Hair (film)
Hair is a 1979 musical anti-war comedy-drama film directed by Miloš Forman and adapted for the screen by Michael Weller, based on the 1968 Broadway musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical. Set against the backdrop of the hippie counterculture of the Vietnam era, the film focuses on a Vietnam War draftee who meets and befriends a "tribe" of hippies while en route to the army induction center. The hippies and their leader introduce him to marijuana, LSD, and their environment of unorthodox relationships and draft evasion.
The film stars an ensemble cast including John Savage, Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, Annie Golden, Dorsey Wright, Don Dacus, Cheryl Barnes and Ronnie Dyson. Dance scenes were choreographed by Twyla Tharp and were performed by Tharp's dancers. Hair was nominated for two Golden Globes: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture.
Plot
Claude Hooper Bukowski sets off from Oklahoma to New York City, where he is being drafted into the Army. Before his draft board appointment, Claude explores New York, where he encounters a close-knit "tribe" of hippies led by George Berger. He observes the hippies panhandle from a trio of horseback riders...including Short Hills, New Jersey, debutante Sheila Franklin. He later catches and mounts a runaway horse, exhibiting his riding skills to Sheila. Claude returns the horse to Berger, who offers to show him around.That evening, Claude gets stoned on marijuana with Berger and the tribe. He is then introduced to various race and class issues of the 1960s. The next morning, Berger finds a newspaper clipping that gives Sheila's home address. The tribe members — LaFayette "Hud" Johnson, Jeannie Ryan, and "Woof Dachshund" —crash a debutante party purportedly so that Claude can meet Sheila before he gets drafted. Sheila secretly enjoys her rigid environment being disrupted. After the hippies are arrested for trespassing, Claude uses his last $50 to bail Berger out of jail, where Woof resists having his hair cut. When Sheila is unable to borrow any money from her father so that Berger can get the other members of the group out of jail, Berger returns to his parents' home, where Berger's mom gives him enough cash to bail out his friends.
They subsequently attend a peace rally in Central Park, where Claude drops acid for the first time. Just as Jeannie proposes marriage to Claude, explaining to him that marrying her will exempt him from the draft, Sheila arrives to apologize. Claude's "trip" reflects his inner conflict over which of three worlds he fits in with: his native Oklahoman farm culture, Sheila's upper-class society, or the hippies' free-wheeling environment.
Following his "trip", Claude falls out with Berger and the tribe members, ostensibly due to a practical joke on Sheila, but also due to their philosophical differences over the war in Vietnam. and over personal versus communal responsibility. After wandering the city, Claude finally reports to the draft board, completes his enlistment, and is shipped off to Nevada for basic training.
It's now Winter when Claude writes to Sheila, who subsequently shares the news with the others. Berger devises a scheme to visit Claude. Meanwhile, Hud's fiancée — with whom he has a son, LaFayette Jr. — wants to marry as they had planned earlier. The tribe members trick Sheila's boyfriend Steve out of his car, then head west to visit Claude.
The hippies arrive in Nevada where Claude is stationed, only to be turned away...ostensibly because the base is on alert, but also because the surly MP on duty does not care for their looks. Sheila proceeds to chat up army sergeant Fenton at a local bar, luring him to an isolated desert road where the hippies acquire his uniform and car. Berger cuts his hair and dons the uniform, then drives onto the Army base. He finds Claude and offers to switch places with him for the next headcount, so that Claude can meet Sheila and the others for a farewell picnic in the desert.
Just after a disguised Claude slips away to the picnic, the base becomes fully activated with immediate ship-outs for Vietnam. Berger's ruse is not discovered, and he is herded onto a plane with the rest of Claude's company. Claude returns to the empty barracks and frantically pursues Berger's plane, but is unable to reach it before it takes off for Southeast Asia.
Months pass. Claude and Sheila -- along with the rest of the tribe -- gather at Berger's grave in Arlington National Cemetery; the grave marker verifies that Berger was KIA in Vietnam. The film ends showing a mass peace protest in Washington, D.C.
