We’re big Beatles fans, so it’s hard to believe there’s a film featuring both Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr that we’d never seen. Last week we finally got around to watching “Give My Regards to Broad Street.” The movie was fun- lots of music and singing with a dash of the Beatles’ special brand of silly wittiness. But other than great music, there wasn’t much remarkable about the film. Except, that is, for Paul McCartney’s car.
I’m no car expert, but to me Paul’s wheels looked like they belonged in the 1940’s, even though he was driving down the streets of 1984 London. The old-fashioned car had this spiffy little license plate on the back, PM1. Then we cut to the inside of the car, and we’re propelled 30 years into the future. Paul has a car phone, a bright red dialup rig. Long before the era of established mores for mobile phones, McCartney already has the intelligence to pull over to the side of the road when it rings.
Cool as that was, I’ve seen car phones in older films before. What really knocked my socks off was the fact that Paul had Car Play! I’m not kidding. There’s a small computer embedded in his dashboard. The screen looks flat, though certainly the bulky cathode monitor is hidden in the dashboard guts. As Paul begins his day in the life of a busy rock star, he speaks to this little computer in his car. A voice far more mechanical than Siri’s responds, and brings up the day’s itinerary, reading the appointments off to Paul as he drives. Anyone with Apple Car Play can now follow in Paul’s footsteps, send and receive calls, get a rundown of the day’s agenda by asking Siri something along the lines of, what are my appointments today?
Of course not everybody has scheduled a recording session with Ringo Starr and George Martin, followed by a filming, then a night time jam session. For that, you’d pretty much have to be Paul McCartney.
