2018 | USA | NR | 90 min.
When we think of the iconic filmmaking style of 1970s New Hollywood, our minds often go to the marquee names of Coppola or Scorsese. But perhaps no one was more emblematic of that legendary era than Hal Ashby, maverick director of zeitgeist classics like Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Coming Home (also at TCFF 2018!), and Being There. Sadly, Ashby’s subsequent battles with studios in the 1980s, his own personal demons, and his untimely death from cancer have obscured his name from history. Hal succeeds not just as a lovingly detailed portrayal, but also as an important reclamation and redemption project, emphasizing not the controversies, but rather the stunning body of socially conscious work left behind. Through interviews with Ashby collaborators like Jane Fonda and Dustin Hoffman—and with those he influenced, like Judd Apatow, Alexander Payne, and David O. Russell—an all-time great vividly emerges.