANYWHERE!
So Dan apologizes, gets the band back together and starts teaching them all these “new songs” he’s been inspired to write. And what do you know, they start booking more gigs.
People like the songs. But to Dan’s dismay, they don’t LOVE the songs. And so the band’s success stalls. They become big enough to go on small tours and make a living. But not globs-of-fans-darting-across-streets-crying-just-to-get-a-look-at-them big.
Dan doesn’t get it. These are the greatest recorded songs in HISTORY. Why isn’t Clay Enema as big as the Beatles? Dan’s dismay eventually leads to the group breaking up and Dan trying to build a Beatles replica band, complete with the 60s costumes and haircuts. But it doesn’t work.
Eventually, Dan comes to the realization that if there was never a Beatle, John Lennon wouldn’t have been assassinated. So he goes on a quest to find the never famous Lennon, who it turns out is a fisherman, and Dan confides to Lennon what he’s done. Lennon, who just may believe him, tells him that the reason the songs aren’t hits is because Dan didn’t write them. They’re not true to who he is and therefore they can never be hits. Dan thanks him, ditches the Beatles catalog, and starts writing his own songs again. The end.
So there are two questions being asked here.
1) Which version is better?
2) Did Curtis “steal” from Barth’s script despite the fact that he claims to have never read it?
I’ll deal with the first question first. Of the two versions, I think Yesterday was better. But not by much. Basically, Curtis asked the question, “What kind of movie does the audience want to see?” Whereas Barth asked the question, “What would *actually* happen here?”
Both avenues are interesting. There’s a dramatic irony sledgehammer with Curtis’s version whereby we know that the Beatles songs are amazing. So we revel in this opportunity to witness someone bring those songs into the world for the first time. We WANT his success. We WANT to see everybody scream and go crazy over this guy. Because we’re in on the secret. And it’s an extremely exciting secret to be a part of. Who doesn’t want to watch audiences experience “Here Comes the Sun” for the first time?
Barth’s version is more grounded and realistic. It asks the question, can you separate the music from the artist? Is the artist so intrinsically connected to the songs that become massive hits that they’re a package deal? You can’t split them up.
While I think that’s an interesting question, it leads to a much more subdued experience. And my experience with movies is that they don’t work well with middling, with average, with subdued. Movies work best with extremes, especially when you’ve got a big idea. John McClane isn’t running around some two-story insurance building in downtown Lincoln, Nebraska. He’s running around a brand new state of the art skyscraper in Los Angeles.
So while I respect that Cover Version is more realistic, it didn’t give me that big whirlwind celebrity experience that Curtis’s version did.
With that said, Barth’s version is still good. Because it is more realistic, it has a clearer theme, which is that your art has to come from you. It can’t come from someone else.
Now when it comes to the second question, things become fuzzier. And as it’s been a year since I’ve seen Yesterday, I don’t remember all the details. But the two things I’m seeing people bring up online about Cover Version that prove Curtis read Barth’s script despite claiming not to have, is the John Lennon thing and the Harry Potter thing.
I can tell you right now that neither of these moments convince me that Curtis read Barth’s script. And I consider myself somewhat of an expert in this area because I’ve heard tens of thousands of pitches. And I’ve read thousands of screenplays, many of which cover similar ideas. What I’ve found is that writers choose similar characters and ideas more than they realize. That’s because we’re all fishing from the same well. The same media cycle. The same shows. The same movies. The same pop culture. So most writers think similarly. (Screenwriter Pro Tip: When making any major decisions in your script, ask yourself, “Would another writer think of this?” If you think maybe they would, come up with something else!)
I would be willing to bet that if you gave 10 screenwriters this idea, 7 of them would’ve come up with the John Lennon scene. And I say that because it’s kind of obvious. Any good writer would naturally realize that if there was no Beatles, John Lennon never gets assassinated. Which means he’s alive. And if you have John Lennon alive, you put him in the movie.
I’d also assume most writers would make that a poignant important scene late in the film like both writers here did. Where things get fuzzy is that, if I remember correctly, John Lennon in Yesterday did some job by the sea? And here, in Cover Version, he’s a fisherman. So that’s a legitimate gripe. You could argue that that’s not a coincidence. Still, I don’t know. It’s definitely not a smoking gun situation.
And then with the Harry Potter joke at the end, that’s another thing that a lot of writers would come up with. If nobody remembers the Beatles, theoretically, maybe there are a few other famous British celebrities that never happened, which would be fun to make a joke about. And who’s more well known in the UK than Harry Potter? So that joke doesn’t convince me of anything.
Look, the reality of the situation is that these things are never black and white. I could see a situation where Curtis had someone cover Barth’s script for him and give him the broad strokes of Cover Version so he could make sure he wasn’t copying the major plot points. You’d think this would happen if only for legal reasons. Maybe a couple of those ideas from the coverage seeped into Curtis’s script. Who knows?
But the truth is, these are very different screenplays. One of them asks, what happens when you become famous off another person’s songs and the other asks, what happens when you have the greatest music catalogue in history and you still can’t achieve success? Once the script diverges from that initial hook, it’s two different stories.
And look, a lot of people get screwed over with their breakthrough script. The deal is the bigger name gets the credit and the smaller name now gets a seat at the table. This is how it’s been for many many people who’ve broken into Hollywood. The complicating factor here is that Jack Barth isn’t some 23 year old wunderkind. He was a 62 year old man who’d been grinding away at his craft for two decades and credit matters more to someone in that situation. So it sucks he didn’t get it.
This leads to a bigger discussion where I don’t understand why someone like Curtis, who’s insanely successful – even if he did write a story that was 90% different from Barth’s – why not just give Barth equal credit? He needs it so much more than you do. That’s the only part that bothers me. Do you really need any more residual checks? Is one more Porsche a year going to make you that much happier? What the hell happened to compassion and selflessness?
Anyway, Cover Version is a good script. And, more importantly, it’s a great idea. Writers can spend YEARS looking for an idea like this. And most never find one. So Barth gets credit for the most important thing of all in this case, which is that he conceived of a kick-ass movie idea.
Script link: Cover Version
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Draw out your hook for as long as possible. One thing Barth did better than Curtis was that when it got to the hook point of the movie – Dan realizing that nobody on the planet knows about the Beatles other than him – Barth really drew it out. From when Dan first strums Yesterday to his band to a few days later where he tests out their first Beatles song together. I was bothered in “Yesterday” by how quickly we whipped through that section because, remember, the hook is why the audience is there. That’s what they’re most excited to see. They want that moment where the hero is playing the Beatles song to the people who have never heard of the The Beatles before. So give them what they want. Draw that moment out for as long as you can. No audience member is going to be mad at you for it.
