Did Peter Jackson Make Disney Leave the Curse Words in His Beatles Documentary?

If you're like me, you think the Beatles are the greatest band of all time. When listening to their music, it sounds effortless. But as it turned out, there was a ton of effort behind every song and lyric. And it was all very fucking hard to do. Even if Disney didn't want you to hear the "fucking" part of it. 

In a recent interview with NME, director Peter Jackson discussed his Get Back documentary about the Beatles, and how Disney wanted to take the band's cursing out of each episode.

“Paul [McCartney] describes it as being very raw,” Jackson said. “He said to me: ‘That is a very accurate portrayal of how we were then.’ Ringo [Starr] said: ‘It’s truthful.’ The truthfulness of it is important to them. They don’t want a whitewash. They don’t want it to be sanitized. Disney wanted to remove all the swearing, and Ringo, Paul, and Olivia [Harrison] said: ‘That’s how we spoke. That’s how we talked. That’s how we want the world to see us.'”

When Disney took the F words out of Hamilton, it felt a little weird. There were two of them in songs, but you could make the excuse they wanted something more family-friendly. But when it comes to a doc that's determined to show you how hard the Beatles worked and struggled to make music, it does feel disingenuous to take out the swearing. Especially when it seems like it might have been integral to the process and blowing off steam. 

While Disney might have had notes, the living Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr reportedly loved the series.

Jackson said, “When they got to see the finished thing, I was expecting notes. It would’ve just been normal to get a note saying: ‘Oh, that bit where I say that—could you cut that out?’ Or, ‘Could you shorten the conversation there?’ And I didn’t get a single note. Not one request to do anything. One of them said that they watched it and found it one of the most stressful experiences of their entire life. ‘But I’m not gonna give you any notes.'"

The Beatles: Get Back is now streaming on Disney+.

Let us know what you think of the doc series and the decisions to leave in the bad words in the comments.