Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby

Born: September 2, 1929
Died: December 27, 1988
in Ogden, Utah, USA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hal Ashby was an American film director and editor associated with the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking.

Before his career as a director Ashby edited films for Norman Jewison, notably The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), which earned Ashby an Oscar nomination for Best Editing, and In the Heat of the Night (1967), which earned him his only Oscar for the same category.

Ashby received a third Oscar nomination, this time for Best Director for Coming Home (1978). Other films directed by Ashby include The Landlord (1970), Harold and Maude (1971), The Last Detail (1973), Shampoo (1975), Bound for Glory (1976) and Being There (1979).

Born William Hal Ashby in Ogden, Utah, he grew up in a Mormon household. His tumultuous childhood as part of a dysfunctional family included the divorce of his parents, his father's suicide, and dropping out of high school. Ashby was married and divorced by the time he was 19.

As Ashby was entering adult life, he moved from Utah to California where he soon became an assistant film editor. After being nominated for the Academy Award for Film Editing in 1967 for The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, his big break occurred in 1968 when he won the award for In the Heat of the Night.

At the urging of producer Norman Jewison, Ashby directed his first film The Landlord in 1970. While his birth date placed him squarely within the realm of the prewar generation, the filmmaker quickly embraced the hippie lifestyle, adopting vegetarianism and growing his hair long. In 1970 he married actress Joan Marshall. While they remained married until his death in 1988, the two had separated by the mid-seventies, with Marshall never forgiving Ashby, along with Warren Beatty and Robert Towne, for dramatizing certain unflattering elements of her life in Shampoo.

Over the next 16 years, Ashby directed several acclaimed and popular films, many were about outsiders and adventurers traversing the pathways of life. Aside from Shampoo, Ashby's most commercially successful film was the Vietnam War drama Coming Home (1978). Starring Jane Fonda and Jon Voight, both in Academy Award-winning performances, it was for this film that Ashby earned his only Best Director nomination from the Academy for his work.

After Being There (his last film to achieve widespread attention), Ashby became notoriously reclusive and eccentric, retreating to his home in Malibu Colony. Later it was learned that Ashby was using drugs, and he slowly became difficult and unemployable.

Attempting to turn a corner in his declining career, Ashby stopped using drugs, trimmed his hair and beard, and began to frequently attend Hollywood parties wearing a navy blue blazer so as to suggest that he was once again employable. Despite these efforts, he could only find work as a television director.

Ashby died on December 27, 1988 at his home in Malibu, California.

The Last Detail, Bound for Glory, Coming Home, and Being There were all nominated for the Palme d'Or.

Movies for Hal Ashby...

Hal
Title: Hal
Character: Self (archive footage)
Released: March 28, 2019
Type: Movie
Hal Ashby's obsessive genius led to an unprecedented string of Oscar®-winning classics, including Harold and Maude, Shampoo and Being There. But as contemporaries Coppola, Scorsese and Spielberg rose to blockbuster stardom in the 1980s, Ashby's uncompromising nature played out as a cautionary tale of art versus commerce.
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Being There
Title: Being There
Character: Man at File Cabinet at the Washington Post (uncredited)
Released: December 19, 1979
Type: Movie
A simple-minded gardener named Chance has spent all his life in the Washington D.C. house of an old man. When the man dies, Chance is put out on the street with no knowledge of the world except what he has learned from television.
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Title: Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
Character: Self
Released: January 12, 1975
Type: TV
A talk show presented by Michel Drucker
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The Last Detail
Title: The Last Detail
Character: Bearded Man at Bar (uncredited)
Released: December 11, 1973
Type: Movie
Two Navy men are ordered to bring a young offender to prison, but decide to show him one last good time along the way.
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Harold and Maude
Title: Harold and Maude
Character: Bearded Man Watching Model Train (uncredited)
Released: December 20, 1971
Type: Movie
The young Harold lives in his own world of suicide-attempts and funeral visits to avoid the misery of his current family and home environment. Harold meets an 80-year-old woman named Maude who also lives in her own world yet one in which she is having the time of her life. When the two opposites meet they realize that their differences don’t matter and they become best friends and love each other.
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The Landlord
Title: The Landlord
Character: Groom in Opening Shot (uncredited)
Released: May 20, 1970
Type: Movie
At the age of twenty-nine, Elgar Enders "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert the building into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind.
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Title: The Mike Douglas Show
Character: Self
Released: December 11, 1961
Type: TV
The Mike Douglas Show is an American daytime television talk show hosted by Mike Douglas that originally aired only in the Cleveland area during much of its first two years on the air. It then went into syndication in 1963 and remained on television until 1982. It was distributed by Westinghouse Broadcasting and for much of its run, originated from studios of two of the company's TV stations in Cleveland and Philadelphia.
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Title: The Oscars
Character: Self
Released: March 19, 1953
Type: TV
An annual American awards ceremony honoring cinematic achievements in the film industry. The various category winners are awarded a copy of a statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, that is better known by its nickname Oscar.