Authoring Hal Ashby

Casting fresh light on New Hollywood – one of American cinema’s most fertile eras – Authoring Hal Ashby is the first sustained argument that, rather than a period dominated by genius auteurs, New Hollywood was an era of intense collaboration producing films of multiple-authorship. Centering its discussion on the films and filmmaking practice of director Hal Ashby (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There), Hunter’s work demonstrates how the auteur paradigm has served not only to diminish several key films and filmmakers of the era, but also to underestimate and undervalue the key contributions to the era’s films of cinematographers, editors, writers and other creative crew members. Placing Ashby’s films and career within the historical context of his era to show how he actively resisted the auteur label, the author demonstrates how this resistance led to Ashby’s marginalization by film executives of his time and within subsequent film scholarship. Through rigorous analysis of several films, Hunter moves on to demonstrate Ashby’s own signature authorial contributions to his films and provides thorough and convincing demonstrations of the authorial contributions made by several of Ashby’s key collaborators.Building on emerging scholarship on multiple-authorship, Authoring Hal Ashby lays out a creative new approach to understanding one of Hollywood cinema’s most exciting eras and one of its most vital filmmakers.

A very useful and lucid contribution to understanding of the films of Hal Ashby and the New Hollywood context in which they are situated. Makes a strong and valuable case for the benefits of an approach that acknowledges multiple contributions to authorship, both in this case and as a way of revisiting the films of the period more generally., In this extremely well researched and engagingly written study, Aaron Hunter performs a difficult balancing act. He challenges many of the foundational assumptions of Film Studies to do with directorial authorship, the evaluation of films, and canon formation. At the same time, he makes a strong case for the importance of one particular director, offering a wonderfully perceptive, complex analysis of his collaborative working methods and of the stylistic characteristics and thematic concerns of his films. He thus challenges us to reconsider not only Hal Ashby's work and status, but also our preconceptions about the New Hollywood and indeed our understanding of Film Studies as an academic discipline., With Authoring Hal Ashby: The Myth of the New Hollywood Auteur, Aaron Hunter provides an outstanding contribution to the nascent field of collective authorship studies of film. Combining archival research, interviews, and insightful film analyses, Hunter untangles the complex web of collaborative contributions in films directed by Hal Ashby. In doing so he achieves in this highly readable, thorough, and engaging work much more than an account of an overlooked director and his collaborative approach to film production. He demonstrates that auteur criticism of New Hollywood has mystified our understandings of both New Hollywood directors and the period itself. By tracing the contributions of key production crew to Ashby’s films, Hunter gives compelling cause for film scholars to reconsider New Hollywood through the lens of multiple authorship., In this impeccably-researched volume, Aaron Hunter makes a compelling case for reevaluating one of New Hollywood’s neglected auteurs, changing as a result the way we look at film history. It is a pleasure to read and a timely return to some of the 1970s most important and enjoyable films., Authoring Hal Ashby offers a fresh approach to understanding films of the seventies, which Hunter sees as a period not of directorial dominance but collaboration. The book shows how Ashby's unorthodox approach to filmmaking produced an assortment of intriguing films.

Aaron Hunter lectures in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University in Ireland. His interests include authorship in film and television, sound and music in film, and Hungarian cinema. His articles have appeared in Alphaville and the Journal of Film and Video.