when I was younger: a weekend with the beatles
Category: Documentary Short
Year: 2002
Run Time: 22:00
Producer/Directors: Michael Bowman and Kim Imboden
In September of 1964, the Beatles secretly flew into the Walnut Ridge Airport on their way to a secluded ranch in Missouri for some R&R during their American tour. Word got out that the group would be leaving from the airport two days later; the rest is history. WHEN I WAS YOUNGER tells the story of how the teenagers of Walnut Ridge reacted to the surprise visit from the most popular musical group in the world.
"Walnut Ridge’s Carrie Mae Snapp, 14 years old in 1964, gets the most face time in the short film: 'I was playing all the Beatles songs on my little record player,' she says of the night she found out the Beatles had been in town. 'Working myself into a frenzy. The people who sing on this piece of vinyl have been ... in Walnut Ridge, Arkansas!'...In Lawrence County, word had spread, and many had gathered at the airport Sunday morning, Sept. 20, to Beatle-watch. Snapp convinced her parents to skip church so she could be there. A crowd encircled a small plane that landed around 10 a.m., but it turned out to be a cropduster. An hour later, the actual plane arrived — and it soon became apparent Harrison and Paul McCartney had been parked in a car across the field watching the whole scene before they boarded. 'To a 14-year-old,” Snapp says, “you were suddenly validated. It made you just as important as ... if they had come to your house for Sunday dinner. You’d be glad to give them the best piece of chicken.'"
-- Stephen Koch and Max Brantley, Arkansas Time
Screenings: 2002 Ozark Foothills FilmFest
