Thread by @MrGoldstein7

The film "Let Him Be" is a pretend hunt for a living John Lennon.
Released in 2009, with clips still up on youtube as of 2014. It is chock full of big red flags. The first red flag is the title, which is a prominent part of the psychological operation.

web.archive.org/web/2016051213…

The message is there in the title: let him be! “He isn't still alive; but even if he is, let him be!” In the film, they tell you they have found a guy who looks exactly like Lennon would look at this age.

In interviews for the film, they tell you they have found a Lennon impersonator who looks exactly like Lennon would look at this age, to play the part in the film. The actor named Mark Staycer is playing a character named Noel Snow who other characters think may be John Lennon.

So we have a bluff inside a bluff inside a bluff. Inside a bluff. The film is basically a psy-op that backfired and had to be suppressed.

They produce these things to take you close to the truth and then ricochet you off on some tangent. But they took you so close to the truth the ricochet didn't work. That's why the movie is now being buried.

A similar psy-op is the title of one of the songs he sings in the film: I Was There. That song title works as both an inside joke and a psy-op.

It is a joke because John is a joker. He likes to fuck with you. He is telling you “I was there” right to your face, singing it over and over, and daring you to understand what it means. But it is a psy-op because he knows most people won't dare.

Most people won't see what is right in front of them and he knows it. So it makes him feel powerful. Is that Mark Staycer singing “I was there” or is it John Lennon singing “I was there”? Well, who was there? Not Mark Staycer.

We will start with the smaller ones and work our way up. The director and writer of the film is supposed to be a guy named Peter McNamee, but he has no presence on IMDB except for this one film.
imdb.com/name/nm3502292…

According to the web, he was born, made this one film, and then disappeared from the face of the earth. That is peculiar, to say the least. All people in film are dependent on media, and that includes new actors and directors. A person in film with no web presence makes no sense.

At lethimbe.com, it says McNamee produced some of the biggest names in the British and European music industry before 1987, but I found not one word to confirm that.
web.archive.org/web/2009050706…

At LinkedIn, McNamee says he is the CEO of Abracadabra films, but a websearch only turns up companies by that name in Chile, Montpellier and Melbourne, not Toronto. The name Abracadabra may be a joke left as a clue, since as you will see we are in the presence of some magic here

There is an interview with McNamee online, so you can see for yourself how suspicious the whole film is from the first.
web.archive.org/web/2015102209…

McNamee says he is from Blackburn, Lancashire (which is of course mentioned in the Beatles' song A Day in the Life). I read the news today oboy/about a lucky man who made the grade/and though the news was rather sad/well, I just had to laugh/I saw the photograph.

Blackburn is about 30 miles north of Liverpool. So we are supposed to accept that it is just another coincidence that McNamee, from Blackburn, happened to get involved in this film project in Toronto?

Unfortunately, McNamee appears in the “making of” documentary that comes with the film, and although he has a faded English accent, it isn't Liverpool or Blackburn. It is London or Cambridge.

Another peculiar thing happens early in the interview, when McNamee is asked how he came up with the idea for the movie.

What? We are supposed to believe McNamee wrote the “Lennon” songs in the movie?

Even if we decide to accept that, it still doesn't explain why his friend thought they were Lennon demos. Who was singing in the original demos? McNamee? Does McNamee also do a perfect Lennon impersonation?

What I think is implied here is that the demos were done by the Lennon impersonator Mark Staycer, in which case it wouldn't be accurate to say that the idea for the film came from McNamee's songs. It came from the spot-on impersonation in the singing.

But of course that means Staycer had to be involved in the project from the start. And, as we will soon see, neither explanation pans out. The Lennon “demos” pre-existed any of this, and weren't written by McNamee. They were written by Staycer. . . kind of.

Both McNamee and Staycer are just names, acting as fronts for Lennon. Remember, it was Lennon who produced major musical acts before 1987 (or 1980, according to mainstream history), since he worked on the albums of his friends.

