Hair

Plot synopsis:
Hair is a musical focusing on the lives of two young men in the Vietnam era against the backdrop of the hippie culture.Set in the late 1960s, Claude Hooper Bukowski (John Savage) is a naive Oklahoman sent off to see the sites of New York before beginning his enlistment in the US Army. On his arrival he observes a group of hippies lead by George Berger (Treat Williams) begging for change from a trio of horseback riders. Later, Claude catches the runaway horse the hippies have rented and uses it to show off his riding skills to one of the trio of strangers--an upper class débutante. While returning the horse to the hippies, Claude accepts their invitation to be shown around the city.In the course of a single evening, Claude gets stoned after smoking marijuana and then is introduced to the race and class issues of the 1960's. On the morning after, George finds a scrap of newspaper identifying the mysterious girl. The hippy group which includes Hud (Dorsey Wright), Jeannie (Annie Golden) and Woof (Don Dacus) crash a private party where the girl, Sheila Franklin (Beverly D'Angelo), secretly enjoys the disruption of her rigid environment. After the group is arrested, Claude uses the only money he has to pay George's fine so that George can find the funds to get the rest of them released. Meanwhile, at the prison, Woof's refusal to have his hair cut leads into the title song.Unsuccessful at convincing Sheila to get the funds from her father, George returns to his parents' home and is able to convince his mother to give him enough money to have the others released from jail.For their next adventure, the group attends a peace rally in Central Park where Claude drops acid. When Jeannie proposes they get married to keep Claude out of the Army and Sheila shows up to apologize, Claude's "trip" reflects his internal conflict over which world he belongs in--his own native Oklahoman farm culture, the upper class society of Sheila or the free-wheeling world of the hippies.When his trip is over, Claude and the hippies have a falling out over both a mean trick they pull on Sheila (taking her clothes while she's skinny-dipping, which then leads to Sheila being completely humiliated when she has no choice but to hail a taxi completely naked) and their philosophical differences over the war in Vietnam and personal versus community responsibility. In the end Claude goes through with his original plan and reports to the draft board. He begins his enlistment in the Army and makes it through basic training.When Claude writes to Sheila from his training camp, she seeks out George and his group to share the news. George begins to cook up a scheme to visit Claude in Nevada at the military base. Enter Hud's finance (Cheryl Barnes), who wants him to return to their life together with his son, LaFayette Jr. (Rahsaan Curry). Tricking Sheila's brother Steve (Miles Chapin) out of the family car, the hippies, Sheila and Hud's finance all head west and try to enter the training camp to visit Claude.Turned back at the guard post, George's next scheme has Sheila chat up Fenton (Richard Bright), an Army Sergeant, at a local bar. Luring him out a back country road with intimations of sex, Sheila helps the group relieve him of his uniform and his car. Using both the car and dressed in Fenton's Army uniform, George infiltrates the Army base, finds Claude and reveals himself. When Claude refuses to leave for fear of being found missing during a headcount, George schemes to take his place long enough for Claude to visit with the others waiting in the desert.While Claude is away, the base, which has been on alert, becomes fully activated with immediate ship-outs to Vietnam. George, unwilling to reveal the Claude is AWOL, boards the plane to Vietnam in Claude's place. Claude arrives too late to slip back into his place.The final scene is at Arlington Cemetery several months later showing George's headstone (he was killed in action in Vietnam) and the song "Let the Sunshine In". As the song continues, the movie closes with crowd shots of a full scale peace protest in Washington.

Tags: anti war, cult, romantic, flashback

Review:
The stage musical isn't really much more than a group of skits strung together with some amusing musical numbers; however for the film director Milos Foreman (who won an Oscar for directing ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST) and the writers have taken the basic premise of the play and the score and constructed a real story to make the show more "user friendly" for the big screen.
In the film, naive farm boy Claude Hooper Buchowski (John Savage) is about to go into the army and decides to spend a couple of days in New York where he meets a group of aging hippies (Treat Williams, Dorsey Wright, Annie Golden, Don Dacus)who get him involved in a group of nutty misadventures, including the pursuit of a snooty society girl (Beverly D'Angelo).
There is one outstanding musical number after another here..."Aquarius" is a tour through Central Park which includes dancing horses...Treat Williams disrupts a fancy dinner party in "I Got Life"..."Black Boys/White Boys" features the late Nell Carter and Ellen Foley extolling the ethnic virtues of men and "Easy to be Hard" is a powerful rendering of one of the best songs in the show by original cast member Cheryl Barnes, who plays Wright's ex-girlfriend and mother of his child.
