Download or read book Being Hal Ashby written by Nick Dawson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 665 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the director behind Harold and Maude, Being There, and other quirky classics: “A superb biography of this troubled, talented man.” —Tucson Citizen Hal Ashby set the standard for subsequent independent filmmakers by crafting unique, thoughtful, and challenging films that continue to influence new generations of directors. Initially finding success as an editor, Ashby won an Academy Award for editing 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, and translated his skills into a career as one of the quintessential directors of 1970s. Perhaps best remembered for the enduring cult classic Harold and Maude, Ashby quickly became known for melding quirky comedy and intense drama with performances from A-list actors such as Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail, Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn in Shampoo, Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in Coming Home, and Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine in Being There. But Ashby’s personal life was difficult. After enduring his parents’ divorce, his father’s suicide, and his own failed marriage all before the age of nineteen, he became notorious for his drug abuse, which contributed to the decline of his career near the end of his life. Ashby always operated outside Hollywood’s conventions, and though his output was tragically limited, the quality of his films continues to inspire modern directors as varied and talented as Judd Apatow and Wes Anderson, both of whom acknowledge Ashby as a primary influence. In Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel, the first full-length biography of the maverick filmmaker, Nick Dawson masterfully tells the turbulent story of Ashby’s life and career.
Download or read book Being Hal Ashby written by Nick Dawson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-04-17 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hal Ashby (1929–1988) was always an outsider, and as a director he brought an outsider's perspective to Hollywood cinema. After moving to California from a Mormon household in Utah, he created eccentric films that reflected the uncertain social climate of the 1970s. Whether it is his enduring cult classic Harold and Maude (1971) or the iconic Being There (1979), Ashby's artistry is unmistakable. His skill for blending intense drama with off-kilter comedy attracted A-list actors and elicited powerful performances from Jack Nicholson in The Last Detail (1973), Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in Shampoo (1975), and Jon Voight and Jane Fonda in Coming Home (1979). Yet the man behind these films is still something of a mystery. In Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel, author Nick Dawson for the first time tells the story of a man whose thoughtful and challenging body of work continues to influence modern filmmakers and whose life was as dramatic and unconventional as his films. Ashby began his career as an editor, and it did not take long for his talents to be recognized. He won an Academy Award in 1967 for editing In the Heat of the Night and leveraged his success as an editor to pursue his true passion: directing. Crafting seminal films that steered clear of mainstream conventions yet attracted both popular and critical praise, Ashby became one of the quintessential directors of the 1970s New Hollywood movement. No matter how much success Ashby achieved, he was never able to escape the ghosts of his troubled childhood. The divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, and his own marriage and divorce—all before the age of nineteen—led to a lifelong struggle with drugs for which he became infamous in Hollywood. And yet, contrary to mythology, it was not Ashby's drug abuse that destroyed his career but a fundamental mismatch between the director and the stifling climate of 1980s studio filmmaking. Although his name may not be recognized by many of today's filmgoers, Hal Ashby is certainly familiar to filmmakers. Despite his untimely death in 1988, his legacy of innovation and individuality continues to influence a generation of independent directors, including Wes Anderson, Sean Penn, and the Coen brothers, who place substance and style above the pursuit of box-office success. In this groundbreaking and exhaustively researched biography, Nick Dawson draws on firsthand interviews and personal papers from Ashby's estate to offer an intimate look at the tumultuous life of an artist unwilling to conform or compromise.
