When Sean Ono Lennon teamed up with filmmaker Dave Mullins to create the short film War Is Over!, winning an Academy Award was the last thing on his mind. His focus was taking the anti-war anthem “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” — written and recorded by his parents, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in 1971 — and introducing it to a new generation in an animated film about enemy soldiers in World War One playing chess via a carrier pigeon.
The 11-minute film played at a number of film festivals, and it ultimately picked up an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. “John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote a song that inspired us,” Mullins told the global audience at the Oscar telecast. “It is a global message that we tried to honor with this film.” The clock ran out before Lennon had much time to speak. “I just want to quickly say that my mother turned 91 this February, and today is Mother’s Day in the U.K.,” he said. “Can everyone please say ‘Happy Mother’s Day, Yoko?’ Thank you so much!”
Lennon turned the movie into a children’s picture book earlier this year, but the original film has yet to be seen by a wide audience. That finally changes today with the release of War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko on YouTube. We chatted with Lennon via email to learn more about the background of the film, the lessons he learned creating it alongside Mullins, his experience at the Academy Awards, and his upcoming work with the Claypool Lennon Delirium.
How did Dave Mullins enter your life?
I wanted to make some kind of video clip for “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” and I didn’t want to do something conventional. I didn’t want to do a regular music video. I wanted to do something more ambitious. So I asked a friend of mine who told me that a friend of theirs had worked at Pixar for many years, but had left to start his own production company called ElectroLeague. I then checked out Dave’s work, he had done this film called Lou, which is a short film that got an Oscar nomination, which was really great. I recommend people check it out. I took a meeting with Dave, and on the very first meeting, we pretty much came up with the whole outline for the story together. It seemed obvious that we had a creative chemistry and it went from there.
How did the two of you come up with this story?
I think at first we were talking about a chess game, and then we came up with this idea of a chess game with the soldiers who are enemies playing together kind of secretly. And then I thought, well, can we make it a pigeon because there used to be messenger pigeons during the wars. I just thought it was kind of an interesting idea because I love pigeons and I love birds, and I feel like birds don’t get enough spotlight in animated films and Disney animations — it’s always a dog or something. I just felt like it would be cool to base the story around a kind of heroic pigeon. I’d also thought that you know so many pigeons had sort of lost their lives in war to save humans or to protect humans or to help humans out, and there’s something really touching about it. I had seen this monument or like a statue that had been made to one of the bravest pigeons from World War I or something, and I just thought it was inspiring to see that animals can also be heroes, so that’s where the whole kind of catalyst for the idea came.
What were the biggest challenges you faced trying to make it?
I’ve said this before, and it’s interesting because usually I find every project to be challenging, but there was something about this project that just felt like it flowed really easily from the beginning. The story came really fast, the characters came really fast, we agreed on the design right away. There was something about the project that almost felt blessed. Every single person we came into contact with, that we needed help from in any way, immediately jumped on board. We got the best artists to draw the characters, we got Thomas Newman to score the film, which was like a real shot in the dark since he normally does much bigger film projects. I don’t even think he’d ever done a short before. There was a lot of stuff like that.
Related Content
Editor’s picks
Peter Jackson, who had just done Get Back for the Beatles, I had started talking to him during the Get Back production and when I read him the script, he said he wanted to help with the graphics, the animation process. It actually just felt incredibly easy the whole time. Everything just fell into place. And then we got an Oscar nomination, and to be frank, I really felt pretty confident that we were going to get the Oscar too. I normally feel really skeptical about everything I do, but there was something very charmed about this project. It just felt like the stars aligned.
What are the most important lessons you learned working on it?
I think I learned that I’m not crazy because I think at first when I first said to people, before I met Dave, and before the project began, that I wanted to do a short film instead of a music video, it did seem a little ridiculous considering that most living artists don’t get budgets for their music videos like they did in the old days. It seemed a little bit unrealistic, and it just showed me that you can have a pretty wild and overly ambitious idea and it can work out, if you think outside of the box.
What do you hope that viewers get out of it?
I have to be honest, one of the main conversations I had with Dave in the beginning was that I want to make people cry, which I feel guilty about saying it that way, but I don’t mean it sadistically. I just mean that I wanted people to be touched because I feel like we can be really numb to the concept of being anti-war at this point. There’s been so much anti-war protest over the decades, probably even the centuries. I just feel like it’s a concept that’s easy to kind of brush off, and I really wanted to get people emotionally kind of hooked into the story, to make the message of the song hit hard or sort of land.
Trending Stories
How did you feel when they read your name at the Academy Awards?
I have to be honest: It felt really surreal, like I felt very disembodied, almost like I was watching it happen out from outside of my body. It felt unreal. I didn’t feel how I expected to feel. I thought I would be like, you know, when a beauty queen wins and she starts crying and they throw flowers at her or something — I thought it was going to feel like that. But it didn’t; it felt more like I was floating through some kind of surreal dream that I was kind of expecting to wake up from at any moment. It was very otherworldly. It goes by really fast, especially since we were sort of early in the schedule; I think we were the first award of the televised portion, and it was in and out really fast. I was grateful for that because then I was able to enjoy the rest of the evening without the stress of it.
You didn’t get much of a chance to speak that night. What do you wish you got to say to the world besides wishing your mother a happy Mother’s Day?
I honestly don’t really feel like I missed out on saying anything else. I thought that was sort of, it felt perfect, you know, it really was Mother’s Day in the U.K., and the song wouldn’t have existed without my mom, nor would I have existed. In the end, the whole purpose of the project was really a gift to her anyway, so I don’t really feel like I missed out on saying anything. On top of that, we live in an era where we can all publish our views to the world 24/7, so I don’t really feel like I’m missing out on getting to speak. I think we all have enough opportunity to speak these days, maybe too many.
Why was it important for you to get this onto YouTube in time for the holidays?
We wanted to do it in time for Christmas because that’s the whole point of the song-end of the film. It’s ultimately a Christmas song.
What projects are you working on next?
My band, the Claypool Lennon Delirium, just finished a double-album rock opera, and that’s coming out soon in early next year, and I’m really excited about that. It’s our first double album, it’s our third album, and it’s a complete concept record with a story and narrative, and we’ve got a whole comic book graphic novel coming with it — it’s gonna be really cool.
