Shampoo (1975)

Director: Hal Ashby

Producer: Warren Beatty

Writers: Robert Towne; Warren Beatty

Actors: Warren Beatty; Julie Christie; Goldie Hawn; Lee Grant; Jack Warden; Tony Bill

Music: Paul Simon

Cinematography: László Kovács

Running time: 110 mins.

Rated: R

Beverly Hills  60s excess--- seen from the 70s.

       Shampoo is a satire on the narcissistic culture prevalent in the upper classes in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. It was made in 1975, so there was a several year period of reflection between the time depicted and the writing of the screenplay. Robert Towne and Warren Beatty, the writers knew what they were writing about having had direct experience with the subject matter. Towne was, and still is, the consumate L.A. writer (he wrote the screenplay for Chinatown), and Beatty is an actor who lived the culture of 1960s Hollywood/Beverly Hills. Both are Hollywood liberals, so the critique here is sharply directed at the self-absorbed, materialistic, hedonistic moneyed class they were very familiar with. The politics is blatant.

       The story takes place during one twenty-four hour period--- Election Day, November 4,1968--- hence the politics. Beatty plays George Roundy, a Beverly Hills hairdresser, who is trying to open his own salon while managing his overactive, multi-partnered sex life at the same time. George’s unrelenting heterosexual sex drive is beginning to catch up with him. He’s having simultaneous affairs with several women--- two of them the wife, Felicia, and the mistress, Jackie, of Lester Karpf (Jack Warden), a Beverly Hills millionaire businessman who George is hoping will help finance his business venture. George is ambitious and thinks he using his conquests to further his own ends; but not being the brightest guy on the block, he doesn’t realize that he’s just being exploited by these bored, unsatisfied, frustrated rich women. He winds up getting dumped by all of them and finding himself alone on a hill above Mulholland Drive after Jackie (Julie Christie), the one he really cared for, goes off with the money (Lester). 

          The social comments in this film are strong--- and the political even more so. Lester, the rich Republican businessman and Nixon supporter, who claims to be concerned about the disintegration of the moral fiber of our society, drives around in a Rolls Royce listening to stock reports while his wife Felicia (Lee Grant) wiles away her time in beauty salons--- when she’s not having sex with George. Lester is unfaithful to his wife with a woman who is unfaithful to him; and his daughter Lorna (Carrie Fisher) plays tennis all day and solicits sex from men she barely knows (George again). He may be a shrewd businessman, but he’s not sharp enough to notice that he’s being cuckolded twice, or maybe thrice--- if you include his daughter. Everybody in this movie is either using someone, and/or being used by someone.

        There are two Election Night parties the principal characters attend that spotlight the political divide prevalent at the time in upper L.A. society (a divide that is still with us). One is an old-line, conservative Republican reception at the Bistro on Cañon Drive in Beverly Hills. The attendees are older well-heeled establishment types. Pictures of Nixon, Agnew and Reagan abound as the partygoers await the intended victory. The other is at a private residence in Benedict Canyon attended by hip, young and seemingly liberal types--- also well-heeled and loose. But here alcohol, drugs, and sex are the order as opposed to the stuffy, ridiculousness evident at the Bistro. Both worlds depicted here are out of touch with reality and the problems afflicting the country at that time.

           Nixon is the elephant in the room in Shampoo. He’s everywhere lurking in the background, just waiting to take over. The year 1968 was when the sharp, political and social divisions in this country became deadly evident. It witnessed the assassinations of King and Kennedy, the riots that followed, the Chicago Democratic Convention debacle, and a war that refused to end. The New Frontier and the Great Society were coming to an end. Nixon was elected on the day this movie takes place with the slogan “Bring us together”; and from the vantage point of 1975 when the movie was made, and knowing what was to come: five more years of war in Vietnam, Watergate, and the eventual resignations of both Nixon and Agnew, it was obvious that that did not happen.

Note: See my overviews of Model Shop and Zabriskie Point for two other views of that pivotal year 1968 in L.A.