Nixon looms in the background of the superb Warren Beatty sex farce Shampoo
Film Features Recommends
Watch This offers movie recommendations inspired by new releases, premieres, current events, or occasionally just our own inscrutable whims. This week: With Jon Stewart’s Irresistible headed for home-viewing platforms—and with November 3 on the horizon—we’re looking back at other films about elections or political campaigns.
Shampoo (1975)
Released in a crowded year for American movies, alongside such cultural heavyweights as Jaws, Nashville, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and Dog Day Afternoon, Shampoo was largely received as a raucous riff on the Don Juan-like persona of its writer-producer-star, Warren Beatty. Sporting a fabulously coiffed head of hair and a look of perpetual befuddlement, Beatty plays George Roundy, a horny hairdresser who can’t keep his hands off his Beverly Hills clientele. Given this ostensibly trivial scenario (co-written by Chinatown scribe Robert Towne), the fact that the film opens on Election Eve 1968 and ends the morning of Nixon’s first win might seem like a desperate bid for topicality. (The movie was released in February 1975, only six months after Tricky Dick resigned from office.) But far more than an opportunistic satire of ’60s sexual politics and political hypocrisy, Shampoo is a tragedy of terribly personal short-sightedness. In this respect, it’s probably a truer election movie than most.
From a gorgeously lit opening tryst that unfolds in near-total darkness (the superlative work of cinematographer László Kovács), the film’s first hour mainly observes Beatty’s George opposite an ace ensemble of feminine foils: Lee Grant as upper-crust housewife Felicia, George’s latest fling; Goldie Hawn as sweet, fresh-faced actress Jill, his current girlfriend; a commanding Julie Christie as Jackie, his frustrated former flame; even the late Carrie Fisher in a brief but memorable turn as Felicia’s spiteful younger daughter. Amidst these personal entanglements, George is also trying to get his own beauty salon going, which brings him in contact with Felicia’s financier husband Lester (Jack Warden), who also happens to be having an affair with Jackie. All this builds toward a pair of memorably staged parties with all the principal figures in attendance—the first a staid, self-serious affair with fat-cat Republican donors, the second a mansion-set bacchanal that doubles as a veritable museum exhibit of counterculture markers. (Tracks from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band echo throughout the evening.)
But despite the portentous election-day setting (not to mention a few pointed shots of Nixon in the background, on television screens, posters, and portraits), there’s not much actual political talk in Shampoo. Balancing screwball antics with convincingly shaded emotional clashes, the film is so involving on a dramatic level that it arguably doesn’t even require the political backdrop. Both Warden and Christie become more prominent as the movie unfolds, and they share a jaded pragmatism that plays well off of Beatty’s schoolboy charm, which keeps the entire affair emotionally even-keeled. And while Shampoo is replete with farcical humor (e.g. Christie’s memorable “I want to suck his cock!” during the donor dinner), it’s readily capable of shifting into a more somber register, eventually conveying the aching toll of George’s endless itinerary of mindless sexual encounters. (“You never stop moving! You never go anywhere!” Jill tells him toward the end.)
The film’s MVP, though, is probably director Hal Ashby. His long shots are masterful without being ostentatious, and fully in tune with this story of a man unable to look past his own life and libido. At its best, Shampoo demonstrates how politics slip into the disorder of daily life, and how easily time can slip away without our noticing. In the film’s magnificent final shot, George looks out into the smoggy distance of a landscape on the cusp of transformation. It’s unlikely that he registers a change in circumstance beyond his own.
Availability: Shampoo is available to stream on The Criterion Channel and to stream for free on Crackle. It can also be rented or purchased digitally from Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, YouTube, VUDU, and Microsoft.
53 Comments
For the life of me I never understood why they never made a sequel to this movie and called it “Conditioner”
Or three of them- “Rinse” and “Repeat.” Just like the Spider-man movies.
Or “Poo” — “Not a sham, the real thing!”
I’m too young to have any real memories of 1975, but would audiences at the time have regarded that Beatty coif as a comical exaggeration, or was that look just something people did?Also, Beatty in that hair style would have been perfect in an historical epic about Joachim Murat, the Dandy King of Naples during the Napoleonic era.
Have you ever seen a picture of Eric Clapton? Well, this is what he did to his fairly straight hair in the late 60s.I believe Pink Floyd later referred to the “obligatory Hendrix perm”.
