ATLRetro

by Brooke Sonenreich
Contributing Writer

HAL (2018); Dir. Amy Scott; Starring Hal Ashby, Allison Anders, Judd Apatow, Rosanna Arquette; Opens Friday, Oct. 5 at the Landmark’s Midtown Art Cinema; Trailer here.

In this vivacious documentary, director Amy Scott follows the life and times of Hollywood director Hal Ashby. With archived footage, interviews, audio and once forgotten letters, Scott fills in the missing pieces to a life and career filmgoers might have overlooked.

HAL’s a film that makes you want to return to all of Ashby’s work, even if it’s to catch what you missed. He’s the pot-smoking, neurotic genius behind films like HAROLD AND MAUDE (1971), THE LAST DETAIL (1973), SHAMPOO (1975), COMING HOME (1978), BEING THERE (1979) and more.

‘Courtesy of Sundance Institute.’

Ashby’s journey through Hollywood is as unique as he is. He started off as a copier in large L.A. studios, but joined the cutting room soon after to become an editor to Norman Jewison. By 1967 he had edited Jewison’s IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967), a movie about a black police detective who is assigned to investigate a murder in the south. In times when it wasn’t popular, Ashby continued tackling the topic of racism throughout his career.

Scott does a fantastic job at editing herself, lining up interviews with relevant pieces of dialogue from Ashby’s most beloved films. While attending to Ashby’s most loved and least liked films, HAL follows the stories of Ashby’s love life, his broken home, his estranged daughter, and his dearest friends and actors. It’s an inspiring film that should not be missed.

By Dean Treadway
Contributing Blogger

SHAMPOO (1975); Dir: Hal Ashby; Screenplay by Robert Towne and Warren Beatty; Starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Goldie Hawn, Carrie Fisher; Thurs. July 21; Newly restored 35 mm print; 7:30 p.m.; Cinefest at Georgia State University. Trailer here.

Released in 1975, Hal Ashby’s SHAMPOO very well may rank as the great director’s most cynical film. Ashby had previously given us THE LANDLORD, HAROLD AND MAUDE and THE LAST DETAIL, and would go on to deliver BOUND FOR GLORY, COMING HOME and BEING THERE before beginning a cocaine-fueled downward 1980s slump that would end in his untimely death in 1988 at age 59. It’s been years since I’ve revisited SHAMPOO because it strikes me as a truthful, mildly funny but ugly movie. It’s hard to watch, but extremely worthwhile. I know I’ll be at Cinefest on Thursday, July 21 at 7:30 pm to check out what is probably the first 35mm screening of Ashby’s film since the old days of the Rhodes and the Silver Screen, two long-gone Atlanta repertory theaters that closed their doors in the mid-1980s. We’re lucky to have a venue like Cinefest, which seems to be cultivating a desire to expand Atlanta’s repertory movie options these days.

Star Warren Beatty also acted as producer and co-writer, along with CHINATOWN and LAST DETAIL scribe Robert Towne. As such, he labored for almost a decade to get the film made. When it finally reached screens, it arrived like a bombshell designed to blow apart the sexually revolutionary Me Decade and everything connected to it. Set in 1968, on the eve of Richard Nixon’s election to the White House (which held particular resonance to 1975 viewers, who were still reeling from the Watergate debacle that drummed Nixon out of office), SHAMPOO tells the story of a philandering self-obsessed hairdresser named George Roundy (Beatty). The beautifier and sexual partner of choice for many of his clients, George is sick of life as a mere employee at a Beverly Hills salon. And so he finally steps up to realize his ambition of opening his own hairdressing business. But he’s broke and the banks won’t lend to such a flighty guy. So he sets his sights on a private investor, an equally self-absorbed, aging millionaire named Lester Karpf (played by Jack Warden, who tellingly has the worst hairstyle in the whole film).

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