On the evening of Dec. 8, 1980, WABC-TV producer Alan Weiss was laid up on a gurney at Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hospital, having just been knocked off his motorcycle by a taxi. As he waited for treatment, Weiss peered into the next room to see a group of doctors feverishly working on a shooting victim — one even had his hands inside the patient’s chest cavity. That shooting victim was John Lennon.
The events of that night, and Weiss’ attempt to be the first to break the news of the former Beatle’s murder, are depicted in the new movie “The Lennon Report,” opening Friday. Although it’s a dramatization, Weiss insists it’s a largely factual depiction.
“Truth is the first casualty in moviemaking, but it’s surprisingly accurate,” Weiss, now 65 and running a production company, tells The Post. “I felt like I was almost watching a documentary.”
The movie follows the injured Weiss as he struggles to confirm his hospital neighbor is definitely Lennon. “I heard police officers mention Lennon’s name, but I was foggy from my accident and couldn’t be sure.”
Weiss called his assignment desk at Channel 7 “Eyewitness News,” which confirmed there had been a shooting reported at the Dakota, where Lennon lived.
After being put in his own separate room, Weiss recalls hearing the screams of Yoko Ono before a doctor finally arrived to check out his injuries. She refused to divulge Lennon’s state, so Weiss cannily employed a different line of questioning.
“I asked her, ‘If someone was brought in with gunshots to the chest, is it a safe assumption that if the person was still alive, that you would still need to be in attendance?’ She said, ‘Yes.’ So that was a confirmation.”
Thanks to Weiss’ information, Howard Cosell, announcing the Dolphins-Patriots game on ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” interrupted his commentary to break the news live. But Weiss didn’t know Ono had requested the hospital delay making a statement so she could tell their then-5-year-old son, Sean. “I didn’t realize that, so I felt badly if my actions caused the family any more hurt or pain.”
Informed that Sean told Rolling Stone in a 1998 interview that he didn’t learn of his father’s death till his mother told him a few days later, Weiss, who had never heard that, was relieved.
“Outside of the death of a wonderful human being,” he says, “that is a burden I’ve carried for these 36 years. I’ll sleep better, knowing that.”
“The Lennon Report” is screening at Cinema Village.