Not just not an exaggeration, but he was considered super hot
I love this movie, and I actually had the chance to talk to Goldie Hawn about it one time (she and Kurt Russell live in my neighborhood, and I’ve seen them in stores around here several times over the years. They’re actually quite chatty!) I told her how great I think the movie is, and that she’s very good in it, although her character is annoying. She told me she agreed, but the reason she liked the role was that this annoying, not especially bright young woman is the only one at the end of the movie who ends up happy! She found that interesting. It never occurred to me, but I think she’s right! (That said, Jack Warden should have won an Oscar for it. I think three of the all-time great Oscar screw-overs for supporting actor are George C. Scott in “Dr. Strangelove,” Jack Warden in “Shampoo,” and Robert Duvall in “Apocalypse Now.” Not that it matters. The performances remain that good.)
Some pretty tough competition in ‘75.
Winner
Robert De Niro The Godfather Part II
Nominees
Fred Astaire The Towering Inferno
Jeff Bridges Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
Michael V. Gazzo The Godfather Part II
Lee Strasberg The Godfather Part II
And some not so tough. I mean, Fred Astaire in The Towering Inferno? Gimme a break.Also, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot would make a good “Watch This”.
Fred Astaire was in The Towering Inferno?
Fuck you. Fred Astaire danced his ass off in The Towering Inferno.
Please, that performance is SHIT compared to the one he turned in for “Viva Knievel”
Plus, his proto-disco bow tie was so,huge he was able to use it as a hang glider to rescue the survivors with.
Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is SO great. Besides Jeff Bridges (who kills in it) I genuinely love the performances of George Kennedy and Geoffrey Lewis.
You’re really not dancing around with your criticism!
Those are the nominees for films released in 1974, for the awards given in 1975. The Supporting Actor Oscar nominees for 1975 films were: WINNER – George Burns – The Sunshine Boys as Al LewisBrad Dourif – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as Billy Bibbit
Burgess Meredith – The Day of the Locust as Harry Greener
Chris Sarandon – Dog Day Afternoon as LeonJack Warden – Shampoo as Lester Karpf
I wondered if I did that right after I posted the list.
A much weaker list, IMHO, Jack Warden could easily take that. His problem might’ve been that Jack Warden just kinda always plays Jack Warden, so it didn’t stand out, so probably not a top three snub for me.
I don’t remember the movie, but I’m guessing George Burns was mostly a sentimental Lifetime Achievement Award sort of pick, much like Astaire’s nom in 75.
I’m not so sure, Brad Dourif was absolutely tremendous as I recall. I can’t comment on The Day of The Locust, as I haven’t seen it, but Burgess Meredith was one of the greats.
I think Burns is really good in “The Sunshine Boys”, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re wrong regarding a LAA type vote. On the other hand, Burns was primarily known for radio and TV at the time and the most significant part of his movie career came after this.
Astaire was their pean to Old Hollywood in what was a younger, hipper slate of nominations that year (the Academy tended to swing like a pendulum between Old Huard and Young Turks in the ’70s).
“I think three of the all-time great Oscar screw-overs for supporting actor are George C. Scott in “Dr. Strangelove….”It was determined early on that Kubrick directed Scott to play his role *straight*. It was clear he did not have the depth to play it tongue-in-cheek. He just could not wrap his head around the irony, humor and absurdity behind the whole show.
Whatever the motivation, it’s a brilliant performance. He more than holds his own in a room with TWO Peter Sellers in peak form.
I think you’ve got this mixed up. Slim Pickens was the one who supposedly was only given the script for his scenes, because Kubrick wanted him to play it straight. With Scott, the story was that Kubrick tricked him by asking for insanely over-the-top takes from him as an exercise just to get him warmed up before really shooting the scene. Despite assuring Scott no one would see those takes other than the crew on set, Kubrick used many of them in the finished film, which pissed Scott off to no end. That’s the opposite of playing it straight. There’s no way you get that performance if Scott couldn’t wrap his head around the “irony, humor, and absurdity” of the film.In any case, what difference does it make? Should we be asking how many takes and which directorial tricks it took to get the performances from all acting nominees, or should we just judge what wound up on screen?
Jack Warden is fantastic in this. “Now that’s what I call fuckin’!” Also, I love his line delivery when he says, “babe, it’s 5 o’clock, have a drink.” On the politics of the film, one of my favourite little bits is when Warden’s driving in his car, listening to the financial news when a report about Vietnam comes on. He immediately turns the dial and lands on a different station running financial news. It’s one of the few nods to the war in the film and says so much about the people populating this stratum (or intersecting strata) of LA society. Fantastic film.
Peter O’Toole for Lawrence of Arabia is it for me.
Along with the late great Mr. O’Toole in Lion in Winter losing to Cliff Robertson in Charly… arrghhh
What was most significant at the time is the women are presented as having their own sexual agency and George, for whatever faults he may have, wasn’t a ‘predator’ in the modern vernacular. The film is egalitarian in whose a user and whose getting used.
