Hal AshbyFilmography

Born:: September 2, 1929 in Ogden, UT
Occupation:: Director, Editor
Birth name:: William Hal Ashby
Biography:: After briefly attending Utah State University, Hal Ashby worked in a minor capacity at the Universal script department. Moving to Republic Studios in 1953, he became an assistant film editor, graduating to full editor in 1963. Four years later, Ashby won the Best Editing Oscar for his work on In the Heat of the Night...Read More

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8 Million Ways to Die

Crew: Director

Actors: Jeff Bridges, Rosanna Arquette, Alexandra Paul, Randy Brooks, Andy Garcia

Synopsis: Jeff Bridges plays an LA sheriff who loses his job due to his inability to stay away from booze. While attending an AA meeting, Bridges is invited to attend a party, where he meets the beauteous Alexandra Paul. Also at the party is an old enemy of Bridges', druggie Randy Brooks. It doesn't take Read More

4/25/86
The Slugger's Wife

Crew: Director

Actors: Michael O'Keefe, Rebecca De Mornay, Martin Ritt, Randy Quaid, Cleavant Derricks

Synopsis: This routine film should have been called the "rock singer's husband" because it is about the life of a baseball player affected by his love for a singer. Darryl Palmer (Michael O'Keefe) plays for the Atlanta Braves, and when he walks into a nightclub and sees an attractive woman singing (Rebecca DeMornay Read More

1985
Lookin' to Get Out!

Crew: Director

Actors: Jon Voight, Ann-Margret, Burt Young, Bert Remsen, Jude Farese

Synopsis: Jon Voight starred and co-wrote the script for this comedy (directed by Hal Ashby) concerning two gamblers on the run from their debts who try to score big in Las Vegas. When Alex Kovas (Jon Voight) loses $10,000 to local New York City hoods Joey (Allen Keller) and Harry (Jude Farese) in a poker Read More

1982
Let's Spend the Night Together

Crew: Director

Actors: The Rolling Stones

Synopsis: This is the fifth feature-length film in which the Rolling Stones appeared, their most well-known being Gimme Shelter in 1970. In this instance, their 1980 performances at the Sun Devil stadium of Arizona State University in Tempe and at the indoor Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey are presented in Read More

1982
Second-Hand Hearts

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Blake, Barbara Harris, Sondra Blake, Bert Remsen, Shirley Stoler

Synopsis: After a string of box-office hits, including Coming Home and Being There, director Hal Ashby announced in 1979 that his next film would be a "personal" project called The Hamster of Happiness. Two years would pass before this effort would appear on screen, by which time it had been heavily Read More

1981
Being There

Crew: Director

Actors: Peter Sellers, Shirley MacLaine, Melvyn Douglas, Jack Warden, Richard Basehart, Richard Dysart

Synopsis: Having lived his life as the gardener on a millionaire's estate, Chance (Peter Sellers) knows of the real world only what he has seen on TV. When his benefactor dies, Chance walks aimlessly into the streets of Washington D.C., where he is struck by a car owned by wealthy Eve Rand (Shirley Read More

1979
Coming Home

Crew: Director

Actors: Jane Fonda, Jon Voight, Bruce Dern, Robert Ginty, Penelope Milford

Synopsis: Hal Ashby's 1978 melodrama examines the impact of the Vietnam War on the "war at home" among the men who fought it and the women in their lives. Left alone in Los Angeles when her gung-ho Marine husband Bob (Bruce Dern) heads to Vietnam in 1968, proper wife Sally Hyde (Jane Fonda) decides to Read More

1978
Bound for Glory

Crew: Director

Actors: David Carradine, Ronny Cox, Melinda Dillon, Gail Strickland, John Lehne

Synopsis: Adapted by Robert Getchell from Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Hal Ashby's biopic portrays a few pivotal years in the life of the celebrated folk singer and social activist. In the Depression 1930s, Midwesterner Guthrie (David Carradine) plays music locally but cannot make enough as a sign painter Read More

1976
Shampoo

Crew: Director

Actors: Howard Hesseman, Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, Goldie Hawn, Lee Grant, Jack Warden, Carrie Fisher

