The Walrus: Lennon, on peace . . . and change

I_Met_The_Walrus_war_machine.jpg
war machine [still from the video]


In 1969 14-year-old Jerry Levitan managed to get into John Lennon's hotel room in Toronto's King Edward Hotel with his reel-to-reel recorder where he interviewed his idol for the school paper. Nearly 40 years later Levitan produced an animated film documenting and illustrating what he heard and what he captured on tape in conversation with the Walrus that day.

A short excerpt of Lennon thrashing out war and change, from "I Met The Walrus":

It's up to the people . . . you can't blame it on the gov'ment and say they're doing it. Oh, they're going to put us into war. We put them there. We allow it, you know, and we can change it; if we really want to change it we can change it.

"Walrus" was written and directed by Josh Raskin, with illustrations by James Braithwaite and Alex Kurina, and animation by Josh Raskin.


[image is a screen grab from YouTube, but I first heard about it today from scatteredsisters, a site maintained by a good friend in Antwerp together with her siblings dispersed about the globe]