June 6, 1968 - Release

Taped: Thursday 6 June 1968
Aired: Saturday 22 June 1968

John and Victor Spinetti were filmed for the BBC2 arts programme Release discussing The John Lennon Play: In His Own Write, directed by Victor Spinetti, which was due to open in London on the 18th.

Q: The boy hates a lot of things and, in a way, you could say you were attacking these things -- like, organized religion, and the way people teach you in school.

LENNON: I feel the same now, really, about organized religion, education, and all those things that everybody is still laughing at. But I mean, I expressed it that way then. I don't know how I'd express it now, you know. It'd be slightly different really. I've always sort of suspected that there was a God, even when I thought I was an atheist. But I believe it, so I am full of compassion, really, even still. I just hate things less strenuously than I did. I haven't got as big of a chip about it, because maybe I've escaped out of it a bit. I think our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. And I think that's what I sussed when I was sixteen and twelve, way down the line. But I expressed it differently all through my life. It's the same thing I'm expressing all the time. But now I can put it into that sentence that I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends, you know. If anybody can put on paper what our government, and the American government, and the Russian, Chinese... what they are all trying to do, and what they think they're doing, I'd be very pleased to know what they think they're doing. I think they're all insane. But I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that, you know. That's what is insane about it. I mean, don't you agree?

Q: I do, actually.

LENNON: It's not just a bit strange. It's just insane, and nobody knows. Half the people watching this are going to be saying, 'What's he saying! What's he saying!' You know... That you are being run by people who are insane, and you don't know.

SPINETTI: We are living in insane times, aren't we, you know. We really are.