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Lennon's Ghost

By BROOKS BARNES
April 19, 2006; Page B1

A pay-per-view television special that promises to conjure the spirit of John Lennon has fans of the peace-promoting rocker declaring war.

In what is alternately seen as rabid commercialism and a spectacular chance-of-a-lifetime, TV producer Paul Sharratt will launch a $9.95 pay-per-view special on April 24 titled "The Spirit of John Lennon." Mr. Sharratt says infrared cameras will be poised to capture Mr. Lennon's ghost on film while psychics conduct séances at spots where it's most likely to linger, such as the Strawberry Fields memorial in New York's Central Park. "Perhaps he will even give us a new song," Mr. Sharratt says.

But so far, the only people seeing red are in the Lennon camp. "Tasteless, tacky and exploitive" is how Yoko Ono's spokesman, Elliot Mintz, describes the plan. "He still speaks to those who choose to listen to his recordings," he says. "It's another example of the misuse of John's affirmation of life as opposed to the preoccupation of his death."


Some Beatles fans are organizing online to boycott the special, which will be made available by In Demand, a programming service owned by Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc., and Time Warner Inc. Sally Stevens, co-owner of a Beatles-centric Web site, Rockphiles.com says, "It's an outrage. [John Lennon] was interested in the spiritual development of humanity, not things that go bump in the night."

To counterattack, Mr. Sharratt's publicity team has been disseminating electronic copies of a 1980 Newsweek article that says Mr. Lennon and Ms. Ono held séances in the living room of their New York City apartment to commune with past residents. "I don't know why people find it extraordinary that we would charge for this," Mr. Sharratt says. "It's documentary and entertainment too." His slogan: "Give psychics a chance."

Mr. Sharratt says he decided to go ahead with the Lennon special in part because he noticed that shows about real-life psychics were all over TV. There's "Ghost Whisperer" on CBS Corp. and "Medium" on General Electric Co.'s NBC. The Sci-Fi channel has two, including a reality show called "Ghost Hunters" (they're Roto-Rooter plumbers by day). And in the United Kingdom, "Most Haunted" has turned into a major hit for the British Broadcasting Corp.

"People scoff, but this subject is hitting a chord for a reason," says Mr. Sharratt, who produced several hit variety shows in Australia. "I'm a skeptic myself, but millions of people around the world do believe, so who am I to pass judgment?"

Mr. Sharratt is an old hand at this kind of TV. In 2003, he produced a pay-per-view special called "The Spirit of Diana," where a flotilla of psychics attempted to contact the late princess. She didn't show up. But the production was still a success -- at least for Mr. Sharratt. Over 500,000 people world-wide paid $15 each to see the Diana special, and a couple thousand more have since bought the DVD. In total, the venture grossed upwards of $8 million.


A medium tries to contact Princess Diana in "The Spirit of Diana," a pay-per-view séance televised in 2004. The princess was a no-show.
In selecting Mr. Lennon as a follow-up, Mr. Sharratt may have bitten off more than he can handle. Princess Diana was much beloved, but she doesn't invoke the generational fervor and complicated emotions of Mr. Lennon's fans. Some love him as a symbol of peace, others as a symbol of the lost innocence of the counterculture. Some simply adore him as a rock icon. Last year, an estimated 400,000 people visited Strawberry Fields, says a spokesman for the New York City Parks Department.

The princess's no-show creates other problems for Mr. Sharratt. A second high-profile bust could frustrate plans to turn "The Spirit of ..." into a full-blown franchise. Although Mr. Sharratt is unapologetically commercial, he doesn't want to be remembered as the person who delivered one of TV's biggest letdowns. Geraldo Rivera is at the top of that list for his live 1986 special, "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults." After 90 minutes of drum roll, they turned out to be ... totally empty.

Dismayed Lennon fans say Mr. Sharratt is nothing more than a modern snake-oil salesman. They argue the project hits new lows in TV tastelessness and are gathering ammunition from "The Spirit of Diana" to support their claims.

In one scene from the Diana special, for instance, a woman identifies herself to a group of people as a "channeler." She says this means her spirit can leave her body and hover 50 feet in the air, leaving room for a "little old Chinese man" to enter and commune with the dead. "John is too busy rolling in his grave to talk to these idiots," a blogger with the name BeatleMamma posted on a fan site.

Even a spokeswoman for In Demand, best known for offering sports events such as boxing and pornographic films, gave the special lukewarm support. "A certain level of person will be interested and a lot of people will just ignore it," she says.

Mr. Sharratt says he isn't bothered by any of that. Instead, he is concentrating on securing an international distributor, completing filming and editing footage already shot. He says the special will unfold in three parts starting in the U.K., where psychics visit Liverpool, a school Mr. Lennon attended and the hair salon where the Beatles got their first floppy haircuts. From there, viewers travel with psychics to a town in India where Mr. Lennon once attended a spiritual retreat, and then to the U.S.

Séances have already taken place in several places, including Strawberry Fields -- where Mr. Sharratt says something unusual happened. During filming, he says, one of the cameras lost sound. But when played back, "there is a voice on one of the tracks." He won't reveal what the voice said but adds that his crew is in the process of securing confirmation from "experts in electronic voice phenomena."

As for whether he is trying to get Ms. Ono onboard before the special airs, Mr. Sharratt says the answer is no. "We took a rough stab that the estate wouldn't be terribly happy and left it at that," he says.

Write to Brooks Barnes at brooks.barnes@wsj.com