Reflections on a 1970s Film

This morning, I woke up at 3:00, to find one of my favorite representative films of the 1970's on Turner Classic Movies: Shampoo, directed by Hal Ashby, with Warren Beatty, Jack Warden, Julie Christie, Lee Grant, Carrie Fisher and Goldie Hawn. What a great movie. Takes place on election day 1968, as Beatty - a hairdresser and philanderer - prepares a number of gals for a party that evening. Two of them happen to be involved with the guy he's trying to get to support his business, played by Jack Warden: one is a mistress, the other a wife. So, somehow in the course of a day, Beatty beds down with his future business partner's wife, mistress and daughter (played by a very young, pre-Star Wars Carrie Fisher), gets in trouble with his girlfriend, wants the mistress but loses everything...except maybe the business, in the end.

But the key to the whole movie, to me, is this great monologue where he tells Goldie Hawn how he got involved in the business, of being a hair stylist, for no other reason than the women.

It is a very dated film in a way...pre-AIDS, pre-safe sex, drug parties and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band playing in the background at said party. And for a film of the times, it does cast a wonderfully dark message about the non-commital life that Beatty's character lives. He screws his way through the whole film, but inthe end, he has nothing...or he doesn't have what he wants, which I guess was Julie Christie.

I guess for me it's kind of timely to see that film. A bit of a warning as far as my own new bachelorhood: be careful for what I wish, I just might get it. But the reality is, I have never been one who is in it just for the sex. There has to be conversation before at after. There needs to be, in any and all relationships, intimate and otherwise, a life of the mind. And how you treat people, as I learn for the better and the worse, has repurcussions.

I've had a pretty mellow bachelorhood, thus far. I do seek more fun and thrills, but not without the added dimensions, not without the accountability - on my part and the part of others. Friends with benefits are fine and probably would work with an Aquarian and an ethical slut like me, but the key word is "friends."

So endeth the sermon!