HAiR Remake?

[Usnavi]

Posted: 1/6/09 at 2:41pm

with all the talk of remakes lately i've been thinking about some shows that probably would benefit from one.

i am in no way knocking the 1979 film version but everyone here knows that the original show was totally re-imagined for the screen.

should HAiR be remade as a feature film that is more faithful/representative of the vision of it's original creators Ragni, Rado & MacDermor or should the new revival be eventually filmed at some point?



Updated On: 1/6/09 at 02:41 PM

[Carol Channing Doll]

Posted: 1/6/09 at 3:41pm

I doubt that they would film the current production:
They'd have to have the whole cast agree to be nude on the big screen.
I do believe that Lincoln Center filmed HAiR in the park this summer... but the same nudity issues apply.
You know the JCS remake? Sure it wasn't amazing, but it did capture how to re-imagine a production... and it still kept the whole "stage" theatrical aspect. Maybe something like this shot using various NYC 'timeless' locations: central park, tompkins square, Jim Rado's apt, etc..?

[metropolis10111]

Posted: 1/6/09 at 4:11pm

How fun would it be to see the Walking In Space number in 3-D?

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 1/6/09 at 5:09pm

The only way I can really see it working if it were a "Shakespeare in Love" type story. I mean, the war in Iraq is ongoing, but with Obama in office, "change" is today's buzz-word, and suddenly HAIR is back to irrelevant, just as it was before the war kicked in (about 2003). And I personally think with all the backstage stories and **** that went on, you could do a great "Shakespeare in Love" type tale about Gerry Ragni and Jim Rado.

[Kad]

Posted: 1/6/09 at 5:18pm

Hair, as it is written, would not work as a film. Period.

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 1/11/09 at 10:27am

It might, given a bit of careful tweaking. A lot of Sixties film like "Blow-Up", "Invocation of My Demon Brother", and (to some extent) large parts of "Easy Rider" were essentially plotless to the same extent as "Hair." Done right, at the time, it could have worked, and been a hit. Unfortunately, it never happened, and in today's market, such a film would have no chance of breaking even, which is why I suggest the "Shakespeare in Love" type plot line where it's about them writing the show, and includes aspects of the show within it.

[Spacedog78]

Posted: 6/5/10 at 3:11am

I am sitting watching Hair on HBO and can not believe what a horrible job they did with this film. I truly feel if they re-made this film, keeping it true to the score and twists of reality like "Across the Universe" it could be amazing.

[BroadwayGuy12]

Posted: 6/5/10 at 9:13am

I feel like the reason the original HAIR film never worked - and why any remake wouldn't work - is because, for a show like this, the medium is the message. In the theatre, the show's messages of love and acceptance really hit home because the audience becomes part of the experience. Between the tribe roaming about the audience throughout the show and everyone being invited on stage at the end for the dance party, the audience members become one of the tribe and feel more connected to what's going on in the story. No matter how good any film version is, this connection would be lost on screen. It's the theatrical medium that allows this type of storytelling to succeed. Just my opinion.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 6/5/10 at 9:28am

i am in no way knocking the 1979 film version but everyone here knows that the original show was totally re-imagined for the screen.

Please, knock it. Black Boys and White Boys sung by army recruiters? Berger taking Claude's place in the war? The nonsense with I Got Life? Awful, awful adaptation.


I am sitting watching Hair on HBO and can not believe what a horrible job they did with this film. I truly feel if they re-made this film, keeping it true to the score and twists of reality like "Across the Universe" it could be amazing.

I said something similar last year- that Across the Universe felt more like what Hair was supposed to be than the Hair movie did, and was lambasted for it by a Hair "superfan" (who loved the show so much that they gave up on it completely with the new cast and moved on to American Idiot).

I think Hair could work as a movie, but not as the typical linear plotline movie that most people can't see past.

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 6/5/10 at 10:27am

Update: Caught up with Jim Rado recently, and apparently he's written a screenplay adaptation of the new revised version and is shopping it around as HAIR Uncensored. Just sounds like a bad porn to me. Apparently there's a company in California that claimed to have wound up with the film rights to the show in the fall-out of United Artists during the early Eighties, and it's on the market for $2 million. Once informed, Rado was interested in acquiring them, so let's see what happens.

Personally, I'm not big on Rado's penchant for revision. Since the end of the Nineties, Rado has been revising the show again and again, sometimes for its betterment, but mostly making it worse. There were two other screen drafts in the (LOOOOONG) lead-up to the '79 film, one by the Ragni/Rado team and one by Colin Higgins (to have been directed by Hal Ashby). I would like to see either be made into something ahead of Rado's revised script.

Updated On: 6/5/10 at 10:27 AM

[yay_gerb]

Posted: 6/5/10 at 10:34am

they should remake a HAiR movie. the first one was to different from the original story to be considered a solid telling of the story. the only problem is that everyone and their momma would be saying that it's to similar to Across The Universe.

[gvendo2005]

Posted: 8/23/10 at 7:39am

I hate necro-posting, but I've begun throwing together some of my ideas for how to re-do Hair on film. Anyone with their two cents can contribute their point of view on individual blog entries at the link below.
HAIR by the Strand

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 5:19pm

"Black Boys and White Boys sung by army recruiters?"

Aww, c'mon, that was cute.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 8/24/10 at 11:08pm

In 1979 Milos Forman was embarrassed by the material, the hippy dippiness was so passe at that point and the title song was largely remembered as a hit song by the original Partridge Family, The Cowsells. It was so clear he just wanted to get through that number so they did it about 180 beats per minute.

