The Hal Ashby Poll

hal ashby frustrates me. all of his films (save for some of the late ones) have stuff that is truly great--particularly in the performances and subtle mise en scene. but nearly all of them also have some really woeful script problems and/or just failures to successfully put across much of those scripts...

ranking for Me:

The Last Detail (far and away his best movie--one of the great examples of early 70s deflated naturalism, beautifully directed)
Being There
The Landlord
Lookin' to Get Out (directors cut)
Shampoo (this is also beautifully directed and entertaining but like e.g. nashville it's kind of smug and its aspirations to sociopolitical profundity are pretty hollow and have not dated well)
Bound for Glory (really flawed but parts of it are pretty extraordinary)
Harold and Maude
Eight Million Ways to Die
Coming Home (some beautiful stuff but a lot of it is pretty fucking hard to take)
The Slugger's Wife (this is pretty fucking awful by any measure)

haven't seen: Second Hand Hearts (terrible by reputation)

hal ashby is so awesome

The Landlord only available to stream on Netflix.

the landlord is p rad

You can get it as a MOD disc from amazon and the wb store. xpost

turned it off when it started to point towards the rich wife being encouraged to screw the moron in front of the dying rich guy

lol uh it doesn't exactly work out that way.

I love the pace of Being There, but given a lot of it's appeal is kind of in it's punchline at the end

i mean really i'd just keep last detail, being there, landlord, looking to get out, and the first half of bound for glory.

Has there ever been a satisfactory explanation about why Melinda Dillion plays two parts in Bound for Glory?

didn't care for Last Detail at all myself. But consider Harold & Maude, Being There, and Shampoo pretty unfuckwithable

"I am the motherfucking shore patrol, motherfucker!"

Last Detail's great.

harold and maude not winning this poll = a bunch of ILXors fronting.

(nb: i would've voted for being there)

last detail is amazing. one of the most depressing movies of the 1970s though. robert towne's script is a real wonder.

found the overall premise/setting unengaging, what can I say

chacun a son goat.

hmmm shakey u intrigue me to go back to it. but setting/premise unengaging was p much my problem with it

forgot the rising actors who show up in The Last Detail: Carol Kane, Michael Moriarty, Nancy Allen, Gilda Radner.

when it's working The Landlord is the movie he never topped. He achieves startling juxtapositions with his editing; it complements the ambivalent black/white relations. Even the decision to go Expressionistic with a few performances helps.

Aw shit, this was just on TCM and I forgot to PVR it.

saw The Landlord for the first time in 25 years, probably, in archival 35mm... Some of it is awkward and not sure how to fulfill its intentions, but it certainly has all the edge and more of its era. (I mean it even has Robert Klein in blackface.) That scene with Lee Grant and Pearl Bailey drinking wine (with ice) in PB's apartment is amazing.

Also Beau Bridges plays the lead's entitlement and arrogance w/out ever trying to endear himself to the audience.

scene with Lee Grant and Pearl Bailey drinking wine (with ice)

'...sit down and drink your wine before the ice cubes melt'

watched it on youtube over the weekend, after the Ganja and Hess thread brought it up I couldn't wait. I expected to like it but I loved it.

Haven't seen Being There in years but it's one of those rare movies that's much better than the book imo (along with Dr Zhivago).

The Landlord was a random Netflix watch and a very good surprise -- enjoyed it a lot and also enjoyed slightly gawking at the stuff that was edgy in a very particular and dated way.

also the little bits like the fierce hairdresser in the hyper-edited opening sequence... I overheard some 20somethings coming out of the film who probably hadn't seen much or any nouvelle vague style cutting in Hollywood movies from that era, and were kinda flummoxed.

geez, Diana Sands, I wonder if she's got any standout films besides this and Raisin in the Sun? She was all over Broadway (and Off-) for 15 years or so, doing The Owl and the Pussycat, Genet et al.