The same mystery applies to producer Carol Wright, who also has just this one film to her credit. Like Sean Clement below, her bio at the New York Times has been scrubbed.
nytimes.com/movies/person/…

Although she is an advertising executive at NBCUniversal, and has also worked for ClearChannel and CBS radio, this is her only foray into film. Why? Why is NBC involved in this project? At the time of the film, NBC was owned by GE and Vivendi. It has since been bought by Comcast.

Despite having Wright involved, this movie went nowhere, and it now looks like it was suppressed. Although it came out in 2009, it didn't go to DVD until 2011, and now it is unavailable at Amazon.
amazon.com/Let-Him-Be/dp/…

There is one copy at ebay, labeled “rare” and going for $118. It is not available at Netflix.

The young female lead in the film is Kathleen Munroe, the only actor in the film with a real web presence. But we get more strange coincidences if we look her up at IMDB.
imdb.com/name/nm1182008/

Right after the film, Kathleen was pretty busy, both in film and TV. If we go just by number of listings at IMDB, 2009 was her busiest year. She must have made some good contacts in 2008, while filming this no-budget indie movie in Toronto.

And check out these titles: In 2009, she did a film entitled Survival of the Dead. Hmmm. Survival of the dead. She also did a TV series called Without a Trace. Hmmm. Without a trace.

In 2010, Munroe was hired to appear in the TV series Haven. What is that about? It is about FBI special agents sent to Maine to investigate strange happenings. Maine is just across the border from Canada, you know.

Munroe plays an FBI agent. That's curious, since in the film Let Him Be, we find John Lennon singing “are you listening FBI?”. In 2010, Munroe appeared in Stargate Universe as a computer ghost.

Since 2011, Munroe has specialized in appearing in TV series that deal with secret agents or the supernatural. Spooks or spooks, in other words. She appeared in Nikita, which is about rogue agents of a rogue division of Intelligence.

She appeared in Supernatural and will be appearing in Resurrection. She appeared in Alphas, which concerns Department of Defense spooks. What could it all mean?

You will say it just means most new shows are about spooks or spooks: what choice does a young actress have? But even if that were the reason Munroe is in all these shows (it isn't), it still begs the question: why are most new shows about spooks or spooks?

That wasn't true in previous decades. Why are things so weird now on TV and in film? You should ask yourself that.

In the film, Kathleen Munroe's character begins spending time with the Lennon character in the second half of the script. She takes walks through fields with him, discussing literature and music and so on. He then gives her a couple of books, which they show her reading in bed.

The scene passes quickly, and the script doesn't focus on the book. Neither does the camera, and you have to go back and pause the film on just the right frame to read the title. The book is Cheiro's book of numbers, which is very curious.

I will be told they included this book as another nod to authenticity, purposely trying to make the character seem like Lennon. But if they were going to do that, they should have focused on the book.

As it is, the clue would only be found by someone who was looking for it. For those who don't know what I am talking about, Cheiro's book is a famous book of numerology supposed to have been written by “Cheiro” in 1879 at the age of 13.

Of course he was a complete fraud, but what is important in this context is that John Lennon is known to have considered this book to be “his Bible.” So for many reasons it is odd to find it placed in the film in this way.

The next clue comes quickly, since the next book he gives her is Through the Looking Glass. Again, a casual watcher of the film would not catch that, since it passes very quickly, and you only see the letters
UGH THE
GLASS

Most of the title is cut off by the bottom edge of the film. Even paused on a single frame, it is hard to tell if the last word is Class or Glass. I had to think about it for a while to get the title.

This is important for several reasons. If the title had been obvious to the audience, we could dismiss it as a subtle leitmotif of the film. The entire film is a journey through the looking glass. But taken in context, the hidden clue is far darker.

