By the time Hal Ashby made it to the director’s chair in 1970 after a stint as one of the most acclaimed film editors of…
By the time Hal Ashby made it to the director’s chair in 1970 after a stint as one of the most acclaimed film editors of the 1960s, he’d grown out his hair to a shaggy fullness more in keeping with the hippie-ish message he sent over the airwaves when accepting his 1968 Oscar for editing “In the Heat of the Night”: “I hope we can use all of our talents and creativity for peace, and for love.”
Ashby would never lose his vibey guru mien thereafter, and through the Me Decade, he turned out a remarkable stretch of socially conscious, bitingly funny and character-rich pictures — including “The Last Detail,” “Shampoo” and “Being There” — that have made him a giant among cineastes who see the ’70s as Hollywood’s most satisfyingly adult and uncompromising period. But if there’s still the sense that Ashby isn’t as sanctified as American New Wave stalwarts Coppola or Scorsese — with his stories of small-bore goodness invariably less sexy than tales of gangsterdom — Amy Scott’s breezy tribute of a documentary “Hal” is out to correct that oversight.
Read the full article on The Wrap
