Home Show Yesterday
The Clubhouse Podcast reviews Danny Boyle's film Yesterday, a what-if story about a struggling musician who wakes after a bus accident to discover the Beatles never existed, allowing him to pass off their music as his own. The hosts praise the film's clever writing, strong performances by Himesh Patel and Lily James, and the inclusion of Ed Sheeran and Kate McKinnon, while noting it runs slightly long at two hours.
About this episode
Key takeaways
- Yesterday is a what-if scenario where a worldwide 12-second blackout causes the Beatles to be erased from existence and history
- The film required 10 million dollars in royalties to use the Beatles catalog
- Multiple things beyond the Beatles disappear during the blackout, many of them described as vices
- Himesh Patel performs all the Beatles songs himself throughout the film
- The script was written by the same writer who wrote Love Actually
Q&A
What happens to Jack Malik at the beginning of the film?
While riding his bike home after playing a festival gig, he gets hit by a bus during a worldwide 12-second blackout and wakes up in the hospital
What is Yesterday according to the hosts?
Yesterday is the most covered song in history, with no other song having been recorded by more artists
Who plays the talent agent in the film?
Kate McKinnon plays an agent character described as purely business-focused and unemotional
What detail do the hosts notice in the end credits?
Letters spelling section titles move across the screen during the credits, and in the casting, any names with the letter B have that letter displayed taller than other letters
Read Transcript
If you're hearing the sound of my voice, you're very much appreciated. As you've checked out the Clubhouse Podcast, at least once in your existence. Live every Sunday night at 7 Eastern 4 Pacific.
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My name is Rob. I am the executive producer of the Clubhouse Podcast and it's time for another ham show. I like the ham shows.
This is number 470 for those of you playing the home game. Let's go around the days. Sitting in the co-host shirt tonight is the lady of the house and she loves you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome. Hello, everyone.
It's great to have you back. Remember, those have to be restrained into it. The vocal ones are to the side.
These are to the front. Riding up the days is the official fact checker of sooner or gator productions and a man who wants a revolution. But you know, we all want to change the world.
You may know him as Igboonu, but his mom and mom Don Ford. I'm going to call him Don Ford. Welcome, sir.
You know why? My guitar gently weeps still. Whenever we do one of these, it is to review something.
This is no exception. Danny Boyle. This guy is very, very prolific and directing.
I know from a little movie called Slum Dog Millionaire amongst other things. His latest film is called yesterday. First of all, thank you.
We got to thank Mary Ann here, but it's a rock for the invite. We are such fans of our vendors. They let us see movies and stuff early so we can talk to you guys about them and you can make the best possible decision for your entertainment dollar.
So this is what is called a what if scenario and what I mean by that. And I put this I start my written review look currently located at www dot the clubhousepodcast.com. That's our website.
So I started talking about Marvel comics and when I was a kid, I did not play the xylophone, but Marvel had a series called what if okay and what they would do is they would take their major characters and they would be like what if Uncle Ben had not died before Peter Parker became Spider-Man. And that's kind of what this film is. It's a it's a what if situation.
So yeah, I see that. In this particular situation, we have a young man named Jack Malik played by him is Patel. And he is a struggling musician playing gigs in front of five of people.
Friends. I wouldn't say I don't know anything about that. And he's ready to give up.
And so as he's thinking about giving up, he's writing his bike home after playing a a festival. And there is a worldwide 12 second blackout during that 12 seconds on his bike. He gets hit by a bus.
SS tends to happen. When he wakes up, he's in the hospital. And his best friend slash manager, Ellie, played by the great Lily James is with him.
And she takes care of him, takes him home and she buys him a new guitar because she doesn't want him to give up. And so he decides if he's going to play a song, it's got to be a great song. So he starts to play the great song yesterday, which by the way, in case you don't know, is the most covered song in history.
No other song has been done by artists more than that song. It's a great song. It's great song.
