After four years, director Andrew Piddington has finally brought the tragic story of John Lennon’s murder to the big screen. Philip Key reports

WHEN Mark Chapman shot John Lennon to death on December 8, 1980, he immediately became the most hated man in the world. He remains in prison, parole constantly refused.

Now comes British film director Andrew Piddington, 54, with a new film, The Killing of John Lennon, in which Chapman is the central character.

It might be thought that such a film would immediately cause consternation. On the contrary, it has been well received, says Piddington.

“It got fantastic reviews on the festival circuit,” he reports. “Variety gave it a marvellous review and CNN called it a masterpiece. How many films get that accolade? It also won a prize at the Tribeca Festival in New York, the film festival with which Robert de Niro is involved.”

Piddington can congratulate himself on taking on one of the most controversial subjects a film-maker could tackle and, on his evidence, ending up with a success.

Now the public will have its opportunity to judge the film and make it a financial success – or a flop. The movie will get a limited national release from next Friday and will open in the USA in the New Year.

For Piddington, in Liverpool for a regional premiere of the film at FACT, it has been a long haul. It took him four years to make, he explains, three of those years actually filming.

The problem, as usual, was finance. He denies it was difficult to raise money because of the film’s theme – a look into the mind of Mark Chapman – but because it was generally difficult to raise money for a film. “This one did not have any stars either, so it was truly an independent film.”

The money did come from “private sources” but in dribs and drabs.

“When I did get some money, I would go out and shoot material, come back and edit it and then use that to raise some more money. It has been a difficult process.”

It was certainly difficult to keep his lead actor, Jonas Ball, playing Mark Chapman, looking the same throughout the film.

“Well, he did age four years, of course. But the main problem was that each time he did come back, we had to cut his hair to match the previous scene or add hair extensions.

“It was tough for him as an actor and me as a director maintaining the vision of the film. In the end, I think it looks quite seamless.”

Piddington wanted to make the film because he was interested in the psychological journey of the killer.

“I thought I knew and understood the story but when I started to research it, I realised there was a whole different sort of underlying psychology going on that is more relevant today than it was then.

“Lennon’s was the first rock and roll assassination, Chapman the first stalker killer. That same theme is with us now in a much more dominant way than it has ever been.

“These issues need to be discussed, why these people do it, and I hope this film generates some kind of debate.”

Chapman had been born in Georgia, his mother a nurse, his father an ex-US Army sergeant. He had an unremarkable childhood until he was 17 when he experimented with drugs and saw visions of Jesus.

He was to become a security guard and took a gun course before moving to Hawaii, where he made his first suicide attempt. When he recovered, he married a Japanese travel agent and his personality changed, becoming increasingly unpredictable, targeting a Scientology Church with telephone threats, intoning “Bang, Bang! You’re dead.”

His favourite book since his late teens had been the novel Catcher in the Rye, by JD Salinger, and he identified with its leading character, Holden Caufield, a youth who takes against society and particularly those he considered “phoney”. When Chapman decided Lennon was a phoney, the tragic die was cast.