Synopsis: A frankly adult comedy about the sex lives of the aimless and the rich, Shampoo is also a pointed commentary on the demise of 1960s idealism at the dawn of the Nixon era. It is Election Day, 1968, and randy Beverly Hills hairdresser George Roundy (Warren Beatty) is too worried about attending to Read More

1975
The Last Detail

Crew: Director

Actors: Gilda Radner, Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, Randy Quaid, Clifton James, Michael Moriarty, Carol Kane

Synopsis: Two Navy "lifers" and one military innocent briefly attempt to thumb their nose at Authority in Hal Ashby's The Last Detail (1973). "Badass" Buddusky (Jack Nicholson) and "Mule" Mulhall (Otis Young) are assigned to escort young sailor Meadows (Randy Quaid, who beat out John Travolta for the part) Read More

1973
Harold and Maude

Crew: Director

Actors: Ruth Gordon, Bud Cort, Vivian Pickles, Cyril Cusack, Charles Tyner

Synopsis: A young man with a death wish and a 79-year-old high on life find love in Hal Ashby's cult black comedy. Deadpan rich boy Harold (Bud Cort) keeps staging elaborate suicide tableaux to get the attention of his mother (Vivian Pickles), but she keeps planning his brilliant future for him instead. Read More

1971
The Landlord

Crew: Director

Actors: Beau Bridges, Lee Grant, Diana Sands, Marki Bey, Pearl Bailey, Louis Gossett, Jr.

Synopsis: Wealthy, insensitive young Beau Bridges buys an inner-city tenement, planning to evict the present occupants and construct a luxury home for himself. But once he ventures into the tenement, he grows quite fond of the low-income ethnic types who dwell within. He even kicks over the traces of his Read More

1970
Gaily, Gaily

Crew: Associate Producer

Actors: Beau Bridges, Melina Mercouri, Brian Keith, George Kennedy, Hume Cronyn

Synopsis: Ben Hecht's reminiscences from his youth as a cub reporter in 1910 Chicago makes an uneasy transition to the screen in this Norman Jewison production. During the Galena, Illinois, Independence Day celebration of 1910, Ben Young (Beau Bridges) determines that it is time to seek his fortune and sets Read More

1969
The Thomas Crown Affair

Crew: Editor

Actors: Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Paul Burke, Jack Weston, Yaphet Kotto

Synopsis: Thomas Crown (Steve McQueen) is a self-made Boston millionaire who masterminds a bank heist in hopes of leaving it all behind. Tired of being part of the Establishment, he has hopes of pulling off the caper and flying to Rio. Erwin Weaver (Jack Weston) leads the cast of crooks who never actually Read More

1968
In the Heat of the Night

Crew: Editor

Actors: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, James Patterson, Scott Wilson

Synopsis: The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier Read More

1967
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming!

Crew: Editor

Actors: Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, Alan Arkin, Brian Keith, Jonathan Winters

Synopsis: Just because The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming was vastly overrated by contemporary critics does not make it any less amusing. The story gets under way when a Soviet submarine accidently gets lodged in a sandbar on the coast of a New England town. In his feature film debut, Alan Arkin Read More

1966
The Loved One

Crew: Editor

Actors: Robert Morse, Anjanette Comer, Jonathan Winters, Rod Steiger, James Coburn, Dana Andrews

Synopsis: The satire in Evelyn Waugh's darkly comic novel The Loved One was originally double-edged. The book was not only an attack on the Southern California funeral industry but also a lampoon of Hollywood's "British colony," those clannish, cricket-playing English actors of years gone by who bemoaned Read More

1965
The Cincinnati Kid

Crew: Editor

Actors: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld

Synopsis: Steve McQueen stars as the Cincinnati Kid, a crackerjack New Orleans stud poker player. Tired of chicken feed, the Kid decides to challenge The Man (Edward G. Robinson), the reigning poker champ, who is in town for a private game. The Shooter (Karl Malden), another gambling pro, arranges a game Read More

1965