John Lennon and Yoko Ono were never shy about sharing their love story with the cameras. The late Beatle and his wife/Plastic Ono Band co-leader are center stage in the first trailer for One to One: John & Yoko, an upcoming documentary from Oscar-winning director Kevin Macdonald that tells the story of a life-changing, fast-moving 18-month period in the couple’s lives in the early 1970s.
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The two-minute clip opens with audio of Lennon calling someone named Howard, in which the woman on the other end begins to spell out the singer’s name only to realize who she’s talking to. “You’re a member of the Beatles?” she asks. “That’s right, yeah,” Lennon answers nonchalantly. From there, the footage explodes into a collage of images of bombs falling in the Vietnam war and the couple preparing for a charity show as Lennon says, “good morning, folks. Have you had your breakfast yet,” accompanied by, yes, footage of the pop icon having his bowl of morning cereal.
We see a flip-book of footage of John and Yoko leaning into their new lives in the city, shopping for clothes and goofing around with friends as Yoko says, “the Flower Generation is over, but we can start all over again, right?,” which leads into a famous image of the couple from behind throwing up raised fists as the Statue of Liberty hovers on the horizon.
The movie is a chronicle of the couple’s new life in New York post-Beatles in 1972, following them as they move into an apartment in Greenwich Village and prepare for their One to One Concerts, a two-show all-star charity event for children with special needs that they threw at Madison Square Garden in August 1972. It was the only full-length performance by Lennon in the wake of the Fab Four’s split two years earlier and in addition to the Plastic Ono Band it featured sets by Stevie Wonder, Sha Na Na and Roberta Black, among others.
Asked by a reporter at the time why they were doing the free shows, Lennon said, “to change the apathy that the youth have.” The couple’s only child, musician Sean Ono Lennon — seen in clips as a toddler — produced and remixed the concert audio for the movie, with the trailer ending with footage of Lennon , wearing his signature tinted round eyeglasses, performing his signature hit “Imagine” at the concerts.
The film also features newly transferred and restored footage from that era along with previously unseen and unheard items from the couple’s personal archives, including phone calls and home movies recorded and filmed by Lennon and Ono during the 18 months the couple lived in a cramped Greenwich Village apartment in the early 1970s.
“How would you like to be remembered?” a reporter asks Lennon at one point. “Just as two lovers,” he responds. The movie will be released exclusively in IMAX on April 11 and in wider release on April 18 and then stream later this year on Max.
Watch the One to One trailer below.