As it is, the film plays out like one long, fantasy trip (whether that trip is substance-enhanced or not is your call)- starting with the "Aquarius" sequence and continuing on to the marvelous set pieces for "Manchester England," "Ain't Got No," "I Got Life," and best of all, the "Electric Blues"/"Hare Krishna" fantasy which shows lovers John Savage and Beverly D'Angelo literally flying through their own wedding ceremony.
(BTW, the woman singing "Aquarius" in the film's opening is not Melba Moore, but Ren Woods- a wonderful singer-actress seen a lot on TV in the 70's, and star of the Los Angeles production of "The Wiz.") The opening Twyla Tharp corps-de-ballet shot right on the Central Park grounds- with Woods' solo in a dizzying 360 camera pan- is an awesome start to a rock-infested musical.
Ms. Moore (who performed in the original Broadway HAIR) appears later in the film singing "3-5-0-0" with Ronnie Dyson in the war protest scene shot in Washington, DC.
Now more than ever we need Peace & Love in this world!This film really showcases the wonderful music of the Broadway show, and the fabulous Choreography of the legendary Twila Tharp!
WOW!The supporting cast is absolutely great,with the late great Nell Carter making a singing cameo in a couple of scenes, as well as the kooky Charlotte Ray (Mrs. Garrett on 'Facts Of Life')The story gets a little weak toward the end, but the anti-war sentiment of the late 60's still holds up, and is relevant today.
It's beautifully filmed (quite a bit on location) and is so colorful and lovely and really brings the spirit of 1968 back on the big screen.I saw this movie when it was released in 1979 when I was 15, and was moved by it then, and it still moves me now at 40.
Some other reviews on here say they think it should have been made sooner--I don't think Hollywood was ready to make such a movie back in the late 60's-early 70's.The Vietnam War ended in 1975, and the whole thing hit a little too close to home, I think for this story to be filmed before it was (like in 1969, 70, 71)Bravo to Director Milos Foreman!
George Berger (played by Treat Williams) leads a small group of 1960's-1970's era anti-war "hippies" living at large in New York City.
And although I know I would never be a hippie, this film makes me want to say "Heck with work, I'm going to grow out my hair so fleas can live in it!" Watch it, but beware, I think it just might do the same for you!!!.
I do not know how many time I have seen this film in the movie-theaters and on VHS, or how many times I have listened the CD with the stunning soundtrack, and now, this masterpiece has been finally released on DVD in Brazil.The pacifist and touching story is still amazing, a hymn of freedom, friendship and liberty of choices, and pictures the resistance of a generation against the stupidity of war.
Now, 25 years later I have tried to watch it again, thinking that with the passage of time, Hair the Movie might have qualities I didn't notice then.
In fifty years, film critics may look back on Hair the Movie and be able to say something interesting about the fetish of the 60s, the shallowness of the late-70s, or something.
They are still usually put down as much as they were when they were operational.The best "HAIR" is beautiful Beverly D'Angelo's, blowing in the wind as she sings "Good Morning, Starshine" in the Pontiac convertible with her new friends as they zoom across the Nevada desert to find Claude (John Savage.)Berger (Treat Williams) has two fabulous arguments with "the authorities," both of which are very painful to watch, because you can feel the military-social force over what is considered to be his irresponsibility and paltriness.
They had been smart not to tell her everything in Haight-Ashbury when she drank gin and took ups to do the story.In the same group of essays, she claims not be interested in "paradises, real or artificial." Well, that explains a lot.She said she was too unstable to take acid when they offered it to her; but this was only partially true: It was fear of paradises.Otherwise, it is impossible to miss how this extraordinary film, made almost 15 years after Haight-Ashbury and the East Village would cease to exist as they had (remaining primarily only as weak mutations reduced to unspeakable New Age ashrams, where the pot was all gone and heavily enforced k.p. duty--vilely called "karma-yoga things"--was prevalent) captures so much of the happiness that some of us remember so well still as we continue on as kinds of older hippies...Twyla Tharp's choreography and Ann Roth's colours are all that that strange moment was and is supposed to be--I remember the way people who had used LSD drew stars; you could always tell a psychedelic star, a psychedelic moon, a psychedelic sun.
The 'carpool' going across the desert would never have been possible if Cheryl and the baby hadn't been part of the "mornin' singin' song."Central Park has never been more of a movie star than it is in this one, and New York is sure *lookin' good* in this memoir of collective rapture.That same essayist said "New York was no mere city" and that she would always have the feeling toward it as of "the first person who touched you."She was often right, of course.