One of the great songs of our time. That boy's the man didn't have an aquapella version of it. Well, in this movie, just added to the numbers of redoing.
And true story, we actually did that in high school for the orchestra. We actually have us know the song. We actually did it.
It's a great song. Lots of school bands play. We didn't, but you know, hey, and so he starts to play the song and they're like, that's an amazing song.
I have even hiding this. And what he realizes is that he now lives in a world where nobody knows who the Beatles are, which then prompts him to take their music as his own and then holiday and so's. This is a solid two hours.
If there's a downside to this film, that's it. I think it runs a little long. Now, the weird thing is there were three screenings of this film.
None of us went to the same one. I saw this way early. Well, so in general, I saw just two days before we recorded this episode because I kept having conflicts.
At my screening, thanks to our friends at Morocco, local Beatles tribute band, a hard night's day was there, a half of them were there. And they played the title song before the film and they're great, you know, big fan. Go see them live.
There are sections of this that I thought dragged a little bit. I'll give you that probably could have been 15 minutes shorter, but I still really, really, really, really, really enjoyed this film. This is this is a movie that's fun.
You know, you take it for what it is. I mean, Kate McKinnon plays an agent that gets a hold of him and she's Kate McKinnon, you know, Ed Sheeran plays Ed Sheeran. As you see him in the trailer, or he wants to rewrite hate Jude.
Just something funny. I thought that was funny. Yeah, it was funny.
Don't get it wrong. I thought Ed Sheeran was great. Oh, yeah.
You know, I love this movie on so many levels because I spent a lot of the movie going trying to figure out where the payoff was going to be. Yeah. And I know, I don't want to spoil it on this show.
But I think it ends like it's supposed to end. And there's some really nice little twists in there that I've really dug because there are certain points where the story wants you to think one thing when something else is happening. This is a very cleverly written script by the guy who wrote love actually.
It's well acted. It's well played. The music's great.
Little fact, they had to pay 10 million dollars in royalties for the Beatles. It's a catalog, man. I know.
And I'm sure that Universal went all right. Check. It's cool.
Yeah, it's Beatles. Yeah. And I also love that.
And I'm not going to get more not spoiling this. But the Beatles aren't the only thing that disappear. Yeah, I like to say vices.
There are some and I noticed most of those things were vices. Continue about it. Easy, easy because these bikes pick up everything.
I, yeah, a couple of them, but a couple of them weren't. But it's funny when he does the Google search. Yeah, every time somebody mentioned something, it's like, what's that?
And in typical Danny Boyle fashion hard cut to the googling, very, very funny. I really, really enjoyed this film. And there were some pieces in it that fall back to some of the history of some of the Beatles music that I didn't necessarily know.
Some of it I did know, but some of it I didn't know. And it was kind of interesting to see some of the inspiration behind some things. Oh, absolutely.
I really enjoyed the movie. I loved the music. I could have done with more music probably, but I just happened to really like the Beatles catalog.
As you said, the ending was how it should be. I kept expecting another turn that never happened. And I'm okay with that.
I'm right there with you. You know, I'm okay that they did it the way they did it, but I could see an option B. And then there's part of me that goes, ooh, can we clue this and have like more than one ending possible?
Don, what you thinking? I'm thinking, well, I, little twist, I'm going to say is the people with the toy that was really cool. How they brought that in and their feelings about it.
That's being spoiler free. You know, I'm talking about by the toy. I'd rather you didn't say it again, but yeah, okay, but we'll leave it at that.
But how they, I really liked how they did that point and what the payout was for that. The singing was great. And I'm like, question, did he do that singing all himself?
He did all the performances himself. Yes. Yeah, that's the other thing.
I had to give two shout outs to his singing. And to care true, who I loved on this was Kate McKinnon. Kate McKinnon always brings it.
But how she did that where it's like, I don't care. I'm just pure business and I don't care about your thoughts. And you're going to do this because I said so and I don't care how you feel because I like care about getting this done.