Watched The Last Detail for what I'm pretty sure was only the second time ever; I saw it on TV in the '70s, basically liked it, but never had any desire to see it again. I probably remembered the profanity, and reduced the film to just that. Which is dumb, it's Hal Ashby, so of course there's more than that. I especially like Quaid at the roller rink, his time with Carol Kane, and that slow pan in the park towards the end, accompanied by some really beautiful soundtrack music. Nicholson's pretty much perfect; I'd still go with Five Easy Pieces and Chinatown as his best performances, but the role felt definitive. I remembered Kane, but seeing Gilda Radner and Nancy Allen was a big surprise. (Clifton James is an actor where, every time I see him in a movie, it drives me up the wall who he is until I once again look up his name.) Otis Young and Luana Anders were very good.

Was the misspelling in thread title intentional?

the Biskind book on seventies Hollywood was devastating about Ashby's decline: drug addiction until cancer killed him.

― Gucci Mane hermeneuticist (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, September 10, 2010 6:16 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just finished the bio on ashby which expands on this, takes a p soft view & lotsa peripheral stuff abt only using weed, nothing harder regularly but it's hard to tell; def seems clear the studios thought he was an addict

interesting also that among the friends who scattered ashbys remains, was jeff bridges, and the wind blew them back in all of their faces a la big lebowski

Is there any reason to read the novel of Being There?

It's, uh, more graphic about certain things (cough cough gay scene). And it's only 120 or so pages long, so it's a quick read.

i remember it being great, 38 years ago

Just saw a clean-cut 20-something Ashby on an episode of Art Linkletter's "People Are Funny" (kind of a reality game show) on Decades. He was pulled from the audience to take the roll of a "Mr. X" who'd been anonymously wooing this woman. They sent him out to introduce himself and get a date with her. He succeeded and won a trip to Las Vegas (and the woman won a TV).

Just now noticed that there's a documentary about him opening up here in a couple of weeks.

http://boxoffice.hotdocs.ca/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=80975~fff311b7-cdad-4e14-9ae4-a9905e1b9cb0&epguid=a1a41036-cbe1-4f35-bc34-1ed13d4bd525&

Cool, thanks for the heads up.

Gave one of my brothers the gift of Ashby for xmas (Being There, The Last Detail, and Bound for Glory on blu).

I still have never seen Bound for Glory. It might be the most famous (or at least highly regarded) mainstream American film of the '70s I haven't seen. I always wanted to see it in a theatre for the first time, but it never plays.

As my other brother noted, you don't really even need to know/care much about Woody Guthrie going in to get something out of it. I guess it would make it onto my very short list of solid biopics.

The documentary reinforced the picture I got of him from some other documentary I saw on American film in the '70s (I don't think it was the Biskind film but a different one): revered by everyone who worked for him, typically (for the era) difficult if he was the one working for you. Made me want to see all the films again, and I guess that's what you hope for.

Shampoo is so sad... and what amplifies that is the lack of a score, despite the "original music by Paul Simon" credit at the beginning, all or nearly all of the music in the movie is diegetic... opening with "Wouldn't It Be Nice" playing verrrrrrrry quietly from a radio through the Sgt. Peppers songs at the party... there's so much silence, dead air, and space... the setting & sociopolitical commentary are broad enough that they don't bog down the essential, universal story of people thinking they know what they want, but ultimately failing or missing out by the skin of their teeth. it's all near misses and elisions, and the title is perfect because despite following a hairdresser and dozens upon dozens of shots of people getting their hair cut and done, I don't think there's a single shot of actual shampoo or shampooed hair.

Drove down twice this past week to watch Shampoo on a big screen. First time, the online listing was set for the wrong day--I went down on a Friday, but the screening was Monday/Tuesday. Tried again Monday, driving though a ridiculous snowstorm; got there in time, theatre closed. Almost tried again yesterday, but I checked first, and they'd actually cancelled both screenings last week (announced on Facebook, but without updating the schedule on their website) even before the storm.

So I stayed in and watched the DVD.

