The 1970s was a watershed decade for young directors that would come to define the artistic medium for the next forty years. Whether one is looking at the “New Hollywood” crop (Coppola, Spielberg, Scorsese, Lucas), or the auteurs (Altman, Allen, Lumet, Friedkin), it’s hard to overstate just how profound a shift took place at this time. One director has arguably overshadowed them all, however, both via his output during this period and in the influence he cast upon a generation of filmmakers to follow.
This is the case that director Amy Scott makes for Hal Ashby, anyway, and her documentary “Hal” pulls out all the stops to try and sell its audience on this notion (and largely succeeds). An Oscar-winning editor, and later the director of such stone-cold classics as “Harold and Maude,” “Shampoo,” “The Last Detail,” “Coming Home,” and “Being There,” Ashby’s work is often cited as the progenitor of the cinematic hipster aesthetic. His characters were often savants, outsiders, rebels, and/or socially deficient, yet he made all of these peculiar creatures the stars of his pictures.
Hal Ashby made being weird, different, or “other” a cool thing, and audiences have never recovered. “Hal” proceeds in a straightforward manner, using talking-head interviews from colleagues, family, and notable admirers to walk the audience through Ashby’s story. A Utah kid by birth, Ashby bounced around a bit in his early years before finding himself in Hollywood, where he took the first “industry” job he could as a path into showbiz. When he heard that the best directors make their bones in the editing room, Ashby went into the business of cutting and developed quite the reputation in that field.
An Oscar for achievement in editing came for his work on “In the Heat of the Night,” which then led to his first directing gig, “The Landlord.” This kicked off a string of films in the 1970s that enjoyed varying degrees of commercial and critical success but have since solidified into enduring masterpieces. In “Hal,” contemporary directing luminaries David O. Russell, Alexander Payne, and Judd Apatow all speak about Ashby’s influence on their work.
Ashby also had a knack for winning the people around him Oscars, something that Jon Voight and Jane Fonda speak about during their appearances in the doc. A true collaborator, Ashby strove to connect and cooperate with his actors so that they were intimately involved in the process, and felt more invested in the characters and the story. A true artist, Ashby lived and breathed film, and submerged himself in his work body and soul. And while this made him and his movies great, it also led to personal and professional difficulties that “Hal” doesn’t shy away from.
Ashby’s eccentricities and strong artistic vision are touched upon several times in Scott’s piece, yet they never form the basis for any real critique or reexamination. Ashby had a nearly unprecedented string of hits in the ’70s, only to wallow in Hollywood’s artistic wasteland in the ’80s once the suits took over the studios. Indeed, what made the director great one decade (an unwillingness to compromise, a strong personality, a shoot-from-the-hip approach to filmmaking) made him an industry pariah the next. While contemporaries like Spielberg and Lucas found a way to work within the studio system in the ’80s to marry their artistic vision with bankable products, Ashby made “Solo Trans” and “The Slugger’s Wife.”
“Hal” seems to presuppose that whatever Ashby’s failings, they were worth it. As loving and respectful a documentary as this is, “Hal” would be far stronger if it took the time to critically examine its subject rather than excuse away his failings in the name of enduring art. Which is all to say that “Hal,” with its well-sourced testimonials and convincing arguments to prop up a cinematic legend, is just fine. For fans of Ashby, or even just lovers of good cinema, “Hal” serves as a wonderful examination of a masterful director who had a lasting influence on generations of cinephiles. Had Scott dug a bit deeper, though, she might have stumbled across something as profound as the filmmaker she supposes to glorify.[B]