Authoring new Hollywood : auteurs, canons, and the films of Hal Ashby

• Main Author: Hunter, Aaron Mark
• Published: Queen's University Belfast 2013
• Subjects: 791.430233092
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.601784

Hal Ashby's career as a Hollywood film director and the films he directed have been largely marginalized in the critical discourse on the New Hollywood era. While interest in Ashby has shown some recent signs of increasing. during m OSI of the thirty years since the end of New Hollywood, scholarship has struggled to accommodate him or his films in received definitions of New Hollywood. A period that has been the focus of increased scholarly attention, New Hollywood is regularly described as an era of great directors, auteurs whose practise was driven by and constructed upon their individual talent and their ability to express their ideas and vision in manners unique to them. Some results of this model have included limited attention to the contributions of non-directing cast and crew, and an overriding tendency to downplay the films of directors such as Ashby who were open to practicing a more collaborative, multiple-author approach to filmmaking. This thesis interrogates Ashby's historical and critical positioning in regards to New Hollywood. In doing so, it relies on extensive historical and archival analysis to evaluate Ashby's status within 1970s Hollywood and his reception by film scholarship. It also combines film analysis with detailed examination of Ashby's filmmaking practise in order to recognize the individual and combined contributions of Ashby and his cast and crew as multiple authors of the films he directed. By analysing several of Ashby's films as well as placing his films and career within the context of the New Hollywood era, this thesis argues for a re-evaluation of Ashby and his films in light of emerging scholarship on multiple-authorship and its role in the making of Hollywood films. Consequently, the thesis opens the door for further reassessment of prevailing constructions of authorship and canonicity in this vital period of Hollywood history.