Idle co-directed the film with Gary Weis; it features 20 Beatles' music pastiches written by Innes, which he performed with three musicians as the Rutles.
A second film, The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch (modelled on the 2000 TV special The Beatles Revolution), was made in 2002 and released in the US on DVD in 2003.
After writing "I Must Be in Love", Innes conceived parodying the film A Hard Day's Night, because he felt the song sounded very "Beatle-y".
Paul McCartney (working with Gus Dudgeon under the collective alias Apollo C. Vermouth) had produced the Bonzos' hit single "I'm the Urban Spaceman" in 1968.
George Harrison made a guest appearance on Rutland Weekend Television's 1975 Boxing Day special, with Idle and Innes, and he encouraged them to make a film that would parody the Beatles' career and serve to deflate the myths surrounding the band's legacy.
[3] This proposal led to the mockumentary All You Need Is Cash (1978), directed by SNL film director Gary Weis, with Idle credited as co-director.
A running theme for this episode was the "Save Great Britain Telethon", and it included an appearance by "the Rutle who lives in New York, Nasty".
Idle drew inspiration from this 1976 version of the documentary, as compiled by Neil Aspinall, and was granted permission to use some of the archival footage to tell the Rutles' story.
Innes assembled a band (himself, John Halsey, Ollie Halsall, Andy Brown, and Ricky Fataar) and the group played in a London pub to gel.
Additional actors in the special include Dan Aykroyd as the man who turned down the Rutles, John Belushi as Ron Decline (a parody of Allen Klein), Bill Murray as "Bill Murray the K", Gilda Radner as a reluctant street interviewee, George Harrison as a TV reporter, Mick Jagger and Paul Simon as themselves,[5] Michael Palin as Eric Manchester (a parody of Beatles press agent Derek Taylor), Ron Wood as a biker, Lorne Michaels as a man who wants to merchandise the Rutles, Al Franken and Tom Davis as Ron Decline employees, and many others.
The ensuing uproar prompted Rhino to reissue the album with a new cover featuring a photograph of Beatles memorabilia, claiming that Stout refused to amend his work.
The clip is simply the Tragical History Tour part of All You Need Is Cash, with the sound clunkily muted out during the segment's narration in order to leave just the music.
[12] Innes, with a group called the Moptops backed by the 'Rutland Symphony Orchestra',[13] performed as "Ron Nasty and the New Rutles" at a convention honouring the 25th anniversary of Monty Python in 1994.
Halsall died in 1992, but the reunion album, titled Archaeology as a play on the Beatles' Anthology series, featured several tracks recorded in 1978 that included his contributions.
McQuickly and Nasty have cameos in the 2004 graphic novel, Superman: True Brit, co-written by former Monty Python's Flying Circus member John Cleese.
On 17 March 2008, all four movie Rutles (Innes, Idle, Fataar and Halsey) reunited for the first time at a 30th anniversary screening of All You Need Is Cash at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.
The "Rutlemania" live show was conceived and written by Eric Idle which starred the Beatles tribute group the Fab Four as "The Pre-Fab Four" Rutles.
[16] Additional musicians Following the release of the 1978 the Rutles album, ATV Music, the then-owner of the publishing rights to the Beatles catalogue sued Innes for copyright infringement.