Download or read book The Films of Hal Ashby written by Christopher Beach and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the films and filmmaking career of director Hal Ashby, placing his work in the cultural context of filmmaking in the 1970s. Hal Ashby directed eleven feature films over the course of his career and was an important figure in the Hollywood Renaissance of the late 1960s and 1970s. Though he was a member of the same generation of filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Robert Altman, Ashby has received comparatively little critical or scholarly validation for his work. Author Christopher Beach argues that despite his lower profile, Ashby was an exceptionally versatile and unusually creative director. Beach focuses primarily on Ashby's first seven films—The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There—to analyze Ashby's contributions to filmmaking culture in the 1970s. The first two chapters of this volume provide an overview of Ashby's filmmaking career, as Beach makes the case for Ashby's status as an auteur and provides a biographical survey of Ashby's most productive and successful decade, the 1970s. In the following chapters, Beach analyzes groups of films to uncover important thematic concerns in Ashby's work, including the treatment of a young male protagonist in The Landlord and Harold and Maude, the representation of the U.S. military in The Last Detail and Coming Home, and the role of television and mass media in Shampoo and Being There. Beach also examines the crucial role of the musical score in Ashby's films, as well as the rapid decline of the director's career after Being There. The Films of Hal Ashby is based on Beach's extensive use of unpublished archival materials, as well as a number of interviews with actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, and others involved in the making of Ashby's films. This volume will interest film and television scholars, as well as readers interested in filmmakers of the 1970s.
Download or read book Hal Ashby written by Hal Ashby and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collected interviews with the director who is sometimes called the "lost genius of the New Hollywood generation" for creating such films as Harold and Maude, Being There, Shampoo, and Coming Home
Download or read book Hal Ashby and the Making of Harold and Maude written by James A. Davidson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-02-11 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original script was sold to a major Hollywood studio virtually overnight; the screenwriter was working as a pool boy and driver for the producer; the director was considered an "acid freak" by the studio heads; the star was a 74-year-old actress who didn't know how to drive a car. The film flopped upon release but later became one of the great cult successes of all time. This is the fascinating, never before told story of the making of Harold and Maude, shot guerrilla-style in the San Francisco Bay Area by a crew of "New Hollywood" filmmakers in the winter of 1971.
Download or read book The Films of Hal Ashby written by Christopher Beach and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Analyzes the films and filmmaking career of director Hal Ashby, placing his work in the cultural context of filmmaking in the 1970s. Hal Ashby directed eleven feature films over the course of his career and was an important figure in the Hollywood Renaissance of the late 1960s and 1970s. Though he was a member of the same generation of filmmakers as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Robert Altman, Ashby has received comparatively little critical or scholarly validation for his work. Author Christopher Beach argues that despite his lower profile, Ashby was an exceptionally versatile and unusually creative director. Beach focuses primarily on Ashby's first seven films--The Landlord, Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There--to analyze Ashby's contributions to filmmaking culture in the 1970s. The first two chapters of this volume provide an overview of Ashby's filmmaking career, as Beach makes the case for Ashby's status as an auteur and provides a biographical survey of Ashby's most productive and successful decade, the 1970s. In the following chapters, Beach analyzes groups of films to uncover important thematic concerns in Ashby's work, including the treatment of a young male protagonist in The Landlord and Harold and Maude, the representation of the U.S. military in The Last Detail and Coming Home, and the role of television and mass media in Shampoo and Being There. Beach also examines the crucial role of the musical score in Ashby's films, as well as the rapid decline of the director's career after Being There. The Films of Hal Ashby is based on Beach's extensive use of unpublished archival materials, as well as a number of interviews with actors, directors, producers, cinematographers, and others involved in the making of Ashby's films. This volume will interest film and television scholars, as well as readers interested in filmmakers of the 1970s.
Download or read book Authoring Hal Ashby written by Aaron Hunter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casting fresh light on New Hollywood – one of American cinema's most fertile eras – Authoring Hal Ashby is the first sustained argument that, rather than a period dominated by genius auteurs, New Hollywood was an era of intense collaboration producing films of multiple-authorship. Centering its discussion on the films and filmmaking practice of director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There), Hunter's work demonstrates how the auteur paradigm has served not only to diminish several key films and filmmakers of the era, but also to underestimate and undervalue the key contributions to the era's films of cinematographers, editors, writers and other creative crew members. Placing Ashby's films and career within the historical context of his era to show how he actively resisted the auteur label, the author demonstrates how this resistance led to Ashby's marginalization by film executives of his time and within subsequent film scholarship. Through rigorous analysis of several films, Hunter moves on to demonstrate Ashby's own signature authorial contributions to his films and provides thorough and convincing demonstrations of the authorial contributions made by several of Ashby's key collaborators. Building on emerging scholarship on multiple-authorship, Authoring Hal Ashby lays out a creative new approach to understanding one of Hollywood cinema's most exciting eras and one of its most vital filmmakers.
