In the case of the 1979 film, screenwriter Michael Weller tried to solve this problem by throwing out most of the story and filling in the gaps with new ideas. Some of the ideas, and this may come as a shock to some of the people whose opinions and input I seek, were great (in my opinion anyway); most weren't. I like some of the "classic" images, so to speak, that the film of Hair established, whether Mr. Weller was responsible for them, or director Milos Foreman, or whoever. For example, a hippie (in the '79 film, it was Berger, but as we're following the play, it's better to think of him as Claude) dancing on a dinner table during "I Got Life" is like a Dionysian revel. An early rave. A true spitball in the eye of authority. It's symbolic to some extent, at least to me, of much bigger steps that the hippies were taking in bucking trends and shaking up the status quo, rather than the random vandalism of a rich family's stuffy "Establishment" dinner party, as a literal interpretation would believe it to be. It's an expression of freedom, and one of the biggest sentiments in Hair, one of the closing lyrics of Act One in fact, is "freedom."
So, to start with, there are some established dynamics and images in the 1979 film that would indeed be useful in the screenplay I see in my head, the screenplay that I plan to write, and I intend to borrow them. (If you guessed because of the way I cited the table dance that it would appear in my screenplay, congratulations! You're a rocket scientist!) There are also some more unused elements in a draft copy of the film's screenplay dated 1977 that I purchased from a website called scriptcity.net (it's basically a photocopy of the original mimeographed pages; occasionally where there's not enough of one draft, they'll sneak in pages from later revisions to fill out the rest of the story, at least in the case of Hair). Among other things from this draft script that I feel would be very interesting to play with, there is the choreographic element of "the Twins" that was severely decimated in the final film (two hippies that horses imitate, big whoop; in the script, they were a much bigger motif weaving through the film, and I want to use that idea to its full potential in my new script), and the various locations of many major sequences, such as Central Park.
(It also opens with "Exanaplanetooch" [an outtake from the Off-Broadway version of the play] sung by Claude in his bedroom before he boards the bus to go to New York, I suppose with the intent of setting him apart from the beginning as an idealist seeking a better world among "squares" that aren't doing anything to help who may become sympathetic to the hippie cause when confronted with it, as the film proves him to be. Without that added subtext, I still think it might be interesting to play with "Exanaplanetooch" as some kind of opening or prologue. It's a crappily thought out idea, probably one of the first I'll ditch.)
But this isn't just a case of "something old, something new..." etc. I do have some ideas of my own, and I'll start by offering one of the biggest. People find it hard to figure out how one would adapt the stage version of Hair for the screen. The show's script appears deceptively difficult to adapt. The Off-Broadway version, for all of its faults, had more of a through-line to it than the Broadway script, which was a "happening" vs. a locked-down story and practically invented the term "non-book." Some of the most devout Hair followers and creatives, for all their dislike of the film, seem to agree that there's no coherent way of bringing the show, and the inventive staging by Tom O'Horgan in particular, to the big screen. But there is, and the key to doing it is one most people miss.
There are two lines (and in some versions of the script, particularly the original Broadway one, a particular scene) that point to the way the film could stay truer to the original Broadway production while getting a sort of plot line going. Aside from the infamous "movie scene" following Berger's fight with Sheila in some versions of the script, there are two moments that point to this key I speak of:
"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..."
and
"I fashion my future on films in space..."
A subplot in the show that was sadly eliminated for the most part in the now-departed Broadway revival (another big inspiration in my drive to start the screenplay, because it showed me there was an audience that was interested in Hair again) was that Claude Bukowski was a wannabe filmmaker. 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?
My concept basically involves making Claude Hooper Bukowski the hippie version of Mark Cohen from Rent. Maybe he's got 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! With the above in mind, we use effects common to other Sixties films. Cheapo stuff like double exposures, odd visual effects that are low budget and common to such Sixties films as Blow-Up, Invocation of My Demon Brother, 8 ½, Easy Rider...this is what we deal in for much of the realistic framework of the film. 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 the aforementioned Blow-Up; and the more psychedelic or group scenes bear traces of Fellini's influence. (Hell, their names are even mentioned in the lyrics! It's practically a road map!)
The best part? 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). Ultimately, Claude's less-than-hopeful outlook may well have been proven right, when you look at what current teenagers (my generation) are dealing with thanks to the actions of their grandparents. The sexual revolution did give benefits to the babies it created, but there were also severe drawbacks. What they really accomplished and how it resonated through the ages is arguably much different from what the hippies intended. He's torn between his love for his friends, his ambitions in film-making, and his duty to his country.
More about the mis en scene in the next post!
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