Yeah, the film goes out of its way to paint George as a bimbo, basically; as if he doesn’t even really want to sleep with all these women, but they all want him and goshdarnit, he just can’t help but try to make them happy (whether it’s by giving them screaming orgasms or fabulous haircuts). I don’t know if that was Beatty’s way of trying to whitewash his image at the time or if it was meant to be ironic or if that’s legitimately how he saw himself re: women. Given some of the stories out there, I’d say the first thing. Still, great film.
One of the unsung movies of the 70s. This and the episodes of Mrs. America set in the lead-up and aftermath of the 1972 election have put into perspective how history really does repeat. I hope that we’ll learn from our mistakes this time.
In a post-November 2016 funk, I got this from Netflix (before it was added to the Criterion Collection and I got the fab blu-ray). This was the envelope.I reported it to Netflix customer service. The customer service rep was aghast. Not only was this defacement of Netflix property, it was incorrect!
…. wait. Netflix still sent out DVDs in 2016?
Netflix STILL delivers DVDs, dude.
Ummm… You just happen to have a picture of that standing by for moments such as these? That was forward thinking.
It was so egregious that I had to take a picture.
Still. That is professional-level preparedness.
I see they got my message!
I have watched this movie a couple of times, and man…I just don’t get it. It must be one of those “you just had to be there” type of films that captures a zeitgeist I wasn’t old enough to experience (I was 3 years old in 1968).
Having read about Jay Sebring and his life in Hollywood circles (as part of the backdrop to the Manson murders), I see a bit of that in Beatty’s character, but overall…nope, I totally miss the point. Guess I am hopeless.
the film is so involving on a dramatic level that it arguably doesn’t even require the political backdropBut then it would be a completely different film; the political backdrop is integral to the overarching theme. The Godfather would be a great movie even if the first line weren’t “I believe in America,” but ignoring the parallels between Michael’s inexorable path toward moral compromise and this country’s would have made it less resonant and iconic.
i’ve never seen this movie…but as a kid, i enjoyed the “mad magazine” version! does that count?
MAD magazine parodies and Carol Burnett Show spoofs – they both count!
Honestly, I think MAD and Carol Burnett Show really had consistently good movie parodies, some of the best. I think in both cases, it was because the writers really knew the source material, so the parody wasn’t just full of random jokes – rather the humor was very specific to the film being spoofed. As a result, they often transcended spoofery and made salient critical elements points. I always loved how the panels in MAD often had characters mouthing very specific criticisms of the screenplays of the movies they were in.The Carol Burnett Show ones were also so great because they showed such great affection for, in addition to knowledge of, their sources. “The Little Foxies” is SO CLOSE to “The Little Foxes”, just sped up and tweaked for laughs, but the characters ARE THE SAME characters as in the original. Especially the loathsome Tim Conway/Dan Duryea – hardly any exaggerration at all. And “Mildred’s Fatburgers”, from “Mildred Fierce”…come on. “Don’t you want to hear about my…shabby…shoes?”
Hey, look what I just found out reading the “Carol Burnett Show” Wikipedia page! Many of [”The Carol Burnett Show”’s] film parodies were written or co-written by Stan Hart, Arnie Kogen and Larry Siegel, all prolific contributors for Mad magazine, with each authoring dozens of the magazine’s own movie satires.
It’s no coincidence that Mad and Carol Burnett were both known for their movie parodies. Stan Hart, Arnie Kogen and Larry Siegel, who were writers on The Carol Burnett Show, were also among Mad’s Usual Gang of Idiots. I see another comment made the same point. Oh well.
With Tim Conway as ‘Warren Pretty’!
I had no idea that Heaven Can Wait was such a reunion. Now, I really want to see this. I recall commercials for it from probably back then, and they played up Goldie Hawn acting ditzy, so that is all that I ever thought about it. Does she say “a man who lies cannot love” in it? Why am I remembering a 45 year old tv commercial for a movie that I never saw?
the scene in the bathroom, when Jack Warden interrupts Warren and Lee, is so great. Jack’s second thought… checks again… “the steam!” “Oh, right…”
No mention that Beatty’s character is based on Jon “giant mechanical spider” Peters?
Also based on Manson victim Jay Sebring.
I thought he was based on Jay Sebring…
A rather racy trailer showing what appears to be simulated fellatio in the salon…and also Tricky Dickey, you now seem so quaint…
This and Heaven Can Wait seem like the most overrated pair of movies ever. They’re both just so… minor, and for some reason are treated like monumental works. I do not get it. I like Reds but the Beatty love fest of this era is baffling to me.
Warren Beatty IS The Creepy Pervert!
That final shot is fucking brutal.
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