To see what I mean, you could read Robert Littell's 2003 novel The Company. In that novel, we discover that Through the Looking Glass is one of the CIA's favorite books, both for its implications and for its uses in brainwashing.
amazon.com/Company-Littel…

Moving beyond that book, we find that declassified documents from the CIA's Monarch program indicate that popular books and films were used in various brainwashing techniques, including the Alice in Wonderland series and the Wizard of Oz series.

In this film, the book title is either working subliminally, or it is simply a CIA marker—a sort of “we were here” signal.

Notice that the actress looks right at the camera as she is supposed to be reading that book. Why is she doing that? This is just one of many unintended spooky moments in the film.

The young lead actor in the film, Sean Clement, has a similar problem as his director and producer.
Although he has appeared in a few films, he has no bio up on IMDB or anywhere else. Zero web presence.
imdb.com/name/nm1249525…

No bio at Rotten Tomatoes, FringeWiki, TVGuide; and the New York Times listing is empty, as if it has been cleansed. No personal website. Only one headshot on the web.

Like Monroe, Clement specializes in spooks and spooks. He played an agent in Fringe. And in 2012 he appeared in the film Black Coat Mob. It asks the question: “What if Columbine happened again?” Curious.

But Sean Clement has an even bigger red flag, one I would guess almost everyone but me has missed. He looks very much like John Lennon.

Study that nose, for a start. That is the Lennon nose. It is the same length, and also has the same ending, with the same nostrils. But Sean Clement also has the same shaped face as Lennon, as well as very similar eyes, mouth and ears.

You have to watch the movie to see the ears, but it is a close match. Overall, it is a very strong family resemblance. Also remember that John and Sean are basically the same names, just in different dialects.

And that John has another son named Sean, of course. I would suggest that this is probably a later son of John, born after 1980. That is why he is used in this movie. And of course his real name isn't Sean Clement.

We can tell his mother isn't Yoko, and I have no idea who is real mother is (yet). They were so brazen in this film, I wouldn't be surprised if the “actress” who played John's girlfriend really is his girlfriend. She may be Sean's mother as well.

John Lennon is played in the film by Mark Staycer, who—we are told—is a well-known Lennon impersonator. Not only can Staycer sing exactly like Lennon, mimicking the Liverpudlian accent even while singing, but he also happens to look exactly like him.

Before we discuss the “exactly” there, let us pause for just a moment to consider only what we have so far. Good impersonators aren't that rare, but good impersonators who look exactly like who they are impersonating even when out of costume must be very rare.

Just consider it for a moment. We've all seen really good impersonators but the impersonation is usually in the voice and mannerisms. Most impersonators don't look anything like who they are impersonating, and if they try for a resemblance, it is achieved with costume and make-up

So the odds that a guy who looks exactly like John Lennon can also sing exactly like him are very, very low. But Staycer can also play all John's songs, on both guitar and keyboards, singing and playing at the same time. So run the odds again on that.

Lennon would have been 67 in 2007, and Staycer with no makeup looks about 65 to 70. The character in the film is said to be 65. They are the same height. Run the odds again.

Staycer also uses authentic guitars of the same type used by Lennon. He “has compiled one of the largest collections of rare 60's memorabilia, audio & video in the midwest.” Lennon could probably say the same thing, don't you think? Run the odds again.
imaginelennon.com/bio.html

In this article from 2004, we are told the full extent of Staycer's collection of Lennon and Beatles memorabilia: he says, “You name it, I have it.” static.record-eagle.com/2004/may/21bea…

He showed only a small fraction of that collection in his hometown of Traverse City, Michigan, and yet it was still called by the newspaper one of the largest outside the Smithsonian. Problem is, the story doesn't make any sense. For instance, it says this:

OK, so let's do the math. The article was published in 2004, so 1964 was 40 years before that. What was Staycer then, 7 years old?

No it wasn't. It may have been noisy, what with all the screaming girls, but moshpits weren't around in 1964. And if they had been, it doesn't sound like a good place for a 7-year-old.