They had time to help bring on the resistance to the Vietnam War that forever changed the course of what America could then be, no matter how hard it tries to forget it."Let the Sunshine In" makes it impossible for the song in the Pontiac Bonneville convertible to be called "Good Mornin' Sunshine," and that is a true blessing, it goes without saying.It's about those psychedelic stars even though they are under the sun in the morning in Nevada and this moment in the film is like a magic carpet ride all its own.
It seemed like all the producer wanted was to sing certain songs, and fit the story-line to them regardless of what that did to the original intent of the play.Claude, Sheila, and Hud were presented as a selfish brats who could care less about anyone outside their tribe.
I watched it several times and always thought something was inherently wrong with it.After having recently seen the revival performed twice at the Delacorte Theatre in NYC as part of the Shakespeare in the Park production, I now understand what's wrong.Any effort to modernize this production or adjust it for a movie audience is a mistake.
If could be they didn't learn the lesson of the '77 revival which tried to modernize it 10 years later on Broadway and watched it completely flop in less than a month.Hair, 41 years later, contains topics that are still amazingly relevant in today's world and is a film musical that deserves a re-make only if it sticks to the original story..
When Hair was released in 1979, I told myself: `You really love each song of the musical, and now it's adapted for the screen by one of your favorite film-maker.
It's absolutely incredible, the scope of a director who can follow up the cramped quarters & pent-up energies of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest," with the explosion of the psychedelic generation in "Hair." But Milos Forman accomplished just that.Forman imbues this movie musical with distinctive touches all his own: particularly the dizzying 360-degree spin around the lead singer in the opening "Age Of Aquarius" number; the endearing comedy of the "Black Boys/White Boys" number; protagonist Bukowski's drug initiation in the extended "Hare Krishna" number; and (my very favorite) the unexplainable warmth and human celebration of the "Good Morning, Starshine" number (shot entirely in close-ups and medium shots, in a convertible car!).
The emotional lift experienced when the camera finally trucks back from a group of characters we've come to know & love, is beyond words.Twyla Tharp adds her renowned choreography to all songs; director Forman gave her a free rein on all of them.It'll be fascinating to many who've only been familiar with Treat Williams, John Savage & Beverly D'Angelo through their subsequent work, that they're ALL terrific singers & dancers!.
Anyway, Treat Williams (very talented guy..seen him on stage) is well-cast with the energy and life-spark that Berger embodies, and John Savage (wonderful actor - saw him on stage in American Buffallo Before this film) is Mr. Mid-West to the tee, Beverly D'Angelo I also liked (a great Patsy Clilne in COALMINER'S Daughter in '80), and the rest.
Despite the shortcomings, the film works because of the music, highlighted by "Aquarius," "Manchester, England," the hilarious "Black Boys"/"White Boys," the beautiful "Easy to be Hard," and the title song.
Hair, at its best, has the same directorial energy that made Milos Forman's previous work, One Flew Over the Cuckcoo's Nest, and like that film it reflects quite well the tensions of a period.
Forman also has the good sense to not populate his film with many real stars- more so they're up and comers, people one might see soon get some fame (Beverly D'Angelo and Treat Williams), particularly in having the quiet, reserved, and soon "freed" Bukowski with John Savage, who has a true fresh off-the-bus quality for the part.The spirits are high for a lot of it, with an interesting contrast formed from time to time about the opposing stubbornness on both sides (the little arguments that Berger has with authority figures), that leads to the more 'heavy' topics raised throughout.
It's not exactly subversive as it could be, but then again Forman's ambitions aren't to make a totally definitive statement on the period, per-say, as there is a lot of the little drama and characters as in any musical-tragic/comedy, but at the same time there is a course taken to prevent any sappy nostalgia.It's as good as a Hair musical-movie can be (with a PG rating anyway, though for its period it got away with more than it would today with the rating), which means that it's very good, near great in-fact (some scenes are actually very great, or just in a weird level where you can't quite believe you're seeing, then accept it a few seconds later, and laugh)..
The original score spawned an amazing five hit singles with "Hair," "Aquarius," "Good Morning Starshine," "Let the Sunshine In" and "Easy to be Hard" (the last powerfully performed by Cheryl Barnes in the film).
However, as a movie, HAIR definately needed a plot to keep the audience interested, and I think that Milos Forman did a great job with it.
The rest of the cast was so forgettable, that both Beverly D'Angelo and John Savage fade into the cacaphony of a so-so musical soundtrack.HAIR isn't a movie that ages very well.
