Hal Ashby - The Invisible Man

Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma, Scorsese, Lucas: all directors to come to prominence in the period of 1970s cinema known as New Hollywood. Despite some ups and downs (De Palma and Lucas now apparently existing entirely to make it seem as unlikely as possible that they ever actually made a good film) these men have remained at the forefront of the film conciousness to this day. Ask any person in the street to name a director and chances are they’ll name one of those men above. Why then does no one remember the name Hal Ashby? This is a man whose films collectively garnered 24 Academy Award nominations and 7 wins, a man who has worked with Jack Nicholson, Peter Sellers, Julie Christie, Jon Voight, Warren Beatty and... Goldie Hawn. Cult classics Harold and Maude and Being There (Sellers’ last film role – and without question the finest moment of his career) remain popular viewing to this day. They do, however, remain just that: cult classics, known only to those who do a little extra reading about their cinema. Ashby was admittedly not a man who ever cracked the box office to any real degree. His highest grossing hit, Shampoo, is not really a “Hal Ashby film”, heavily tampered and interfered with by the star power of Mr. Warren Beatty.

Even so, David Lynch is hardly a box-office draw and yet he's just about as famous as they come. What, then, is the reason for Ashby’s seeming exile from the industry's conciousness? Is it to do with his drug taking and eccentric behaviour? How can that be Hollywood’s excuse? Coppola’s Apocalypse Now nearly killed Martin Sheen, Scorsese was snorting coke off De Niro’s bonnet during the making of Taxi Driver, and Spielberg made the WWII shitfest that is 1941. Why then has Ashby become a forgotten father of the 1970s new wave? The answer is most likely in his indefinable directorial "style". Unlike Lynch's (no-less brilliant) near-homogenous adherence to the surreal, Ashby's genres range from the prototype-Wes Anderson, Harold and Maude, to the anti-war, existentialist, The Last Detail, to the broad gambling comedy, Lookin’ To Get Out. There is just no real, determinable “Ashby style”. The only running thread of a theme throughout his films is, rather predictably, that of the disenfranchised outsider looking in on a society that does not understand and makes little effort to do so.

Ashby’s later years are admittedly harder to defend. Increased drug use and bizarre personality traits – Ashby began to refuse to eat in the company of other people, instead choosing to exist solely on bowls of rice eaten on his own in editing suites – made him a real concern for studios. While making a documentary about the touring Rolling Stones, Ashby became slightly too involved in the rock star lifestyle and once overdosed before the band had even taken to the stage. It was during the editing of his next cinematic release, The Slugger’s Wife, that things began to take an even steeper downward trajectory. What was intended by the studio as a light-hearted romantic comedy, turned in Ashby’s hands into an avant-garde mood piece – not exactly the kind of thing to improve his box-office woes. With that, Ashby was cast out from the Hollywood studio system.

The heartbreak of his story is completed with Ashby’s attempts to reintegrate himself into the studio system. Shaving his legendary beard and taking to wearing blazers in an effort to convince executives that he was a trustworthy helmsman, Ashby was confined to what was then the auteur’s no man’s land: television. Having suffered years of poor health Ashby was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, dying on December 27^th 1988 at the age of 59.

Haly Ashby is a man who's work deserves so much more than to be swallowed under the weight of De Palma's shitstupid melodramas and Lucas' shitcynical rehashes. I urge you to seek out his work. Because of their variety, it's impossible to say if you'll like every one of Ashby's films. If you like Wes Anderson, you'll love Harold and Maude. If you like Forrest Gump or Rain Man, you'll love the infinitely less mawkish yet still compassionate take on mental illness in Being There. If you like 70s-style disenfranchisement and a good ol' fashioned Jack Nicholson breakdown, you'll love The Last Detail. If you like political intrigue mixed with hair-cutting technique, you'll love Shampoo. Please, for the sake of a wonderful director and a wonderful set of films, watch at least one. Then watch another.