So the Beatles were at a low ebb in pop culture in the early 70's? I don't think so. The only ebb the Beatles have ever had was in 1966, and that was a small ebb that was countered very effectively by Sgt. Pepper's.

Where did young Staycer get the money for Beatles memorabilia, at age 14? Don't tell me, a paper route? We are told one piece of memorabilia Staycer found or bought is a letter written by Lennon from the Dakota apartments, “creatively laced with profanity.” Sure.

Staycer no doubt picked that up in the late 1980's, when Lennon memorabilia could be gotten for a song, due to another popularity ebb.

Now get this, Staycer's collection includes a NYC restaurant menu signed by all four Beatles during their first US tour,framed autographs with original line drawings and Gold Records. Go read the article. It really says that: GOLD RECORDS. Staycer has Gold Records by the Beatles.

But back to the movie Let Him Be. They tell you in the interviews (see Munroe's interview, for instance) that Staycer needed make-up to look like Lennon. But if you watch the film, the interviews, and study the photos, you see the opposite is true.

He actually needs makeup, a wig, a hat, or dark glasses not to look like Lennon. It is when Staycer is playing himself that he is in the heaviest disguise:

That's Mark Staycer playing Mark Staycer.

He is in Toronto for the premiere of the film. If he doesn't look so much like Lennon in real life, why not prove it? Why would an unknown actor in his first film need to come to the premiere in disguise? Most people see what I see, but they don't ask the right questions.

I would say he looks about 68 there, but some will say Staycer looks too young to be Lennon. I encourage you to study pictures of Paul McCartney from 2007-2009, as a comparison.

These famous people have ways of looking ten years younger, including hair coloring, wigs, surgery, and make-up. Just because they don't look like your 68 year-old granddad means nothing.

And for those of you who say Lennon wouldn't or couldn't play Staycer, I give you this 2012 Huffington Pos t article, which admits that McCartney did a similar thing in 1984, busking in front of Leicester Square Station as a disheveled musician.
huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/21/pau…

See the video, which is from his film Give my Regards to Broad Street. No one recognized him, although he looks and sounds just like himself to me. Dark glasses were enough to fool everyone.

Staycer's website links to Yoko's ImaginePeace.com website. I can see why Lennon would do that, but why would Mark Staycer do that? Staycer's facebook page is down, so he may be feeling some heat.

Director Peter NcNamee said in his interview: “So I found him on the internet, and he even lives locally so I didn’t even have to pay for his travel (laughs).” But wait, I thought Staycer lived in Traverse City, MI, which is about 350 miles from Toronto.

That's what it says on his website. Six hours by car isn't that far in the US/Canada, but it isn't “locally.” McNamee also says to find Staycer he looked up “English John Lennon impersonators.” But Staycer isn't English.

He is supposed to have been born in Michigan, and Michigan isn't in England, last time I checked.

In a 2009 interview for a Michigan paper, Staycer admits “I was their first and only choice for the role.” Really? That's curious. They didn't even audition anyone else? I wonder why?
web.archive.org/web/2016020420…

We find another joke in the film. John aka Noel Snow is living with his cousin, and his cousin is named Stanley Fields. That's just a combination of Julia Stanley and Strawberry Fields. Stanley Fields.

The guy they hired to play Stanley is also a clue, since he is supposed to be a Liverpool native living in Toronto. But like Peter McNamee, his accent is wrong. It is a British Isles accent, but it isn't Liverpool or surrounding area.

Noel Snow is also an anagram for something. Notice that the name NOELSNOW contains the letters LENONO. That is the Lennon/Ono record label. We are also being told this whole thing is a snow job, and that Mark Staycer is sort of like Santa Claus: Happy Noël!

You should also remember how close Detroit and Toronto are. Detroit is right on the Canadian border, and John may go back and forth down that highway, being seen in both cities. For instance, here is a peculiar photo.