Instead he concentrates on giving us the feelings of the era in a brilliant, enchanting and engaging story accentuated by fantastic music.The movie is so powerful that I find it hard to watch Hair, not wishing I was a part of Bergers hippie family.
Milos Forman's movie version was critically-acclaimed (Roger Ebert named it the best film of the year), but it looked out of place in 1979.
i could watch this musical over and over again, my school recently did a production of HAIR and i was in it i was in the black boys/white girls trio( i got to sing about black boys being delicious), and i played Aretha Franklin(in the play but she is not in the movie) i find this musical to be a classic tribute to free spirit and the sixties.
All the talent in this movie--directing, writing, photography, editing, music, choreography, casting, acting, costuming, art direction--merge perfectly into one of the best musical films I've seen.I think it's amazing how much we know about the characters in "Hair," based on very little information or plot.
It was a strong anti war film, and it has outstanding music.I watched it many times over and I know most of the songs.
From the hospitable openness of New York City's Central Park, Milos Forman recreated HAIR along with it's anti-war hippie ness combated by a society that remained hardened and ironically untouched by the Summer of Love.
Hair is a musical made into a movie about late teens growing up in the sixties and dealing with issues such as; parents, the Vietnam War, and where they fit in socially.
The plot is good for a musical, it has good story about Claude going off to war before that meeting Berger and the tribe, falling in love with Sheila and what happens at the end of the movie.
Milos Forman's original HAIR was the perfect movie that actually revealed how life was changing in those years, not only in the USA, but especially in this country.
"This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius" perhaps the most memorable singing moment of "Hair" praying for a new age to come, an age with more "harmony and understanding, sympathy and trust abounding" Like so many great musicals, the essence of the film is present all through the magic of the songs and their penetrating lyrics, like many classics, no singing part feels unnecessary, each one has a beautiful, sincere and gutsy message to convey, something we all owe to the generation that grew during the most troubled times of our modern history.
Indeed, in 1967, the future of the worlds was at stakes, everything was possible, the arts were boiling in the minds of talented newcomers, even Hollywood was enduring a revolution  the song "Where Do I Go?" was the spirit that inhabited the hearts of many people in the world, the hippies and the other revolutionists could never have become "has been" simply because their minds were constantly turned to the future, but 1969 and the 70's crisis came and all they could do next was to mourn the dead dream of what the world "could have been": a beautiful utopia Now, the question would be why a film adaptation of "Hair" in 1979, 12 years after the original play, when the Vietnam war became a painful memory, when the Manson crimes in a tragic August summer killed all the dreams of harmony and fraternity and showed how the degeneracy that could inspire some crimes couldn't ask for a flower in a gun, but for real bullets, when Nixon had already resigned, when people were living in their everyday life the consequences of the Oil Crisis, when even artistically, the Disco was the new trend, the Punk movement was shouting the anger of a generation with no future, and families were back to a new consumerist era, why making this cinematic anachronism?
When director Milos Forman's film-version of the Broadway musical hair came out, I was 11.
And, what a beginning.The amazing choreographer, Twyla Tharp is in charge of bringing life to the many musical numbers, and, she does so with a brilliant eye, that works beautifully with the camera's eye - and ours.The first number is the well-known AQUARIUS, set in Central Park, as the sun is just breaking, and Claude watches exuberant hippies, move, dance, in a flowing style that expresses their love of life, youth, freedom and hope.It's so overwhelming, that even the cops on horseback become partners - to their horses, as they are pulled in to the rhythm.Most of the music in HAIR is well known, but, with Forman's direction, and Tharp's choreography, it's like seeing classic painting, under layers of varnish, and wear - but seeing it beautifully restored and looking at it anew.I cannot think of another choreographer, who so used the REAL world of New York City, and, the lens of the camera, to such brilliant effect (in fact, one moments love, is during AIN'T GOT NO, when one of the dancers is so into it, that he lets out an audible 'yeah).There's a cameo by Charlotte (FACTS OF LIFE's Mrs. Garrett) as a celebrant at an upscale reception, who becomes entranced with Berger (Treat Williams in his first starring role), and begins to dance with him.Amongst the performances - most of the cast are unknowns - are a powerful number by Cheryl Barnes (prior to this, I saw Ms. Barnes in the Broadway musical, THE MAGIC SHOW).
Since it made such a big splash from its 1967 debut, a film adaptation was probably inevitable.Having not seen any stage production of "Hair" to date, and only knowing it by reputation, I am not one to make comparisons to the original musical.