Head

Recently, I was thinking about a scene in A Hard Day's Night, and I realized that, probably just coincidentally, a similar situation appears in Head.

Around 47 minutes into A Hard Day's Night, there's a scene in a dressing room where, among other events going on, a tailor is measuring Paul's shoulders.  The Beatles' manager then tells them that they're wanted in the television studio, so Paul walks away and the tailor is left holding out his measuring tape.  John goes up to him, says in a funny voice, "I now declare this bridge open," and cuts the tape with a scissors.

The first scene in Head is the actual opening of a bridge.  After some initial set up, the mayor starts making a speech:  "Ladies and gentlemen, I hereby dedicate this magnificent marvel of modern architecture, one of the largest suspended arch bridges in the world, to the people of-" at which point, Micky interrupts him by running through the ribbon he was about to cut.

While the Beatles (and A Hard Day's Night specifically) are an acknowledged influence on the Monkees, I don't know if the faint resemblance between these two scenes is anything more than coincidence.  Neither scene is very significant in relation to the larger plot, and the "bridge opening" in A Hard Day's Night isn't even real.

Head

I've been re-reading Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman recently.  This morning, I ran across a line that sounded familiar.  Near the end of Act 1, Willy Loman says, "Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money."  Of course, this made me think of what Peter says in Head:  "Nobody ever lends money to a man with a sense of humor."  While there's a clear resemblance between these two, I don't know if it's intentional or coincidental.

Head

According to Andrew Sandoval's The Monkees: The Day-by-Day Story of the 60s TV Pop Sensation, fifty years ago to-day (6 November 1968), the Monkees' film Head premiered at the Columbia Pictures studio in New York City.