HAL (2018)

Directed by Amy Scott



Where & When: Nuart Theatre, West Los Angeles, CA. September 19, 2018 7:30 PM



The name Hal Ashby may not mean much to many people today but if you’ve seen "Shampoo", "Harold and Maude", "The Last Detail" or "Being There", then you are more familiar with him than you might think. This brilliant uncompromising filmmaker is the subject of "Hal", a documentary by Amy Scott, which examines his part in the New Hollywood revolution of the 1970’s, an era that completely overhauled the types of American movies that were being made.

These young, experimental filmmakers (like Scorsese, Malick, Coppola and DePalma to name just a few) abandoned the glossy, artificial style that had best defined Hollywood films, shifting towards gritty realism, location shooting and oblique narrative structures to tell their stories. Many of these films involved adult themes that featured drug use, course language, graphic violence and nudity. The work of Mr. Ashby pushed the limits of cinema, focusing on challenging and controversial subject-matter like race relations, intergenerational romance, sexual politics and the struggles of Vietnam War veterans, and while most of these were dark comedies, they still concerned many of the studios he worked with. But audiences responded to his films, sometimes quite favorably, other times with indifference, and they have remained timely and have greatly influenced the next generation of filmmakers.

Born in Utah and raised in a Mormon household, Ashby's childhood was filled with difficult emotional trauma and he did not embrace the religion. After making his way to Los Angeles not long after the demise of his first marriage, he quickly takes to the hippie scene of the time. Ashby stumbled in to Hollywood film editing, assisting while learning the craft until he edited his first feature on his own, the 1965 comedy, "The Loved One".

He met Norman Jewison, a rising director at the time, and they bonded, becoming life-long friends. He hired Ashby to edit his 1966 film, "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming" and went on to receive his first Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing. These buddies teamed up again for "In The Heat of The Night", a drama about a black police detective (played by Sidney Poitier) who travels to a small Mississippi town to investigate a murder. The film became a box-office smash and went on to win five Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Film Editing for Ashby.

Feeling like he was more than ready, Jewison encouraged Ashby to get behind the camera. His debut feature was "The Landlord", an offbeat comedy about racial tension due to gentrification in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The film was not a major success but received plenty of critical acclaim and earned co-star, Lee Grant an Oscar nomination. This was an auspicious start for Ashby and helped emboldened him as a filmmaker.

Ms Scott has not only assembled some of the people who worked with Mr Ashby (which includes Mr. Jewison, Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Jeff and Beau Bridges and Ms Grant, who won an Oscar for her role in "Shampoo") to share their experiences but she has a few modern filmmakers with indie roots like David O. Russell, Lisa Cholodenko, Allison Anders and Alexander Payne to discuss how his films helped shape and influence their own work.

Since his method of creating cinema was all consuming for Ashby that meant that the people in his personal life suffered in the process. He was married five times and had many girlfriends in between yet his rascally charm made them enjoy their time with him until they realized that his true and complete devotion was to his films.

Much of his film output by the 1980’s became more unfocused and far less memorable. Ashby would shoot an excessive amount of footage and relied heavily on improv. Some say that his increased drug usage was the cause while others dismissed this idea and attributed his behavior to his resistance to the increased studio interference of his creative vision.

Ashby was supposed to direct “Tootsie” (and we see early test footage with Dustin Hoffman) but because he refused to complete post-production on "Lookin' To Get Out" after the studio took control of the 1982 film, he was taken off the project. It’s curious to imagine what Ashby’s version of "Tootsie" would have ended up like yet I’m certain this comedy about a difficult male actor pretending to be a woman to get work would not have not been as safe and feel-good under his direction (with no offense to the film's ultimate director, Sydney Pollack).

Candid and insightful, "Hal" brings in to focus a ballsy artist who had something to say with his films and was unafraid to make his provocative ideas known. Mr. Ashby's work may have had themes that were boldly political and socially conscious yet he also managed to entertain. He was the type of maverick filmmaker that really doesn't exist anymore and that is truly a shame.