"Hal Ashby: Interviews" (Conversations With Filmmakers Series)
Edited by Nick Dawson

According to New Hollywood historian Peter Biskind, Hal Ashby (1929-1988) “had the most remarkable run of any ‘70s director.” Consider his brilliant output during this period: The Landlord (1970), Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976), Coming Home (1978), and Being There (1979). What an amazing streak of films! Fans of the Rolling Stones also know Ashby as director of the concert documentary Let’s Spend the Night Together (1983). Unfortunately, his later efforts, including The Slugger’s Wife (1985) and 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), failed both critically and commercially. Earlier in his Tinseltown career, Ashby labored as an editor, chiefly for filmmaker Norman Jewison, on such movies as The Cincinnati Kid (1965), The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming (1966), In the Heat of the Night (1967), for which he won a Best Editing Oscar, and The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

Cinema scholar Nick Dawson calls Ashby, who died of pancreatic cancer—not, as many mistakenly claim, from a drug overdose—“the forgotten man of the New Hollywood generation.” The laid back, hirsute, vegetarian, pot-smoking hippie-moviemaker, Dawson contends, “left his ego at the door and put the work first…he was the most democratic of directors, who would just as readily listen to an idea from a grip as a suggestion from his cinematographer, writer, or lead actor.” According to cinematographer Haskell Wexler, who worked with him on four projects, “You wouldn’t typecast Hal as a film director. Most directors are dictatorial, active managerial, executive types. Hal’s gentle.”

In Hal Ashby: Interviews (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2010; pp. xxiv + 138; paperback, $22.00), Dawson, author of Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel (2009), has assembled a collection of seventeen articles and conversations from such publications as Variety, the UCLA Daily Bruin, the New York Times, Millimeter, and LA Weekly, spanning the years 1970-1986. Dawson’s fine volume also includes an Introduction to Ashby and his movies, a Chronology, and a Filmography.

Many of today’s directors, including Wes Anderson, Judd Apatow, Noah Baumbach, and Cameron Crowe, revere his work. Dawson observes that Ashby, unfairly neglected for so long, is “important once again. In a time when Hollywood is more focused on car chases and explosions than character and exposition, Ashby’s movies provide a perfect counterpoint. They are stories about people, told with humanity and humor. They tackle big subjects with a light touch. They are edgy and subversive. They have great scripts, memorable performances, subtle directing. They were made within the system, but reflect an outsider’s view. For contemporary filmmakers looking back, Ashby’s movies are an example of what Hollywood cinema once was and, they hope, could be again.” Amen.

Hal Ashby: Interviews belongs to the University Press of Mississippi’s “Conversations with Filmmakers Series,” under the general editorship of Wake Forest professor Peter Brunette. Other offerings in this superb set include interviews with Robert Altman, Jonathan Demme, John Ford, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderbergh, and Billy Wilder. Cinema buffs and film historians will relish these indispensable volumes.