The recent A.M.P.A.S. screening of Harold and Maude in Los Angeles proved to be one of those completely unforgettable evenings for anyone fortunate enough to be in attendance. It was a night of intense drama as we entered, for it was
taking place just hours after the announcement of the death of Michael Jackson,
and a day after the thunderbolt announcement of the Academy’s decision to
expand the Best Picture nominations to ten, a practice that had been abandoned in
1943. But most of all it was the beginning of a tribute to the late, great Hal
Ashby, a director who, along with Robert Altman, typified the the best of
American cinema in the 1970s and “Harold and Maude†may well be the best-loved
film of his remarkable, but too brief career. But let us start at the
beginning.
Like many, I got into “Harold & Maudeâ€
through its music. While listening to Radio Station KGB in San Diego, the
announcer played a great Cat Stevens song called, “Maybe You’re Right“ and
announced that the song, along with several other Cat Stevens songs were among
the many joys to be sampled in a wonderfully eccentric film of forbidden love
called “Harold & Maude,†playing at the leading revival house in town, the
Ken Theatre. Any
movie with a Cat Stevens score sounded pretty good to me and the DJs gushing endorsement
clinched the deal, I caught it the very next night. As it turned out, “Maybe
You’re Right†wasn’t in the film but there were a host of other the Catman’s
tunes running through the it, and unlike the cynically placed pop songs injected
in a film today for marketing purposes, these songs were woven into its fabric—
it was impossible to imagine "Harold & Maude" without “Trouble,â€
or “Don’t be Shy,†or “If You Want to SIng Out, Sing Out.†The movie had
come and gone like a shooting star a few months earlier but had left a trail of
goodwill in its wake, and as I watched it that night in the ratty, torn seats
of the Ken, it was one of those epoch-defining films that summarized the best
of that era - a zest for life over death, a celebration of one person’s
individuality over mob conformity, an anti-war sentiment that virtually every
film at the time embraced, and a rejection of the mindless consumerism that
would soon be the legacy of the Me Generation 1980s, just a few years away. But
most of all, “Harold and Maude,†was a celebration of love, in all
its pain and glorious redemption, and it remains one of the grandest
expressions of the healing power of that scary emotion ever put on celluloid.
The film
had made an immediate impact on me, and a year later when the occasion arose
for me to make my first student film, I wrote a script that was a tip of the
hat to “H&M†wherein an alienated philosophy student who reads Camus’
famous dictum in “The Myth of Sisyphus†that the only philosophical question is
whether or not kill oneself decides to end it by jumping off the nearby cliffs
overlooking the Pacific. Just as he is about to hurl himself off the precipice
a beautiful woman calls to him to help her photograph the sunset. He looks down
at the water and then at the girl and figures he can jump later. He snaps the
picture of the young maiden, and she invites him back to her apartment. After
leaving the next morning, full of love for life, he realizes as he approaches
his car that he has left his glasses at her apartment. He turns to go back and
get them and gets run over by a truck. OK, so “Harold and Maude†it wasn’t, but
it does provide a clue to the film’s huge impact upon my delicate
sensibilities. But as the
counterculture faded and disco gave way to big-haired British synth bands and
angry hip-hop gangsta acts, I relegated “Harold and Maude†to those quaint 70s
relics that were best left back with tie-dyed T-shirts and patched Levis and
the oeuvre of Seals & Crofts or the Captain and Tennille. I hadn’t seen the
film since that night in 1972, and because it was such a perfect film-going
experience, so tied to the time, I was afraid that maybe it wouldn’t hold up
after those cold intervening years, or maybe I was afraid that I had been so changed
by time that I would no longer be open to the film’s magic. There
was certainly an electricity in the air as I walked into the Academy foyer.
The first
person I saw was Haskell Wexler, a friend since 1982 when he was a guest in a
film series I was running at the San Diego Museum of Art. Then I chanced
upon  fellow San Diego expatriate Cameron Crowe, Curtis
Hanson, Variety critic Todd McCarthy, Academy director Bruce Davis and the
lovely Diablo Cody who chatted about her upcoming film, “Jennifer’s Body,†a
horror film, a genre that she confessed no longer held the same attraction for
her it once did: “I think I’ve got that out of my system.†Jon Voight
said he was looking forward to discussing working with Ashby on the
panel.
