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Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby

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.

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Movies Made By Hal Ashby (25)

The Rolling Stones: Satisfaction Interviews (2007)

This film contains interview material and archival footage presented all on one film. It begins with very rare black and white Australian documentary from the 60s with Jagger looking like the rebel, and Keith, looking somewhat wasted, talking about Brian J ...

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Jake's Journey (1988)

A normal teenager is transported to a Monty Pythonesque medieval fantasy land where an odd, adamant knight takes him on a quest. ...

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8 Million Ways to Die (1986)

Scudder is a detective with the Sheriff's Department who is forced to shoot a violent suspect during a narcotics raid. The ensuing psychological aftermath of this shooting worsens his drinking problem and this alcoholism causes him to lose his job, as well ...

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The Slugger's Wife (1985)

Darryl Palmer is a major league baseball player who meets and pursues an attractive singer. After some setbacks, the two are married and sent on an emotional journey that sees his career take off, while hers doesn't. She can't escape unhappiness when she g ...

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Neil Young: Solo Trans (1984)

Solo Trans is a concert film by Neil Young, released in 1984. It was recorded at the Hara Arena in Dayton, Ohio on September 18, 1983 during Young's Solo Trans tour. ...

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Let's Spend the Night Together (1982)

The Rolling Stones' record-breaking 1981 North American arena tour documented by director Hal Ashby. Featuring the biggest Rolling Stones songs from the first 20 years - in the words of Mick Jagger, "a feel of what it's like to be there", as 20 cameras tak ...

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Lookin' to Get Out (1982)

Two gamblers must leave New York City after one loses a lot of money. Doing what all gamblers in trouble would do, they hurry to the gambling capital Las Vegas to turn their luck around. ...

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Second-Hand Hearts (1981)

A boozy drifter tries to get to know the widow he married while on a bender. ...

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Being There (1979)

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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Coming Home (1978)

In 1968 California, a Marine officer's wife falls in love with a former high school classmate who suffered a paralyzing combat injury in the war. ...

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Bound for Glory (1976)

A biography of Woody Guthrie, one of America's greatest folk singers. He left his dust-devastated Texas home in the 1930s to find work, discovering the suffering and strength of America's working class. ...

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The Stronger (1976)

Adaptation of a Strindberg play by Lee Grant for the 1974 AFI Directing Workshop for Women. Restored in 2022 by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation. ...

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Shampoo (1975)

A Beverly Hills hairdresser runs around town on the eve of the 1968 presidential election trying to make heads or tails of his financial and romantic entanglements. His attempts to gather the money to open his own salon are continually side-tracked by the ...

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The Last Detail (1973)

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 (1971)

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 ...

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The Landlord (1970)

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 p ...

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Gaily, Gaily (1969)

After runaway Ben Young is robbed and left on his own, he is taken in by Lil, the head of a Chicago brothel. Acting as a surrogate mother for Ben, who thinks she runs a boardinghouse, Lil gets him a job with Francis Sullivan at the local newspaper. As Ben ...

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The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)

Young businessman Thomas Crown is bored and decides to plan a robbery and assigns a professional agent with the right information to the job. However, Crown is soon betrayed yet cannot blow his cover because he's in love. ...

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In the Heat of the Night (1967)

African-American Philadelphia police detective Virgil Tibbs is arrested on suspicion of murder by Bill Gillespie, the racist police chief of tiny Sparta, Mississippi. After Tibbs proves not only his own innocence but that of another man, he joins forces wi ...

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The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! (1966)

When a Soviet submarine gets stuck on a sandbar off the coast of a New England island, its commander orders his second-in-command, Lieutenant Rozanov, to get them moving again before there is an international incident. Rozanov seeks assistance from the isl ...

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The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

An up-and-coming poker player tries to prove himself in a high-stakes match against a long-time master of the game. ...

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The Loved One (1965)

Newly arrived in Hollywood from England, Dennis Barlow finds he has to arrange his uncle's interment at the highly-organised and very profitable Whispering Glades funeral parlour. His fancy is caught by one of their cosmeticians, Aimee Thanatogenos. But he ...

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The Best Man (1964)

The other party is in disarray. Five men vie for the party nomination for president. No one has a majority as the first ballot closes and the front-runners begin to decide how badly they want the job. ...

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The Children's Hour (1961)

An unruly student at a private all-girls boarding school scandalously accuses the two women who run it of having a romantic relationship. ...

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The Big Country (1958)

Retired wealthy sea captain Jim McKay arrives in the Old West, where he becomes embroiled in a feud between his future father-in-law, Major Terrill, and the rough and lawless Hannasseys over a valuable patch of land. ...

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Movies Starring Hal Ashby (5)

Hal (2019)

Hal Ashby's obsessive genius led to an unprecedented string of OscarĀ®-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 uncompromi ...

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Being There (1979)

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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The Last Detail (1973)

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 (1971)

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 ...

Watch Now

The Landlord (1970)

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 p ...

Watch Now