That is supposed to be Staycer in front of Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto. Guess what Bulger Gallery specializes in: Lennon memorabilia, especially old photos. Who do you think supplies them with those photos? Probably the guy above, who happens to have a lot of those photos.

Here are some photos Staycer has posted on his personal website or on the web.
Now I ask you this: are those the kind of photos you would put on your personal website? Who has themselves photographed from the hairline down?

“Yeah, you with the camera, shoot me from directly above, so all you can see is my dandruff. Great! And now let's go shoot some of me onstage, but only get the back of my coat.” Of course these photos prevent any facial analysis.

But I have saved the best for last. We have three more very important bits, and the first bit is his interview for the film, in which Mark Staycer is speaking with an American accent.

In the film, he is doing John, so he speaks and sings Liverpool; but in the interview, he tries to do an American accent “as himself”. If Staycer was born in Michigan and still lives there, why is his American accent suspect? It is pretty good, but not perfect.

It is about as good as your British accent probably is, if you have some talent for that sort of thing. I encourage you to listen closely. It is definitely not a native accent of any kind, which throws up a huge red flag.

John clearly thought he could pull off a perfect American accent, but he doesn't. Even with the hat and glasses, you can tell it is John playing American.

You find even stranger things if you watch the “making of” documentary for Let Him Be. “Staycer” does another interview for that documentary, and his accent isn't the same as in the after-film interview.

John apparently can do several versions of an American accent. In one, the accent is pretty flat mid-Western. But in the other he has a strange drawl. The pitch doesn't even match. When he does the slight drawl, he goes a note lower in pitch.

If Staycer were really Staycer, we would expect his natural voice to be consistent.

Staycer's Liverpudlian accent is actually more convincing than his various Detroit accents. It isn't just the accent in the songs, it is the accent in the patter between songs, which is extensive.

He just submerges completely into John, talking fast and telling jokes and mentioning things from the past that only John would know about. For instance, in that linked video, he says:

I will be told it is just something he memorized for the show. It might seem so, but I would say that goes a little beyond an impersonation in any case.

It also isn't the standard story for the song's creation, which is that “Norwegian Wood” was composed in the Swiss Alps on vacation in January 1965. How is it that Staycer thinks he is qualified to retell history?

Obviously, he hasn't memorized the story, since that isn't the accepted story. He appears to be remembering something!

Even George Harrison's sister Louise apparently agrees with me—about Staycer's Liverpool accent at least—because she is quoted on Staycer's site saying, “I thought they were playing John's records when I heard him.” She would know a Liverpool accent.

You might also consider asking yourself this: “When and where and why is George Harrison's sister Louise listening to Staycer?” Do you really think Louise is going to pay to go to a Mark Staycer concert?

When you go to that youtube video, also notice all the guitars and guitar cases behind Staycer. How many impersonators do you know that own a dozen expensive guitars and take them all to a little one-man acoustic show? It looks a bit odd to me, along with everything else.

Corroborating this line of analysis, we find other odd things if we study backgrounds in the film Let Him Be. Again, we find lots of expensive guitars. The Lennon character Noel Snow is playing a hollow-body natural-finish Epiphone Casino, just like Lennon.

His bandmate is playing a Gibson ES330. “So what?” you say. “The Casino isn't a very expensive guitar: anyone can buy one. Those are probably Staycer's guitars.”

Maybe, but is the vintage hardwood grand piano also Staycer's? How about the vintage AKAI GX-635D reel to reel with six VU's, which they are actually using? How about the vintage Crumar RoadrunnerII keyboard his bandmember is playing? That dates from 1980 and is extremely rare.

How about the vintage analog mixing consoles, one above the other, the large top one with 10 VU's? Are those also Staycer's? Why would a Lennon impersonator need large old analog mixers?

This is also interesting. As you see, in Lennon's private studio, he had a large mixer, with 8+1 VU's. [The VU's are the little sound level meters up high.] In the photo from the film above, we see the large mixer is either an 8+1 or 8+2.