Very unemotional. Very, I don't care about your feelings. And she was just straightforward like a robot on it.
But I loved how she, her performance and how her character was and how it reacted with other people. I was laughing on her through the whole time. Alex really liked Sharon in this.
Because he was with me at my screening. Yeah. And I like how Sharon doesn't take himself too seriously.
He knows that it's, yes, it's him. It's a bit of a cameo. Let's have fun with this.
People like me. I'm a red-headed singer. I get jokes made about me.
Anyway, let's have fun with and this is the second time I've seen him in a movie as himself. He was in the last Oh, I did not see that. Yeah.
Because I'm a dude. It's two girls decide they want a selfie and they hand it to him like take the picture and he thinks they want him in the picture and they don't realize who he is. And it also made me more intrigued by his live show.
Yeah. His live show looks amazing. There's a lot of subtleties to this film that I really, really liked and it's one of those things where if you're not a fan of the Beatles mythology, it's not one of those.
I feel like I'm missing out here on something. It's just little things here and there. But I thought we're really, really cool.
And I loved how when he's trying to write the songs for himself, what were the words on that? What were the words on that? How did a Rigby alone?
Yeah, but how he had to try to improvise it. Does that work or what was the words on that? I don't know a lot of people that know the words that Eleanor Rigby now.
You know, we played that in the orchestra too. That's a good one. But you didn't have to sing it.
I know, but we played it. General. I had to sing it.
I know the words is all I was saying. Yeah. I know most of the lyrics, but if somebody's like Rob writes a lyrics for Eleanor Rigby right now, and of course since the Beatles don't exist, he has nothing to reference.
So everything has to be off the top of his head. There is no, there are no copies of albums, CDs, tapes, anything. There's none of that to go back to.
No, it's not. I'm internet with the lyrics right now. Yeah.
And it's interesting how when the Eleanor Rigby song, when they're trying to do the lyrics, how he's having visuals that go with it that make it a little more because your head gets to saying the song because it starts to go in your head because you know it. And it's not quite the right word. So they have the visual to keep you on track with what they're saying to get the joke.
And I really think Patel really captures a lot of the emotion of their like when he plays in my life, I love that song to begin with, but his performance of that alone in the film, what he do with help. Oh yeah, which is that a very crucial point of the film. It's just this movie works for me on every level.
I would have gave up on Eleanor Rigby if I was him. I wouldn't even try to. I've been like, no, because nobody would have been the wiser.
Yeah. He could have been like watermelon, watermelon, watermelon, watermelon. Would have been the same.
Chop and broccoli. Yeah, exactly. Nobody knows.
But I really, I mean, I liked the way this film unfolds. And I like the personal side. Yeah.
And one thing I talked about earlier, I really thought how they did that issue was really, really cool. And what those people thought is I'm going to say. I really dig like you can't really classify this movie.
It's not a musical. It's not a comedy. It's not a drama.
It's a mix. It's not a rock. It's not a chick flick.
It's it's just a movie, you know, and and I think that with a lot of little parts, which makes it mix away, I agree with you. And I think that goes with the Beatles. You can't totally classify them.
You know, they they covered some different genres and they changed the way things were seen. And we didn't have to hear Octopus's Garden, which is kind of nice. It's just not them.
I've always classified them as classic rock, but you know, people back then would have called them pop or they would have they changed the game. Right. And they absolutely changed the game.
And we wouldn't there's music we have now that we wouldn't have if it wasn't for them. So that's why I'm saying they're kind of non-genre specific. And when I first met the lovely and talented Mrs.
Irvin, she was way into them. I mean, like way into them. Like something was in our wedding.
Did she want to go to the screening on this one? She had, it was, mine was on a Tuesday and my wife being a payroll analyst. Yeah.
Tuesdays are her worst day of all. Okay. But she does definitely want to see it.