Cast
Production
The film was shot in October 1977. Filming locations included a number of well-known spots in New York City, including Central Park's Bethesda Fountain, Sheep Meadow, and the Central Park bandshell; and Washington Square Park. Scenes were also shot at the Fort Irwin National Training Center, in the Mojave Desert in northern San Bernardino County, California, and in Barstow, California; as well as in Washington, D.C., at the Lincoln Memorial, in the National Mall.Soundtrack
- The songs "The Bed", "Dead End", "Oh Great God of Power", "I Believe in Love", "Going Down", "Air", "My Conviction", "Abie Baby", "Frank Mills", and "What a Piece of Work is Man" were omitted. The latter five, even though recorded for the film, were eventually cut, as they slowed the film's pace. These songs are included on the motion picture soundtrack album.
- A few verses from the songs "Manchester, England" and a small portion of "Walking in Space" were removed.
- While the songs "Don't Put It Down" and "Somebody to Love" are not sung by characters in the film, they are both used as background or instrumental music for scenes at the army base. The latter was a new song written by MacDermot for the film.
- Several other differences from songs in the movie appear on the soundtrack, mainly in omitted verses and different orchestrations. One notable difference is that the Broadway version used only a jazz combo while the movie soundtrack use orchestrations that make ample use of full horn and string sections. Many of the songs have been shortened, sped-up, rearranged, or assigned to different characters to allow for the differences in plot.
Charts
Differences from the musical
As the film's plot and soundtrack differ greatly from the original musical, Gerome Ragni and James Rado, who wrote the stage show with composer Galt MacDermot, were unhappy with the film adaptation. They felt it failed to capture the essence of Hair in that hippies were portrayed as "oddballs" and "some sort of aberration" without any connection to the peace movement. Ragni and Rado stated, "Any resemblance between the 1979 film and the original Biltmore version, other than some of the songs, the names of the characters, and a common title, eludes us." In their view, the screen version of Hair had not yet been produced.- In the musical, Claude is a member of a hippie "Tribe", sharing a New York City apartment, leading a bohemian lifestyle, enjoying "free love", and rebelling against both his parents and the draft. Eventually, however, he goes to Vietnam.
- * In the film, Claude is rewritten as an innocent draftee from Oklahoma, newly arrived in New York City to join the military. In New York, he gets caught up with the group of hippies while awaiting deployment to Army training camp. They introduce Claude to their psychedelically-inspired style of living; eventually, the Tribe drives out to Nevada with the intention of visiting Claude at training camp.
- In the musical, Sheila is an outspoken feminist leader of the Tribe who loves Berger as well as Claude.
- * In the film, Sheila is a high-society debutante who catches Claude's eye.
- In the film, Berger is not only the Tribe's de-facto leader, but is assigned some of Claude's conflict involving whether or not to obey the draft. A major plot change from the musical results in Berger being accidentally sent to Vietnam, in Claude's place. Soon thereafter, Berger is killed in action.
- The musical focuses on the U.S. peace movement, as well as the love relationships among the Tribe members.
- *The film, however, focuses on the carefree antics of the hippies.
Release
Reception
Box office
The film earned $15.3 million in the United States and Canada. By the end of 1979, it had grossed $38,290,492 worldwide.Critical response
Hair received generally favorable reviews from critics at the time of release; it currently holds an 82% "fresh" rating on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes from 60 reviews. The critical consensus reads, "Spiritedly performed by a groovy cast and imaginatively directed by Milos Forman, Hair transports audiences straight to the Age of Aquarius." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.For The New York Times, Vincent Canby called it "a rollicking musical memoir.... Weller's inventions make this Hair seem much funnier than I remember the show's having been. They also provide time and space for the development of characters who, on the stage, had to express themselves almost entirely in song.... The entire cast is superb.... Mostly... the film is a delight." Frank Rich said: "If ever a project looked doomed, it was this one" ; but that in spite of these obstacles, "Hair succeeds at all levels—as lowdown fun, as affecting drama, as exhilarating spectacle and as provocative social observation. It achieves its goals by rigorously obeying the rules of classic American musical comedy: dialogue, plot, song and dance blend seamlessly to create a juggernaut of excitement. Though every cut and camera angle in Hair appears to have been carefully conceived, the total effect is spontaneous. Like the best movie musicals of the '50s and the '60s, Hair leaps from one number to the next. Soon the audience is leaping too."