The reason the revival worked so well was the complete embracing of the material, naivety and all.

[missthemountains]

Posted: 6/28/13 at 9:36pm

I saw a production recently and think that this material would be ripe for a remake. According to Wikipedia (which I know is not the most accurate source) it claims the creators have disowned the film, claiming a film version of "Hair" in their eyes hasn't been made yet. Is there any truth to this?

[dramamama611]

Posted: 6/28/13 at 10:13pm

Yes, they hated it.

So did I, it was awful.

Posted: 6/28/13 at 10:33pm

Wasn't the remake already made a few years ago???


SEE: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 6/28/13 at 10:40pm

Across the Universe was more a snapshot of the same timeframe that blatantly ripped off some imagery from Forman's Hair, but added a Beatles score because you can't try hard enough to create a Fab Four jukebox show that doesn't involve four guys who don't look like them trying to look like them.

[gabybon]

Posted: 6/29/13 at 6:40am

I Hope (and prefer) for a dvd/blu ray of the Central Park last revival instead that a movie remake...

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 6/29/13 at 8:00am

^ Keep dreaming. The revival, for everything it got right, missed a few points as well.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/29/13 at 7:28pm

Hair, as it is written, would not work as a film. Period.

I didn't see the recent revival, but the premise of the original HAIR is that we are watching a "happening", an avant-garde style of the sixties that was usually heavily improvised.

How would one ever capture that feeling on film? Celluloid is in the can and the actors are certainly NOT making it up as they go along.

I think we should just face the fact that the Milos Forman adaptation is one of the best movie musicals since the Golden Age and rewatch the DVD of it another 50 times!

[OperaBwayLover]

Posted: 6/29/13 at 8:04pm

It's funny this thread should pop up. I just watched the movie for the first time earlier today, and while there were some decent parts, the whole thing was pretty much crap in comparison to the stage version. I didn't feel sorry for Berger at the end like I was supposed to, Claude came across as a wuss, and Jeanie's constant hang-dog expression got on my nerves. And some of the better songs were cut.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

Posted: 6/29/13 at 8:05pm

A) It's not, Gaveston, with all due respect.

B) It's really simple to tie the loose strands of Hair together, and the irony is that to do so borrows from its later descendant, Rent.

Following context clues in the (admittedly incomprehensible to some, and kind of minimized in the revival) script of the play, Claude wants to be a filmmaker. They're there:

"Claude Hooper Bukowski
Finds that it's groovy to hide in a movie
Pretends he's Fellini or Antonioni
Or also his countryman Roman Polanski
All rolled into one..." (Manchester, England)

and

"I fashion my future on films in space..." (The Flesh Failures)

It was a subplot in the show that was eliminated more and more as the book became a "non-book." If he wasn't drafted, or if he had survived Vietnam, who knows what might have come from the mind of the young Polack who preferred to believe he was from Manchester? Could he have had a good shot at rivaling Lucas or Spielberg, who had their heyday around this time as well? Who knows?

Anyway, less waxing philosophical, more getting to the point. My film of Hair would have Claude sort of be like Mark in Rent: armed with a Super 8 camera, or a sketchpad he's constantly drawing storyboards on, depending on the scene. An early day Martin Scorsese, almost. Everything we see is filtered through Claude's lens. In the course of the movie, fades and scene openings could be done by initially seeing his silent mini-flicks that we enter into (turns into sound and color) or one of his sketches that 'comes alive' as we get closer to it. This also allows us to open up the stage setting to bigger scenes within New York, which in the heady days of the Sixties was a hotbed of performance art, demonstrations, "Be-Ins," etc. Claude shoots without a script and films what he sees, and boy, what rich material he has to draw from!

Take the lyrics for "Manchester" as an example, and you have a veritable roadmap! The darker more brooding scenes (Berger's treatment of Sheila) have the feeling and flow of early Polanski; heady scenes like the Be-In hearken back to Antonioni's best work in such films as Blow-Up, and the more psychedelic or group scenes bear traces of Fellini's influence. All of this is totally in keeping with things suggested by Claude's character. It's apparent that sometimes, as close together as the Tribe keeps, Claude feels separate from them ("I'm in-vis-ib-le..."). He goes through bouts of distance from the rest of the group. The camera enhances his detachment, which is growing as he realizes that as carefree as the Tribe seems to be, they don't face what's really going on, and when you get right down to it, they're not really all that different at heart from their forebears (e.g., Berger's treatment of Sheila).

Updated On: 6/29/13 at 08:05 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 6/29/13 at 10:12pm

HAIR is one of my favorite film musicals, but I'll admit it has more in common with SINGING IN THE RAIN than the stage musical, g.e.l.g.i.

But film is a different medium and very few stage musicals have succeeded when transferred too literally to film. (There are exceptions, but not that many.)

I certainly agree Forman's film is not the stage show. But as I said above, there are some inherent problems to a literal adaptation.

With all due respect to you and Dramamama, I still say that if one views the Forman film as its own entity--and not as a cinematic version of the stage show--it is a masterpiece. (Just compare Treat Williams on the table singing "I Got Life" with the derivative "La Vie Boheme" sequence in the film of RENT.)

Since everyone seems to love the last revival, maybe the solution is to mount a revival of that and film it for TV. It wouldn't be exactly "live", but at least the viewer would know it was live at the time of filming.

Updated On: 6/29/13 at 10:12 PM