I will be told they bought all this stuff to make the film seem authentic. But McNamee said in the interview the movie was near zero-budget. He couldn't even pay for Staycer's travel expenses.

If they couldn't afford to pay for Staycer to travel, do you think they could afford $60,000 worth of old equipment for a background set? If it was just background, why was it running?

I will be told the equipment belongs to McNamee, who used to be a music producer: they shot the band scenes in his studio. Possibly. But again, I found no confirmation of his time as a music producer. He doesn't mention it on his profile at LinkedIn.

Nothing about being a music producer or ex-producer, either in his “overview” or “experience” sections. If you had worked as a producer with “some of the biggest names in the music industry” in the 70's and 80's, don't you think you would include it on your professional profile?

That being the case, we should consider the possibility this studio equipment belongs to. . . John Lennon. It is exactly the equipment we would expect to see in Lennon's studio. Who else would still be using old analog recording and mixing equipment?

As confirmation of that, we also find a Japanese print on the wall. If you still want to argue that this analog studio belongs to McNamee, are you also going to tell us that McNamee just happen to love Japanese art? Is McNamee also secretly still married to Yoko Ono?

Curiously, we also see an old grandfather clock behind the band. This is curious because Lennon loved clocks. When George Smith—Lennon's uncle and legal guardian— died, John specifically requested the family clock that had been in the living room at Mendips.

That picture is from Lennon's New York apartment, and depicts Lennon's housekeeper Rosaura with Julian and Kyoko (I guess). Notice the old clock on the wall. It doesn't match the rest of the décor, but it proves John liked old clocks.

We also see a poster of a whale in the studio background of Let Him Be. And just before the four-song concert, the Lennon character is talking to his roommate, the character Stanley Fields, who is supposed to be his cousin. Stanley is asking Noel Snow about a book on whales.

Why do whales come up twice in the film? Because, as with clocks, John has a connection to whales. All you have to do is search on “John Lennon whale” to get lots of strange things.

The first is from the BBC, dated 2006. In it, a childhood drawing of Lennon has been found. It is of a stranded whale:

It was supposed to have been done when Lennon was 13, in 1953

Another website even has a photo of the actual whale, beached near the Mersey ship canal.

In addition, John and Ringo were both very interested in John Tavener's The Whale, a dramatic cantata written in 1966 based on Jonah and the Whale. They attended the opening and arranged for it to be recorded and released on their own Apple records label.

Moreover, Yoko Ono is well-known for her work in saving the whales. Even Julian Lennon is involved with whales, having produced a 2007 film called Whale Dreamers.

Of course we could just assume that Peter McNamee knew all this and wished to reference it in his film. So he went out and bought a poster of a whale fluke to put on the wall of the studio, etc. But I think that is giving him credit for attention to detail he does not have.

I don't think anyone would call Let Him Be a meticulously crafted film. The better reading of these clues I am giving you is that they are filming in Lennon's actual studio. That explains the things we are seeing without any need invent wild stories.

We don't need to postulate that McNamee just happens to like everything Lennon likes, or that McNamee is spending countless hours packing his film with obscure references, .....

..... or that McNamee is spending countless hours decorating the studio as if it is Lennon's—down to the smallest background detail invisible to any normal viewer. We simply realize we are in Lennon's real studio.

If that still doesn't do it for you, I will hit you with the two things that did it for me. The first and best is that nose. It looks like John has had some surgery over the years, including removing that mole middle of his forehead and some work on his teeth.

But he left that glorious nose alone. Now, that nose isn't only long and crooked (curving slightly to your left), but it has some extremely rare bumps above the nostrils, as you see.

