TooFineAPoint
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RE: Thinking of doing a course/career in hairdressing/beauty salon stuff. Thoughts?
(09-23-2016 10:28 PM)LeoneVolpe Wrote: Haven't you guys ever seen the 1975 Warren Beatty movie, "Shampoo"?
(SPOILERS AHEAD)
"Shampoo" was written by Robert Towne, and was loosely based on "The Country Wife," a Restoration comedy written in 1675 by William Wycherley, whose protagonist Horner feigns impotence in order to be allowed into the company of married women, who he then seduces. Beatty's character in "Shampoo" is considered non-threatening due to the stereotype that male hairdressers are gay, even though he spends nearly the entire movie banging every chick he comes into contact with.
Here are some comments from Robert Towne, the film's screenwriter, on his inspiration to write "Shampoo":
Quote:I was going with a beautiful girl, a dancer – in fact, Fred Astaire’s last dancing partner. She was also an actress, but mainly a dancer. Anyway, she had been married, which I didn’t find out right away. I was twenty-three, and it was very unusual at the time for your girlfriend to have been divorced. She told me his name. Gene Shacove. I asked what he did. She said he was a hairdresser. It shocked the shit out of me, that such a beautiful girl would marry a hairdresser. Or that a hairdresser would marry a girl. Both were shocking. I asked what happened. She said, “Well, we’d been married about six weeks. He woke up one morning and said, ‘I don’t feel like being married anymore.’ I said, ‘What?!’ then asked what happened to him. She said he had a real successful shop. I asked if she ever saw him. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Every week. He does my hair.’ They were still very good friends.
Towne continues,
I went down there to pick her up one day. I walked in, and there he was with his hair dryer, going like a bee from one flower to the next. The most beautiful girls, one right after another. I could not believe my eyes. The only rooster in the hen house. It was a revelation to me. Then I found other guys, like Dusty Fleming, who did the same. A whole subculture of wildly heterosexual guys with a great sense of design, who worked on human heads instead of pieces of paper. I was fascinated by it, thought it was a terrific subject.
Towne says that his script for the film was largely influenced by Jean Renoir’s La Règle du Jeu (1939). According to the sleeve notes for the Cinema Club video version of the film, the story was indeed based on hairdresser Gene Shacove, who served as a technical consultant on the film. It also played on men’s views of hairdressers as effete, consequently allowing them access to their most private chambers.
“What other guy gets regularly into the bedrooms and bathrooms of another guy’s wife?” said Shacove. “You’re working in close contact with a woman. All that touching and you make them beautiful, so they admire you. It’s women who seduce their hairdressers, not the other way around.”
Towne says that Beatty wanted to do a movie about a compulsive Don Juan. He believed he’d had What’s New Pussycat stolen [the title was the phrase Beatty used when calling his friends, including Charlie Feldman, the producer of that film] […] He asked how I would do it. I said that I’d do it somewhat like The Country Wife […] Warren said he thought that that was interesting, and asked how it would be done. “Would you use an actor who everybody thought was gay?” I told him I’d use a hairdresser. He looked at me. It took him about thirty seconds. He said, “You’re right.”
The working title was “Hair”.
Now, here are some of my own personal observations about the film -- there are some great red pill takeaways:
1.) Alpha Fucks/Beta Bucks: George Roundy (Warren Beatty) versus Jack Warden (Lester Karpf)
2.) Social Proof/Kitty Cats Compete: Women want George because other women want George. This plays out over and over again in the film. George himself doesn't really have to do much to seduce these women -- in his world, the highly female/homosexual world of hairdressing, a straight man is able to come out looking alpha and socially dominant quite easily.
3.) Don't Chase 'Em/Replace 'Em: Seemingly George's modus operandi until he develops one-itis for one of his former lovers who is now involved with a married man.
4.) One-itis: Self-explanatory.
5.) Female Hypergamy: Jackie (Julie Christie) doesn't mind having a fling with alpha George (Warren Beatty) but knows she will never have financial or sexual security with George and ultimately runs off with Lester (Alpha Fucks/Beta Bucks)
6.) Keep Two in the Kitty: Even though George is tapping Jill, a young actress played by Goldie Hawn, he obviously isn't interested in being a "kept man" and is still laying pipe on the side.
TL;DR: I recommend watching "Shampoo". As I see it, it's a film which showcases what can happen when a player develops one-itis. The film ends on a somewhat somber note, but in reality, you know Beatty's character will live to fuck another day. In time, he'll laugh at himself for foolishly falling for a girl just because she's now become unavailable to him.
Glad somebody else mentioned this amazing and insightful film.
Robert Towne was definitely the top of the heap of Hollywood writers in the 70s, possibly only equaled by Paul Schrader.
Towne's run of The Last Detail, Chinatown, and Shampoo are all must-sees.
It's probably not the same without the context of the whole movie, but the climactic monologue by Beatty always gets me.
The adorable and beautiful and faithful Goldie Hawn finally opens her eyes to the fact that her boyfriend is a cad and that she can't take it anymore.
His guard is down and she asks him "how many?". He is a seducer gentleman, and he wants to avoid being too much of a shit to her face. She keeps pushing him, and finally he breaks:
"There were a couple...
I mean there...
Let's face it. I fucked them all.
That's what I do. That's why I went to beauty school.
They're always there, and l...
I don't know why I'm apologizing.
So sometimes I fuck them.
I go into that shop and they're so great-looking.
I do their hair. They feel and smell great. I'd be on the street...
...at a stoplight, or go into an elevator. There's...
...a beautiful girl. I don't know.
That's it. It makes my day.
It makes me feel like I'm gonna live forever.
As far as I'm concerned with what I'd liked to have done in my life...
I know I should've accomplished more but I have no regrets. I mean...
Maybe that means I don't love them.
Maybe it means I don't love you.
Nobody's gonna tell me I don't like them very much.
Jesus."
(This post was last modified: 06-01-2017 10:52 AM by TooFineAPoint.)
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