Download or read book Authoring Hal Ashby written by Aaron Hunter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2016-08-25 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Casting fresh light on New Hollywood – one of American cinema's most fertile eras – Authoring Hal Ashby is the first sustained argument that, rather than a period dominated by genius auteurs, New Hollywood was an era of intense collaboration producing films of multiple-authorship. Centering its discussion on the films and filmmaking practice of director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There), Hunter's work demonstrates how the auteur paradigm has served not only to diminish several key films and filmmakers of the era, but also to underestimate and undervalue the key contributions to the era's films of cinematographers, editors, writers and other creative crew members. Placing Ashby's films and career within the historical context of his era to show how he actively resisted the auteur label, the author demonstrates how this resistance led to Ashby's marginalization by film executives of his time and within subsequent film scholarship. Through rigorous analysis of several films, Hunter moves on to demonstrate Ashby's own signature authorial contributions to his films and provides thorough and convincing demonstrations of the authorial contributions made by several of Ashby's key collaborators. Building on emerging scholarship on multiple-authorship, Authoring Hal Ashby lays out a creative new approach to understanding one of Hollywood cinema's most exciting eras and one of its most vital filmmakers.
Download or read book Making Rent in Bed Stuy written by Brandon Harris and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-06-06 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young African American millennial filmmaker’s funny, sometimes painful, true-life coming-of-age story of trying to make it in New York City—a chronicle of poverty and wealth, creativity and commerce, struggle and insecurity, and the economic and cultural forces intertwined with "the serious, life-threatening process" of gentrification. Making Rent in Bed-Stuy explores the history and sociocultural importance of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn’s largest historically black community, through the lens of a coming-of-age young American negro artist living at the dawn of an era in which urban class warfare is politely referred to as gentrification. Bookended by accounts of two different breakups, from a roommate and a lover, both who come from the white American elite, the book oscillates between chapters of urban bildungsroman and a historical examination of some of Bed-Stuy’s most salient aesthetic and political legacies. Filled with personal stories and a vibrant cast of iconoclastic characters— friends and acquaintances such as Spike Lee; Lena Dunham; and Paul MacCleod, who made a living charging $5 for a tour of his extensive Elvis collection—Making Rent in Bed-Stuy poignantly captures what happens when youthful idealism clashes head-on with adult reality. Melding in-depth reportage and personal narrative that investigates the disappointments and ironies of the Obama era, the book describes Brandon Harris’s radicalization, and the things he lost, and gained, along the way.