Notice those strange bumps above his nostrils. In some pictures they don't seem as prominent, and I don't know if that is because they come and go or if it is because they were retouched out of some photos. Well, our friend Mark Staycer also has them:

In that photo you can see the long nose, the curve to your left, and the bumps above the nostrils. The bump on your right is really noticeable in this light. That's John's pretty little mouth, too, hard to miss. So, run the odds on that. But there's even more.

That's supposed to be Mark Staycer from 2004, at his show of memorabilia in Michigan.

That's John, circa 1978.
The mole under the right eye (to your left). An exact match.

We have a second confirmation of that mole on Staycer:

That's a super close-up of Staycer in concert at Abbey Road on the River in Kentucky, 2005. I screen captured it from a youtube video, shot from Staycer's shoetops, apparently.

You can even see that the mole is slightly raised, so you can't argue that Staycer penciled it in to look more like Lennon.

In this video, you can see that John and Mark have the same thumb position on the guitar, wrapping for the bass string or hanging in that position. Trained guitarists don't do that, but it is commonly done by rock guitarists, especially men with big hands.

It frees up the other four fingers and allows you more chord possibilities and that nice accompanying bass when needed.

That's a screenshot from the film Let Him Be. Staycer is supposed to be playing Lennon. We learn a lot from this one photo. First of all, we can see how old Staycer/Lennon really is.

You can see why Staycer was wearing the black cap in the other photo ops: he needs to cover his forehead, which gives away his age. He clearly isn't in his early 50's. This guy is late 60's, which matches Lennon, not Staycer.

We get the same information from his neck, which is very wrinkled. I have also drawn two arrows for you. The lower arrow confirms that mole once again. The upper arrow points to the scar where the larger mole was removed.

That one was far too obvious, and when Lennon went into hiding it had to be removed. You can remove a mole, but you can't remove a scar. In this sort of hot, raking light, it will show up.

I would also point out that Lennon is wearing a wig here. I don't know why. Possibly he is either more bald or more gray than he wants to be on camera here, and this wig is used to cover. Since it is a wig for an older look, it isn't too obvious unless you go to a close-up.

But here you can see the paste lines along the upper forehead. This one photo is a PR disaster, and it may be the reason they had to bury this film after it was released. They should have never let the cameraman zoom in. It is at minute 1:01:45 in the film.

We find more anomalies if we watch the “making of” documentary. We find out that in these closeups, they have put a false nose and chin on Lennon. They tell you it is to make Staycer look more like Lennon, but it is actually to make Lennon look less like Lennon.

This is the only time they go in close, so they have actually widened Lennon's bridge to hide his distinctive nose somewhat (and probably to hide those telltale bumps). Although the chin is mostly hidden by the microphone in the shots, it too looks strange.

They thought we would see “Staycer” with these prosthetics on, and assume he needed them to look like Lennon. But the reverse is true: Lennon is just trying to hide himself from facial analysis in these close-ups.

We now know that, since we have seen “Staycer” without the prosthetics. He looks more like Lennon without them than with them, so they must have used them as misdirection. The whole scene in the documentary about applying the prosthetics was part of the double bluff.

But let's return to that first mole photo. There is something else there I didn't see the first time:

There seems to be a scar on his neck. Is that important? Possibly.

If we go to John's bio, we find this:

That is from “Sean Remembers,” the postscript to John Lennon: the Life, by Philip Norman [p. 811].

The entire area of his Adam's apple looks scarred, and it appears John had major surgery after that car accident. Of course it looks much worse now that he is around 70. Are we supposed to believe Staycer also just happened to have a car accident and an injury in the same place?

The first pic is Lennon, the second Staycer. Check out the back of the hand. The pattern of the veins matches.

We don't have a photo of Staycer's open left hand, so we can't read the lines, but we still get a strong clue here. Go to the index finger. We have a match. You will say everyone's index finger is the same, but that's not even close to being true.

I didn't lead with this clue because, yes, it isn't as strong as some of the others. But it is still strong. The odds are extremely low that two guys' fingers would look this much alike. When we add it to all the other evidence, it acts as powerful supporting data.

