1967–1978: Breakthrough and stardom As Ashby was entering adult life, he moved from Utah to
Los Angeles, California, where he pursued a
bohemian lifestyle and ultimately became an assistant
film editor through a long apprenticeship. His career gained momentum when he served as the editor of
The Loved One (1965), an adaptation of the
Evelyn Waugh novel that involved such New Hollywood contemporaries as screenwriter
Terry Southern and cinematographer
Haskell Wexler. After being nominated for the
Academy Award for Film Editing in 1967 for
The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, His big break occurred one year later when he won the award for
In the Heat of the Night. Ashby often stated that the practice of editing provided him with the best filmmaking background outside of traditional university study and carried the techniques learned as an editor with him when he began directing. At the urging of mentor
Norman Jewison, Ashby directed his first film,
The Landlord—an early rumination on the social dynamics of
gentrification in
Park Slope, Brooklyn—in 1970. While his birth date placed him within the
Silent Generation, the filmmaker (who had been a habitual
marijuana smoker since 1950), eagerly embraced the
hippie lifestyle, adopting
vegetarianism and growing his hair long before it became
de rigueur. Over the next ten years, Ashby directed several acclaimed and popular films. Many were about outsiders and adventurers traversing the pathways of life. They included the off-beat romance
Harold and Maude (1971),
The Last Detail (1973), and the social satire
Being There (1979), with
Peter Sellers, giving the star a well-received role after many felt he had lapsed into self-parody. His most significant commercial success was
Shampoo (1975), a collaboration with
Warren Beatty and
Robert Towne that satirized late-1960s
sexual and
social mores through the life of a hairdresser modeled after such contemporaneous figures as
Jay Sebring and
Jon Peters.
Bound for Glory (1976), a muted biography of
Woody Guthrie starring
David Carradine, was the first film to use a
Steadicam. In June 1973,
Michael Douglas and
Saul Zaentz hired Ashby to direct ''
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'', after the original director
Miloš Forman became unavailable due to the reimposition of
censorship in his native
Czechoslovakia after the
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia and after Forman's initial replacement
Richard Rush was unable to secure studio funding. Ashby was responsible for casting
Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy, but this resulted in a nine-month delay during which Forman fled to the United States and was rehired as director. Arriving in the post-
Jaws and
Star Wars era,
Coming Home was one of the last films to encapsulate the modestly budgeted,
socially realistic ethos of the New Hollywood era, earning nearly $15 million in returns and rentals on a $3 million budget.
1979–1988: Later films Because of his critical success and dependable profitability, shortly after the success of
Coming Home, Ashby was able to form a production company, Northstar, under the auspices of
Lorimar. After
Being There, Ashby became more
reclusive, often retreating to his home in
Malibu Colony, a gated enclave in the city. Later, it was widely rumored in a likely
whisper campaign from Lorimar (whose executives clashed with the director) that Ashby had become dependent upon
cocaine, a drug that he only used intermittently after the production of
Bound for Glory. As a consequence of these rumors, he slowly became unemployable. Eva Gardos, an editor who worked with Ashby during the period, has asserted that his drug intake remained largely confined to
marijuana and
psilocybin. of
Second-Hand Hearts and ''
Lookin' to Get Out''. The latter, a
Las Vegas caper that reunited him with Voight and featured Voight's young daughter,
Angelina Jolie, was plagued by the increasingly strained relationship between Ashby and Lorimar. Filmed in 1979,
Second-Hand Hearts only received a poorly reviewed limited release in 1981 before being pulled from circulation for nearly thirty years. Belatedly released in October 1982, ''Lookin' to Get Out
earned a little under $1 million in returns and rentals on an estimated $17 million budget. During this period, Lorimar executives grew less tolerant of his increasingly perfectionist production (811,000 feet of film were used shooting Lookin' to Get Out'') and editing techniques, a montage in the latter film set to
The Police's "
Message in a Bottle" took six months to perfect but proved to be logistically unusable due to a Lorimar agreement with the
American Federation of Musicians. Initially set to helm
Tootsie after two years of negotiations and Ashby-directed wig and makeup tests, Lorimar executives blocked him from working on the film because part of the pre-production period overlapped with final work on the long-gestating ''Lookin' to Get Out'', which was eventually recut by the studio when Ashby's work was deemed to be unsatisfactory. (Decades later, Ashby's cut was rediscovered and released on DVD in 2009.) As
Dustin Hoffman had not offered a "formal commitment" to the production at the time of Ashby's dismissal, the director forfeited his $1.5 million fee. While post-production of ''Lookin' to Get Out'' continued, Lorimar permitted Ashby to film
The Rolling Stones'
1981 American tour documentary, ''
Let's Spend the Night Together, the director was a longtime fan of the group. He collapsed before the final filmed concert at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona, on December 13, 1981. Although Jeff Wexler said Ashby was "partying way beyond his capabilities with the Stones," Caleb Deschanel has said that Ashby (who directed the concert shoot on a gurney) simply had the flu. The film was well-received but gained little traction during a limited theatrical release. In September 1983, Ashby directed Solo Trans'', a
Neil Young concert video that was released the following year. ''
The Slugger's Wife'', with a screenplay written by
Neil Simon, was a critical and commercial failure. Ashby (whose cocaine use had accelerated throughout the shoot)
Unrealized projects ==Personal life and death==