Posts Tagged ‘George Lucas’

In between our sessions of weeping this weekend, now that the U.S. has been eliminated from the World Cup, we caught “Being There” on TV, and were reminded, once again, that Hal Ashby was one of the great directors of the 20th century and, unfortunately, one who continues to be forgotten during discussions about the filmmaking renaissance of the 1970s.

Ashby was an editor (he handled cutting duties on movies like “The Cincinnati Kid,” “In the Heat of the Night” and the first “Thomas Crown Affair”) before making his directing debut with “The Landlord” in 1970. Over the next ten years, he directed six movies. They were, in order, “Harold and Maude,” “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo,” “Bound for Glory,” “Coming Home” and “Being There.” Pretty good run, right? Certainly up there with any other director’s resumé, we think.

We tend to think that his name doesn’t often come up for a few reasons: partly because he’s been dead for 22 years (he died of cancer in 1988), partly because his work fell off in the ‘80s due to his drug problems, and partly because he didn’t have a set visual style like, say, Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg, but what we think people forget is that there was a substance to his movies that we really admire and can’t really get enough of.

Every now and again, IFC shows the terrific documentary series, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” in which the films and filmmakers of the 1970s are examined and explored and those who are still around talk about their experiences and the movies they made. The episode about Ashby’s movies is a powerful one, not just because of how it deconstructs the movies themselves (Warren Beatty and Robert Towne talking about “Shampoo,” for instance, is pretty mind boggling), but also because of the picture it paints about who Ashby was, the way he shot his movies and the effect he had on the people who worked with him.

Three people in particular, all Hall of Famers, discuss the director on camera, and each says something pretty remarkable. Julie Christie, who co-starred in “Shampoo,” explains, “What I loved about him is that he focused on one thing that had been probably not been broached. Probably a taboo subject. With ‘Harold and Maude,’ it’s ageism. ‘Coming Home,’ it’s paraplegic sex, ‘Last Detail’ it was demystification of the military and ‘Being There’ was corporations choosing a simpleton to be president.”

Up next was Jon Voight, who won his Best Actor Oscar for his performance in “Coming Home.” “People loved Hal Ashby,” Voight says. “And there was a reason. He was non-judgmental. Never! Would never judge an actor. There’s a scene in ‘Coming Home’ and the camera’s supposed to be coming up close and I’m blowing the lines. And I said to Hal, ‘Gee, Hal, I’m so sorry,’ and he said, ‘What’s the difference? Look, we’re all here, having a good time, we’re all together, making a movie. Isn’t this nice? I don’t care if we stay here all afternoon. This is it!’ Wow.” And then he fought back tears, thinking about it.

Finally, Robert Towne, the writer of “The Last Detail” and co-writer of “Shampoo” (with Beatty), as well as “Chinatown,” which is in our all-time top five, shares our enthusiasm for “Being There,” calling it “one of my favorites” and going on to say of the main character, Chauncey Gardner, “He likes to watch. What was unspoken was, that was Hal.” And he fought back tears, too.

We’re not sure what there is to be done about getting Ashby’s name out there more, so that when people talk about the rise of Scorsese, Spielberg, Lucas, Coppola, Allen, Beatty and the rest, his name will be included, but every now and again we’ll do something like write this editorial to remind you that this kind of stuff is important, and is worth repeating.

Tags: 2010 World Cup, Academy Awards, Being There, Bound for Glory, Chinatown, Coming Home, Easy Riders Raging Bulls, Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Hal Ashby, Harold and Maude, IFC, In the Heat of the Night, Jon Voight, Julie Christie, Martin Scorsese, Oscars, Robert Towne, Shampoo, Steven Spielberg, The Cincinnati Kid, The Landlord, The Last Detail, The Thomas Crown Affair, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen
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