Jerry Levitan Met The Walrus

One day in 1969, a determined 14-year-old would-be reporter named Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon's Toronto hotel room with a reel to reel tape recorder and scored an interview with the Beatle. The encounter has become near legendary since then, and Levitan detailed his experience in a T.O. Magazine article in the '80s, but the public hasn't been able to hear the actual recording until now.

So why did Levitan wait so long to share this with the world?

"I have a lot of original material. I have a 40-minute tape interview. I have a five-minute Super 8 home movie that I took of John and Yoko [Ono], a lot of photos, albums, one that he gave me, and people have been approaching me for years and years to do stuff with it. In a strange way, this is all really personal to me and I never wanted to do it in a way or use my material in a way that was cheesy or just run of the mill.

"And I met this young, brilliant visual artist and director, Josh Raskin, and he had a great idea, which was to take the 40-minute interview, edit it down to five minutes and animate it with the words of John Lennon and the young Jerry Levitan. And I thought, 'Wow. That's all it is. You know, this beautiful artistic treatment of this life-altering experience for me. Great!'"

The result is I Met The Walrus, an animated short that features Lennon and Levitan discussing music, war, peace and politics. It's as relevant today as it was the day that the interview was conducted.

"That's what's so striking about the interview and his message," enthuses Levitan, who also produced the film. "My interview is very unique and rock historians are calling it an extremely unique interview with John Lennon because he's just talking to a kid, a 14 year old, so there's no pretense around it or agenda or anything like that.

"And his message was just a very simple one about living a peaceful life and about trying to do things in your own personal life that were peaceful. The resonance of that message is true today."

That message and the art that Levitan and Raskin have made with it have proved to be very popular in the film world. I Met The Walrus has already been a part of the Brooklyn Film Festival and Cannes Short Film Corner, and it will be screened at the Worldwide Short Film Festival this weekend in Toronto. Future stops for the short include Los Angeles, Dublin, Ireland and Brazil, with possible future screenings in places like Denmark, Italy and Cairo, Egypt.

I Met The Walrus isn't just impressing filmgoers, though. It's also getting the attention of Beatles fans, particularly young ones.

"I've received emails from across Canada and a few in the United States and one from England, from young people," says Levitan."One was from a 12-year-old girl who just totally loves The Beatles and heard me on a CBC interview telling the story and sent me this great two-page email about her life and why she loves The Beatles and how she admired my guts. So it's having such a great impact because of the message. It's not just John Lennon talking about what he was wearing or the latest Beatles record, he's talking in very human, real things, and that touched a lot of people."

It sounds like Levitan is inspiring a new generation of Beatles fans much in the same way that Lennon did 38 years ago.

"Well," says a humble Levitan, "let's say that John Lennon is still inspiring the next generation."

I Met The Walrus will play as part of the Worldwide Short Film Festival's I'm With The Band program on Friday at 7:15 p.m. at Innis Town Hall.