Main Cast: Jonas Ball, Mie Omori, Gail Kay Bell, Krisha Fairchild, Robert Kirk, Anthony Solis
Release Year: 2006
Country: UK
Run Time: 112 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
What sort of man kills one of the most beloved musicians in the world, and what prompts him to pull the trigger? Filmmaker Andrew Piddington explores these questions in this fact-based drama which examines several weeks in the life of Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon. Chapman (played by Jonas Ball) is a self-obsessed young man who has an emotionally distant relationship with his parents and a failing marriage to Gloria (Mie Omori). Unable to hold down a job, Chapman spends a lot of time at the public library, where he rereads J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye and browses though a photo book on John Lennon, and the two begin to fuse in his imagination, as he links Holden Caulfield's grousing about "phonies" with the fame and wealth of one-time activist Lennon. Chapman hops a flight to New York City and visits the sights Caulfield talked about in the novel when not busy standing vigil outside the Dakota, the luxury apartment building Lennon calls home, with a gun in his possession. The first time Chapman crosses paths with Lennon as he's leaving the Dakota, he asks the former Beatle to sign a copy of Double Fantasy, Lennon's new album; several hours later, Lennon returns home and Chapman approaches him with a very different intent. The Killing of John Lennon was primarily filmed in the locations where the real-life events took place, and all of Chapman's dialogue in the film was taken from his diaries or interviews he's given since his arrest and imprisonment. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Cast
Jonas Ball - Mark David Chapman
Mie Omori - Gloria
Gail Kay Bell
Krisha Fairchild
Robert Kirk
Anthony Solis
Vera Felice; Richard Sherman; Gunther Stern
Credit
Anu Schwartz - Art Director, Skeeter Stanback - Art Director, Michael Bevins - Costume Designer, Andrew Piddington - Director, Tony Palmer - Editor, Rod Pearson - Executive Producer, Peter Kershaw - Executive Producer, Makana - Composer (Music Score), Martin Kiszko - Composer (Music Score), Tora Peterson - Production Designer, Roger Eaton - Cinematographer, Rakha Singh - Producer, Dane Thomsen - Sound/Sound Designer, Andrew Piddington - Screenwriter, Roger Carey - Co-Executive Producer, Joe Shashou - Co-Executive Producer
The Killing of John Lennon is a 2007non-fictiondrama film about Mark Chapman's plot to kill John Lennon. The film was written and directed by Andrew Piddington, and stars Jonas Ball, Robert C. Kirk, and Thomas A. McMahon.
Anachronisms
While the filmmakers took great care to provide an historically accurate portrayal of the events surrounding the murder of John Lennon, there are nonetheless some minor goofs in the film, such as occurs approximately 50 minutes in when Chapman is shopping for a copy of Lennon's latest LP and, flipping through the albums in the rack, runs across a copy of the Imagine LP with a top border proclaiming that the record had been digitally remastered (that edition was released in 1986). Also, the clearly-visible $20 bills with which Chapman pays his escort at approximately 60 minutes in are of a design that was not circulated until many years after the 1980 setting.
