Martin: How Did The Idea For “Two Of Us” Come To You? Did You First Of All Have An Idea To Write

Martin: How did the idea for “Two Of Us” come to you? Did you first of all have an idea to write a film about an aspect of the Beatles - and then arrive at this particular story? Did you start out by wanting to write about the dynamic of John and Paul - and then arrive at this place? Or was this specific story your very first thought?

Mark: I wanted to do something creative with all this ‘useless knowledge’ that I had accumulated over the years, as a sort of purging and also as a kind of tribute, a way of saying thanks. Initially, I thought about writing a biography, but there have been so many. I think it was the conceit that I had some kind of unique insight into the dynamic between John and Paul that really got me started. And I would see these interviews with Paul where, whenever they asked him about John, everything would shift -- his face, his tone of voice. I would watch him and think, "My God, he really loved John, and he hasn't gotten over losing him."

Martin: Did you have an idea of what ground you wanted to cover? i.e. what factual topics you wanted each person to cover. And what emotional terrain you would want each of them to cover?

Mark: I knew that John's painful childhood would play an enormous role in the way I portrayed him, that he would be seen as never having completely come to terms with being unwanted. And I knew that I wanted to get across how much Paul really loved and understood John, which, I believe, is what frightened John.

Martin: Your original script ended with “Here Today” (Paul McCartney’s 1982 tribute song to John) being played - though you were subsequently unable to obtain permission for its use. If there had been total access from the Beatles for their recordings and their publishers for their music - would you have wanted to feature other music by them - and by John and Paul individually? If so - what specifically would you have wanted to use? And to underscore which points in the film?

Mark: It would have been nice to have "Silly Love Songs" in there, since that kind of summed up where Paul was at back then. The song that I kept coming back to, though, as I was writing, was "Jealous Guy". I'm practically convinced that John actually wrote that song for Paul. Whether he knew it or not.

Martin: Were you ever thinking that this might be regarded as a heresy to postulate history? Not just Beatles history - but postulating history with any real-life characters. Did you actively think about any of the precedents in the literary and dramatic tradition where real-life persons have been portrayed? And more particularly about works which have not just depicted known events - but have speculated about things that MIGHT have happened?

Mark: I didn't give it a lot of thought. Certainly it's been done before, from Shakespeare through something like "Melvin and Howard." And, more recently, in films like "Gods and Monsters". "Shakespeare in Love", for that matter.

Beatles historian Martin Lewis interviews Mark Stanfield, screenwriter of Two of Us (2000)