Shampoo is really something, I guess Warden lost the Oscar cuz he was a little too close for comfort for older male AMPAS members.

If he'd been alive Warden could've played Biden in 2009.

joe doesn't have a bad toupee

It has its unrealized bits, but I'd vote forThe Landlord today.

I'm starting to compile a working list of movie scenes where men throw temper tantrums (usually ending with their better judgement reasserting itself):

1. Beatty in Shampoo after being rejected by the bank (picks up his jacket at the end)
2. Hackman in The Conversation after getting paid (picks up the briefcase filled with money in the end)
3. Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces after walking out on Karen Black (invites her along in the end)
4. Macy in Fargo scraping his windshield (regroups, buys his daughter's way into Harvard in the end)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9s5f_kJsN7c

5. Clooney in Out of Sight after Albert Brooks condescends to him when they meet after they complete their sentences.

That's right--ends with a freeze-frame, I think.

However long that list gets, it'll never be long enough.

I think the rich newspaperman in Citizen Kane throws a tantrum at one point; Brando has a mini-tantrum at the dinner table in A Streetcar Named Desire.

There's a good half-hour discussion on the Shampoo Criterion between Frank Rich and Mark Harris, covering Beatty going "meta" playing a lothario and the shock of Julie Christie saying "I want to suck his cock," both very rare ploys at the time. Also Beatty says in a late '90s interview that he found his character "pathetic," which the film bears out.

I can't imagine Shakey was making any sort of obscure joke when he started this thread, so I'll fix the title.

Shampoo is only 104 minutes yet drags in places, especially a montage in the first forty minutes of Jack Warden approaching the house where Beatty's George is with Julie Christie; Ashby cuts back and forth between them so often that I go, "I get it." And it's impossible for a Gen X-er like me to believe women or men ever thought Warren Beatty was sexy. Not one fingernail.

Yet it's still quite something; its live-and-let-live esprit is foreign to American films.

Shampoo really feels, to me, like one of those "you had to be there" 70s movies, like M*A*S*H*, Zabriskie Point or Ashby's own The Landlord. I didn't dislike it; I just didn't get much out of it beyond a few strong performances and a good period soundtrack (I appreciated them going with "Manic Depression," my fave Hendrix song, over any of the more obvious choices). And yes, selecting today to watch it was a conscious choice on my part.

I'd say yeah, but it's definitely one of those films where if you're not down with the opening sequence, DO NOT PROCEED.

I gave it a very belated try maybe 20 years ago and didn't care for it that much. I liked the soundtrack, but it wasn't enough for me to connect with anything else.

OTM

Although for me the only time I saw it was as an undergrad. I had already hated Ruth Gordon’s performance in MY BODYGUARD and recall some funny but bad taste article in National Lampoon about her. Did like her in ROSEMARY’S BABY and did enjoy her husband’s memoir that I read.

Wonder how I would feel if I ever got around to WHERE’S POPPA?

Pardon me for dusting off an old chestnut, but: DO YOU PEOPLE HATE FUN?

Ha. Yes, I do.

If you enjoy The Landlord, the films and novels of screenwriter Bill Gunn are a must. Stop (1970) is amazing

I love 8 Million Ways to Die so much. “See how my pussy hair glows in the moonlight?” That Malibu tram shootout is glorious

The 2018 documentary is hagiographic but nicely detailed.

Disappointing how it has nothing from Jake’s Journey, his pilot with Graham Chapman. I’m surprised it hasn’t made its way to back channels yet

i like harold and maude but that movie has ALOT to answer for, basically the beat happening of movies

Bwahahaha

I think gave The Last Detail and Being There some points in that poll a couple of years ago with ~100 selections per ballot, so the results up top are pleasing. (Though BT is one of those alleged 'favourites' I may never have even revisited since youth, whereas I reach for my olde TLD DVD uncharacteristically frequently.)

I shall take this thread as my cue to seek The Landlord methinks...