Hair (film)


Hair is a 1979 American musical anti-war comedy-drama film based on the 1968 Broadway musical Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical about a Vietnam War draftee who meets and befriends a "tribe" of hippies on his way to the army induction center. The hippies introduce him to marijuana and LSD, and their environment of unorthodox relationships and draft evasion.
The film was directed by Miloš Forman and adapted for the screen by Michael Weller. Cast members include John Savage, Treat Williams, Beverly D'Angelo, Annie Golden, Dorsey Wright, Don Dacus, Cheryl Barnes, Melba Moore, and Ronnie Dyson. Dance scenes were choreographed by Twyla Tharp, and were performed by the Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation. The film was nominated for two Golden Globes: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture.

Plot

Hair is a rock musical focusing on the lives of two young men against the backdrop of the hippie counterculture of the Vietnam era.
Claude Hooper Bukowski is a naive Oklahoman sent off to New York City after being drafted by the Army. Before his draft board-appointment, Claude takes a self-guided tour of New York, where he encounters a close-knit "tribe" of hippies led by George Berger. As Claude looks on, the hippies panhandle from a trio of horseback riders including Sheila Franklin, a debutante from Short Hills, New Jersey. Claude later catches and mounts a runaway horse, which the hippies have rented, and with which Claude exhibits his riding skills to Sheila. Claude then 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 which gives Sheila's address in Short Hills, New Jersey. The tribe members—LaFayette "Hud" Johnson, Jeannie Ryan, and "Woof Dacshund"—crash a private dinner party to introduce Claude to Sheila, who secretly enjoys the disruption of her rigid environment. After Berger and company are arrested, Claude uses his last $50 to bail Berger out of jail—where Woof's refusal to have his hair cut leads into the title song of the soundtrack.
When Sheila is unable to borrow any money from her father, Berger returns to his parents' home. His mother 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, in order to keep him out of the Army, Sheila shows up to apologize. Claude's "trip" reflects his inner conflict over which of three worlds he fits in with: his own native Oklahoman farm culture, Sheila's upper-class society, or the hippies' free-wheeling environment.
After snapping out of his acid trip, Claude has a falling-out with Berger and the tribe members, ostensibly due to a practical joke they pull 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 in New York when Claude writes to Sheila from Nevada. She, in turn, shares the news with Berger and his friends. Berger devises a scheme to visit Claude in Nevada. Meanwhile, Hud's fiancée—with whom he has a son, LaFayette Jr.—wants to marry as they had apparently planned to earlier. The tribe members trick Sheila's brother Steve out of his car, then head west to visit Claude.
Arriving at the Army training center where Claude is stationed, the hippies are turned away...ostensibly because the base is on alert, but also because the MP on duty doesn't like their looks. Sometime later, Sheila chats up army sergeant Fenton at a local bar. She lures the sergeant, with intimations of sex, to an isolated desert road, acquiring his uniform. The hippies steal Fenton's car, and Berger cuts his hair and puts on the uniform, then drives the sergeant's car onto the Army base. He finds Claude and offers to take his place for the next headcount so that Claude can meet Sheila and the others for a going-away picnic they're having for him in the desert.
As fate would have it, 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 never discovered; clearly horrified at the prospect of joining the war, he is herded onto the plane to be shipped out. Claude arrives back to see the barracks empty and frantically runs after Berger's plane but is unable to reach it before it takes off for Southeast Asia.
Months later, Claude, Sheila, and the tribe gather around Berger's grave in Arlington National Cemetery, whose grave marker shows that he was killed in Vietnam. As "Let the Sunshine In" plays, they mourn the loss of their friend. The movie ends with what appears to be a full-scale peace-protest in Washington, D.C.

Cast

The film's plot and soundtrack both differed greatly from those of the original musical stage play; consequently, the original creators were unhappy with the adaptation.

Plot

and James Rado, who wrote the original musical along with composer Galt MacDermot, were unhappy with the film adaptation, saying 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. They 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.

Reception

The film received generally favorable reviews from film critics at the time of its release; it currently holds an 87% "fresh" rating on review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes from 23 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."
Writing in 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."

Box office

Hair grossed $15.3 million in the United States and Canada. By the end of 1979 it had grossed $38,290,492 worldwide.

Awards and honors

The film was shown out of competition at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival.
At the 37th Golden Globe Awards, the film was nominated for a Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and Williams was nominated for New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture – Male. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Film at the 1980 César Awards, losing to Woody Allen's Manhattan.
Years later, Forman cited his loss of his moral rights to the film to the studio as eventually leading to his 1997 John Huston Award for Artists Rights from the Film Foundation:
The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

Home media

Hair was released on VHS by 20th Century Fox Video in 1982 with later VHS releases from MGM/UA Home Video. The film was released on DVD by MGM Home Entertainment on April 27, 1999, as a Region 1 widescreen DVD, and on Blu-Ray on June 7, 2011.