Download or read book Hawkline Monster written by Richard Brautigan and published by Amereon Limited. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Gothic WesternAn imaginative novel about a mansion, a monster and a magic child
Download or read book Easy Riders Raging Bulls written by Peter Biskind and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-12-13 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1969, a low-budget biker movie, Easy Rider, shocked Hollywood with its stunning success. An unabashed celebration of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll (onscreen and off), Easy Rider heralded a heady decade in which a rebellious wave of talented young filmmakers invigorated the movie industry. In Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Peter Biskind takes us on the wild ride that was Hollywood in the '70s, an era that produced such modern classics as The Godfather, Chinatown, Shampoo, Nashville, Taxi Driver, and Jaws. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls vividly chronicles the exuberance and excess of the times: the startling success of Easy Rider and the equally alarming circumstances under which it was made, with drugs, booze, and violent rivalry between costars Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda dominating the set; how a small production company named BBS became the guiding spirit of the youth rebellion in Hollywood and how, along the way, some of its executives helped smuggle Huey Newton out of the country; how director Hal Ashby was busted for drugs and thrown in jail in Toronto; why Martin Scorsese attended the Academy Awards with an FBI escort when Taxi Driver was nominated; how George Lucas, gripped by anxiety, compulsively cut off his own hair while writing Star Wars, how a modest house on Nicholas Beach occupied by actresses Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt became the unofficial headquarters for the New Hollywood; how Billy Friedkin tried to humiliate Paramount boss Barry Diller; and how screenwriter/director Paul Schrader played Russian roulette in his hot tub. It was a time when an "anything goes" experimentation prevailed both on the screen and off. After the success of Easy Rider, young film-school graduates suddenly found themselves in demand, and directors such as Francis Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich, George Lucas, and Martin Scorsese became powerful figures. Even the new generation of film stars -- Nicholson, De Niro, Hoffman, Pacino, and Dunaway -- seemed a breed apart from the traditional Hollywood actors. Ironically, the renaissance would come to an end with Jaws and Star Wars, hugely successful films that would create a blockbuster mentality and crush innovation. Based on hundreds of interviews with the directors themselves, producers, stars, agents, writers, studio executives, spouses, and ex-spouses, this is the full, candid story of Hollywood's last golden age. Never before have so many celebrities talked so frankly about one another and about the drugs, sex, and money that made so many of them crash and burn. By turns hilarious and shocking, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls is the ultimate behind-the-scenes account of Hollywood at work and play.
Download or read book The Last Great American Picture Show written by Alexander Horwath and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This publication is a major evaluation of the 1970s American cinema, including cult film directors such as Bogdanovich Altman and Peckinpah.
Download or read book Harold and Maude written by Colin Higgins and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nineteen-year-old Harold Chasen is obsessed with death. He fakes suicides to shock his self-obsessed mother, drives a hearse, and attends funerals of complete strangers. Seventy-nine-year-old Maude Chardin, on the other hand, adores life. She liberates trees from city sidewalks and transplants them to the forest, paints smiles on the faces of church statues, and "borrows" cars to remind their owners that life is fleeting—here today, gone tomorrow! A chance meeting between the two turns into a madcap, whirlwind romance, and Harold learns that life is worth living, and how to play the banjo. Harold and Maude started as Colin Higgins's master's thesis at UCLA Film School. He was working as a pool boy when Paramount purchased the script. The 1971 film, directed by Hal Ashby, bombed. But then this quirky, dark comedy began being shown on college campuses and at midnight-movie theaters, and it gained a loyal cult following. In 1997 it was selected for inclusion on the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress. This novelization was published shortly after the film's release, but has been out of print for more than 30 years. Even fans who have seen the movie dozens of times will find this companion valuable, as it gives fresh elements to watch for and answers many of the film's unresolved questions. Colin Higgins was a screenwriter, director, and producer of films that included Harold and Maude, Silver Streak, 9 to 5, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. He died in 1988.
Download or read book Always Crashing in the Same Car On Art Crisis and Los Angeles California written by Matthew Specktor and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-07-27 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Best Book of the Year at The Atlantic Los Angeles Times Bestseller "[An] absorbing and revealing book. . . . nestling in the fruitful terrain between memoir and criticism." —Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage Blending memoir and cultural criticism, Matthew Specktor explores family legacy, the lives of artists, and a city that embodies both dreams and disillusionment. In 2006, Matthew Specktor moved into a crumbling Los Angeles apartment opposite the one in which F. Scott Fitzgerald spent the last moments of his life. Fitz had been Specktor’s first literary idol, someone whose own passage through Hollywood had, allegedly, broken him. Freshly divorced, professionally flailing, and reeling from his mother’s cancer diagnosis, Specktor was feeling unmoored. But rather than giving in or “cracking up,” he embarked on an obsessive journey to make sense of the mythologies of “success” and “failure” that haunt the artist’s life and the American imagination. Part memoir, part cultural history, part portrait of place, Always Crashing in the Same Car explores Hollywood through a certain kind of collapse. It’s a vibrant and intimate inspection of failure told through the lives of iconic, if under-sung, artists—Carole Eastman, Eleanor Perry, Warren Zevon, Tuesday Weld, and Hal Ashby, among others—and the author’s own family history. Through this constellation of Hollywood figures, he unearths a fascinating alternate history of the city that raised him and explores the ways in which curtailed ambition, insufficiency, and loss shape all our lives. At once deeply personal and broadly erudite, it is a story of an art form (the movies), a city (Los Angeles), and one person’s attempt to create meaning out of both. Above all, Specktor creates a moving search for optimism alongside the inevitability of failure and reveals the still-resonant power of art to help us navigate the beautiful ruins that await us all.