Okay. And I'm looking forward to either T. Oh, well, I guess we'll get to that when we get to the point.
Yeah, that's absolutely. And something that Alex noticed that I didn't. And this is not a spoiler in the end credits.
Because you know, there was there was letters coming across the back of the screen. Those letters were the title of each section. So it was like catering would go across and the caterers came up.
It was really okay. So it makes me want to go back and watch it again because it was really cool. And apparently Alex told me that, especially in the casting, anybody that had a B in their name, the B was taller than everything else.
Okay. So the Beatles, how they do that. Yeah.
Okay. I see it. That's cool.
There's a lot of little tidbits. And that's what I dug about this film. And there were some things that made me go, Oh, okay.
We're doing that. All right. Let's go.
Anything else we want to talk about before we get to file analysis? All right. The way we do the final analysis on the show, we're not going to give you thumbs up, thumbs down letters, numbers, guitars that gently weep anything like that.
I had to counterdowns reference. We're going to ask up the two questions. Question number one is, would we see this film again?
If the answers you know, we're done here, but if the answer is yes, the follow up question is how far we will need to go to do so from the best of the best of the worst of the best full price in a theater down to a twilight show, down to a matinee on a, you know, on a day or whatever, down to early morning on a weekend, down the second run at the theater at the dollar theater. I mean, where's my head today? Down to actually leaving your house to get it from somewhere down to streaming it on your favorite streaming service, down to watching it on cable.
Don Ford, we're going to start with you. Yes. Would you see yesterday again?
Oh, yeah. Okay. Let's get you the thing there.
How far are you willing to go to see it? I'm doing afternoon. Okay.
The afternoon, have some dinner after. Fun time. Enjoy the talk about the reminiscent of the songs and reminiscing.
That's a little river band. Completely different thing. But great song.
Don't get me wrong. The foundation of Yacht Rock Radio, but reminiscing about those songs. Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. Genro, would you see yesterday again? Yes.
How far you want to go to do so? I would actually do a late night and pay for you. You know, I'm cheap.
I would pay full price. Wow. And you know what's going to happen with Amazon as soon as I can.
Oh, absolutely. And the soundtrack too. Because I thought he performed these songs really well.
I would definitely see this again. I'm right there with Genro. This is is this is a great date movie, but it doesn't have to be a date movie.
That's the brilliance of this film. Yeah, you can go with your bud. Absolutely.
It's a great film. It is your wife. You name it.
Yeah, you can take kids to this one. Oh, yeah. Teams would love this, I think.
It is Danny Boyle's favorite favorite film. I don't know if it's his favorite, but it's his latest. And it's called yesterday.
Throw in this whole man. Yes, sir. I think Mary Ann here, but he's a rock for the invite.
I don't drink. I promise. We love our vendors.
They take care of us and we get to see movies and stuff before they come out so we can tell you guys about them. We think our vendors so much. Make sure that you check out our website where you can find our written reviews and so much more.
It is www.theclubhousepodcast.com. Follow us on social media, Twitter's at Clubhouse Show, everything else the clubhouse podcast, all three words in that order or you will wind up somewhere else. You can follow me if you'd like.
Everything is yes, that Rob Irvin that has built E-R-V-I-N. My normal co-host for this show is Chad Womack. You can follow him at Chad NPG-69.
Alex Barnhill, also part of the crew. You can follow him at Vexploit. I'm Jen Rome home on Instagram.
And on Twitter, I'm at Igbonu, IG, B-U-N, U-U-U. Also email me, don to clubhousepodcast.com. Email Don for information on how we can come to a live show for you.
We love doing live shows and hanging out with the Empire. You can email me, questions, comments, concerns, somebody to go pound sand. I am Rob at theclubhousepodcast.com.
Chad is Chad at theclubhousepodcast.com. Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest because we're morally obligated to say that. Faith is waiting on Don.
Alex is with Sean. Chad's with Shannon. It's kind of the way that works.
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