And, although the thumbs are not in the same position in the two photos, they appear to match as well. The joints are the same length, the thumbnail is the same length, and the knuckles have the same conformation.

Here's one last thing that is very strange. I said that Staycer has had his teeth fixed, and you can see that in the interviews and in the shorts from the film. His front teeth are very even, and they look fixed. That was 2009.

But a few years earlier in around 2004, Staycer still had his old front teeth. Here's a screen capture from that earlier youtube video I linked to:

Staycer's right front tooth is funky—forward of the others, if nothing else. Well, John's right front tooth was also funky.

It looks like John may have chipped his right front tooth as a teenager, but only on the inside, toward the middle. It was filed straight across the bottom, but was lower on the outside—as you see in this picture from his 20's.

We have a definite match in the relative position of the first and second teeth. We can see that Staycer's first incisor is forward of his second. Lennon's is also.

As corroborating dental evidence, we may study this photo from the late 60's:

We can see that Lennon is missing his first molar on his right side. The biscuspids over there don't look too good either, being both brown and long. Not a good sign for someone who isn't quite thirty.

What about Staycer? He's missing his first bicuspid on the same side.

I found nothing that didn't match, which is also a huge clue. When you have two separate people, you should be able to prove one is not the other very quickly. You only have to find one definite difference—one that can't be explained away easily.

But every feature of Staycer is close enough to cause alarm, and many features are spooky exact matches.

The ears do match, except for the lobes. Staycer's lobes hang a bit while Lennon's don't. But since Staycer is actually Lennon at 63-73, we would expect the lobes to be hanging a bit.

It is known that ears grow in length (but not width) as we age, and the earlobes of men grow by as much as .22mm per year. That is a fact, not some wild theory I came up with on a lark. Just as women's breasts sag, men's earlobes sag.

The shape, size, position of the ear matches from the side as well as from the front. From the front, look how the right ear (your left) goes in in the middle. You will say that all ears do that, but they don't. Even Lennon's other ear doesn't. Only his right. Same with Staycer.

I will be told that ears can't change from attached to unattached. Lennon had attached ears as a young man, or so it seems from that one photo. But his ears were always only semi-attached, as we see more clearly from this photo:

So run the final odds. You don't have to be a mathematician to have figured out by now what is going on here. It's called the old double bluff. It's fairly brilliant, I have to admit: posing as your own impersonator.

Then, you can even make a film about John Lennon still being alive, put your own music in the film, appear as yourself in the film, but then say “just kidding” at the end.

If it is done right, the film can act as the perfect misdirection, seeming to open up the question to investigation, getting every one interested, but then selling the wrong conclusion. I assume this is what they hoped to do.

John wanted desperately to appear on film again, and this seemed the perfect way to do it.

If you watch the film, you find they debut four new Lennon songs in a short low-budget documentary, playing three of them back-to-back almost in full. The last three are filmed “in concert”, with the camera directly on John.

And although John is 68 in the film, he gets the 28 year old girl in the end. That was probably part of the deal, too. He could do all that, appear with his son, have a grand ole time, and then turn the screw at the end, telling the audience it was just a fantasy.

For a final laugh, we find that Mark Staycer entered the Next Best Thing look-alike contest on ABC in 2007. He got second. I guess the judges wanted the young John Lennon, not the old John Lennon. John Lennon impersonating himself got second to Trent Carlini as Elvis:

That's what a real impersonator looks like. At least 30 years too young, wig, massive facial surgery plus make-up. And still not one facial characteristic matches Elvis. Not the eyes, not the nose, not the mouth, not the face shape, not the ears, nothing.

Those are some other Lennon impersonators. How long does it take you to tell they aren't really Lennon? A couple of them are pretty good, since we at least get a long nose, but there is no question of them really being Lennon.

With them, we never have the weird feeling we get when looking at Staycer, or listening to him.