film - Hair film
Photograph by michael mucciolion Flickr.
Hair is a 1979 film adaptation of the 1968 Broadway musical of the same title about a Vietnam war draftee who meets and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to the army induction center. Opinions are mixed as to whether the film was an improvement over the stage show. In the original stage show, the character Claude Bukowski is a hippie who eventually joins the Army and is sent to Vietnam.
In the movie, the plot was changed so that Claude comes to New York City from Oklahoma after he is drafted and befriends a group of hippies before being sent to Army training camp. In Central Park, he meets a troupe of free-spirited hippies led by a young man named George Berger (Treat Williams), who introduce him to a debutante named Sheila Franklin (Beverly D Angelo) when they crash a dinner party at her home.
In the play, Claude is from dirty, mucky, polluted Flushing, in Queens, but wishes he was from Manchester, England, which explained why he sang a song with that title. Inevitably, Claude is sent off to boot camp in Nevada, but Berger and his band of merry pranksters including Woof Daschund (Don Dacus), LaFayette Hud Johnson (Dorsey Wright) and Jeannie Ryan (Annie Golden) follow him.
The film omits the songs The Bed , Dead End , Oh Great God of Power , I Believe in Love , Going Down , Abie Baby, Air, My Conviction, Frank Mills, and What a Piece of Work is Man from the musical. Sheila flirts with an off-duty Sergeant in order to steal his uniform, which she gives to Berger.
In the original play it is Claude who dies in Vietnam. Original writers James Rado and Gerome Ragni were unhappy with the film. He uses it to extract Claude from the base for a last meeting with Sheila, taking his place, but while Claude is away, the unit flies out to Vietnam, taking Berger with them. A few verses from Manchester, England and a small portion of Walking In Space have been removed.
Dance scenes were choreographed by Twyla Tharp and performed by the Twyla Tharp Dance Foundation. The film was nominated for a Best Picture Golden Globe Award, and Williams was nominated for a Golden Globe as New Star of the Year in a Motion Picture - Male. In this adaptation of the hit Broadway musical, a naive farm boy from Oklahoma named Claude Hooper Bukowski (John Savage) heads to New York City to enter the Army and serve in the Vietnam War.
While the songs Don t Put It Down and Somebody To Love are not specifically sung by characters in the movie, they are both used as background or instrumental music for scenes at the army base. The hippies introduce him to their environment of marijuana, LSD, and unorthodox relationships. The film was directed by Miloš Forman, who was nominated for a César Award for his work on the film.
Many of the songs have been shortened, sped up, rearranged, or assigned to different characters to allow for the differences in plot. The latter five songs were originally recorded for the film, but were eventually cut, as they slowed the pace of the film.
They can be found on the motion picture soundtrack album, although they were omitted on the 1990 reissue. There are several other differences from songs in the movie and as they appear on the soundtrack, mainly in omitted verses and different orchestrations. The plot is changed in the film.
The song remains in the film, though with a joking introduction by Berger - he just got off the boat - to make it apply to Oklahoma native Claude. In the musical, Sheila Franklin is a hippie who falls in love with Berger, not Claude. Jeannie was knocked up by a speed freak, not by either Woof or Hud. Arguably, the most extreme change is Berger s death in the finale.
They introduce him to their psychedelically-inspired style of living, and eventually drive to Nevada to visit him at a training camp.