Download or read book Soul Searching written by Christopher Sieving and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The sixties were a tremendously important time of transition for both civil rights activism and the U.S. film industry. Soul Searching examines a subject that, despite its significance to African American film history, has gone largely unexplored until now. By revisiting films produced between the march on Washington in 1963 and the dawn of the “blaxploitation” movie cycle in 1970, Christopher Sieving reveals how race relations influenced black-themed cinema before it was recognized as commercially viable by the major studios. The films that are central to this book—Gone Are the Days (1963), The Cool World (1964), The Confessions of Nat Turner (never produced), Uptight (1968), and The Landlord (1970)—are all ripe for reevaluation and newfound appreciation. Soul Searching is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics and cultural movements of the 1960s, cinematic trends like blaxploitation and the American “indie film” explosion, or black experience and its many facets. Ebook Edition Note: All images have been redacted.
Download or read book Glorious Birds written by Heidi Greco and published by . This book was released on 2021-03-15 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literary Nonfiction. Film. Cinematic film, the art form that came into its own in the 20th Century, is not only familiar to all of us, but is likely the form that lodges most clearly in memory. Like music--and the music employed in a film--scenes come back, often carrying emotion as well as remembrance. One such film is Harold and Maude, the 1971 production that brought Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon to what are possibly their most memorable roles, and the film that locked so many Cat Stevens songs in mind. A cockeyed love story that stretches the definition of a May/December romance, it reveals the fact that love can indeed be blind to matters of age or appearance. This book takes us back half a century to when this one-of-a-kind film was released--a time with its own kind of turmoil, but a time as well of a different kind of innocence--one worth exploring again. Fifty years, traditionally a golden anniversary, is surely an appropriate time to celebrate.
Download or read book Being There and the Evolution of a Screenplay written by Aaron Hunter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2022-08-25 with total page 489 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Being There and the Evolution of a Screenplay provides an insightful look at the drafting of one of Hollywood history's greatest scripts. Being There (1979) is generally considered the final film in Hal Ashby's triumphant 1970s career, which included the likes of Harold and Maude (1971) and Shampoo (1975). The film also showcases Peter Sellers's last great performance. In 2005, the Writers Guild of America included Being There on its list of 101 Best Scripts. Being There and the Evolution of a Screenplay features three versions of the script: an early draft by Jerzy Kosinski, based on his 1970 novel; a second by long-time Ashby collaborator and Oscar-winner Robert C. Jones, which makes substantial changes to Kosinki's; and a final draft written by Jones with Ashby's assistance, which makes further structural and narrative changes. Additionally, the book features facsimile pages from one of Kosinski's copy of the scripts that include handwritten notes, providing readers with valuable insight into the redrafting process. For each version, Ashby scholar Aaron Hunter adds perceptive analysis of the script's development, the relationships of the writers who worked on it, and key studio and production details. This is both a presentation of the script of Being There, and a record of the process of crafting that script – a text that will be of interest to film fans and scholars as well as writers and teachers of screenwriting. Evolution of a Screenplay is the first book of its kind to so amply demonstrate the creative development of a Hollywood script.