As
the lights dimmed, Academy president Sid Ganis took the occasion to note the
passing of the King of Pop, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon (it is amazing, how
the old “it always comes in 3s†folklore does seem to come true), and then the
lights went down and out stepped Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf, to perform
the two original songs, “Don’t be Shy†and “If You Want to Sing Out,†from the
movie. It was one of the most remarkable performances I’ve ever witnessed, so
simple and unadorned, yet riveting in its power and intensity and as dramatic
an opening to the evening as one who hope for.
Following
that was a panel discussion moderated by Cameron Crowe that was comprised of
Judd Apatow, Diablo Cody, Peter Bart, Seth Rogen, Peter Bart, Haskell Wexler
and Jon Voight. It was enjoyable, but the problem was that when there are so
many people on a panel, time only permitted the briefest of answers and only
Bart, Wexler and Voight actually worked with Ashby, so there wasn’t the
opportunity to really delve into the man at length. But the unspoken question
that hung in the air was - how would the film hold up? The answer - it played
like gangbusters.
Instead of
being some precious hippie relic from a distant, tie-dyed past, “Harold and
Maude†seems even more astonishing now than it did then. In an age of
“Transformers,†to see a studio film like this seems like a miracle. And one of
my favorite moments - there are so many - was the brief shot of the
concentration camp tatoo on Maude’s arm. Blink and you miss it, Ashby
practically throws it away, but by making the audience work and pay
attention, when you catch it, it adds such a tremendous emotional subtext to
film, a layer revealed only to fellow initiates. It is a kind of cinematic
subtlety that has vanished along with bell bottoms and floral ties.Â
WatchingÂ
the film again I was struck by the resemblance to another key movie of the era
- “The Graduate.†Both films feature alienated sons of privilege who have
affairs with older women, accompanied by terrific folk-rock soundtracks. Yet, I
would argue, “Harold & Maude†is the greater accomplishment because it
risks so much more, it is the more daring and radical, and yet ultimately, it
is much more life-affirming. In the bleak ending of “The Graduateâ€
Benjamin sits at the back of the bus with Elaine, yet what will happen to them
seems to be a repeat of the emptiness of their parents’ lives. It is a very
bleak ending, no exit indeed — they will succumb to plastics. But Harold not
only survives losing Maude, the last shot of him dancing while playing the
banjo gives us reasonable hope that he will love again, because Maude has given
him the ability to love life and the courage to risk falling in love
again.
Just when
it seemed there couldn’t be any more peaks, producer Ellen Harrington had one
last card to play - as the curtains closed and the lights rose, out walked
Harold himself, Bud Cort, and the audience poured out its love for the film
into his richly deserving arms, for we had just seen him create a
characterization that has already become immortal in screen history. I had
heard that he had felt his career was overtaken by the role and that he had
come to resent the part. Well, as Bogie once said, I was misinformed. It was
obvious that he loved the movie and was immensely proud of it. He spoke so
movingly about his experience working with Hal Ashby, by all accounts the kindest
of souls, that at the end of his brief address if anyone had been unmoved by
the previous two hours they needed to have their pulse checked.
(Photo: Richard Harbaugh/A.M.P.A.S.)
I have
been to many great evenings at the Academy, but this had an emotional impact
that far exceeded any other event I had attended in the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre.
And there was one small gem still remaining. As I boarded the elevator going
down, who should walk in but the man whose music had led me to this film, Yusuf
himself. After thanking him profusely for the joy his music had given me, I
mentioned a special favorite of mine, an obscure song of his called “Ruins.†He
smiled and said, “I’m writing a Broadway musical and that’s going to be in it.â€
Then the doors opened and he was gone. It was that kind of night.
So
thank you Ellen, thank you Peter and Cameron, thank you Bud and Colin and Ruth
and Hal and Yusuf and Bob Evans, but most of all, thank you to the Academy for
all the outstanding work you do in recapturing the past and reminding us of
forgotten areas of our heart, those lost loves, those precious pieces of time,
that are so much the best part of our lives.