Harold and Maude

[My son Jake was so taken by this movie that he had Harold’s hearse tattooed on his arm! Silverbelle Maude hails from Quincy, MA, a Silverback stronghold. This post also seconded by SB Bill (Hinesburg SBs). SB SM]

Today’s selection–from The Curious Movie Buff by Jennifer M. Wood. The 1971 cult movie classic Harold and Maude:

“You’d be  hard-pressed to find a true cinephile who doesn’t own a copy of Harold and Maude. The 1971 box office failure, directed by Hal Ashby and written by Colin Higgins, may have had a rocky debut, but it has since become a New Hollywood classic. The brutally dark rom-com tells the story of a death-obsessed young boy (Bud Cort) who falls for a free-spirited seventy-nine-year-old woman (Ruth Gordon), much to the chagrin of his oblivious, blue-blooded mother (Vivian Pickles). Not only has the film found a second life at film festivals, outdoor park screenings, art-house cinemas, and on home video, but it’s also become a must-see movie for anyone serious about filmmaking.

“Harrison Ford worked for screenwriter Colin Higgins–as a carpenter. According to the Criterion Collection cut, Higgins employed Harrison Ford, then working as a carpenter, to build a hot tub and deck for his backyard while the movie was in production.

“Cort and Gordon’s real-life relationship almost mirrored that of their characters. In the April 2001 issue of Vanity Fair, Cort revisited the cult classic and reminisced on his chemistry with his co-star. ‘During the making of the film, [Ruth] was very standoffish. Then, the day my father died, the first call I got was from Ruth, saying “Let me tell you about the day my father died,”’ he told the magazine. ‘And suddenly we became the characters pretty much that we were in the film.’

“Elton John passed on doing the soundtrack. According to the Criterion Collection version of the film, producer Charles Mulvehill initially approached Elton John to write the music for the movie, as Ashby was a fan of the pop star. John passed–but not before suggesting his friend Cat Stevens for the job. Stevens said yes, and his music has become inextricably linked to the movie.

“Ali Macgraw, Robert Evans’s then-wife, wanted the love scene between Harold and Maude to be cut. Of course, her Paramount boss husband tried to oblige. Ashby furiously objected, saying, ‘That’s sort of what the whole movie is about, a boy falling in love with an old woman; the sexual aspect doesn’t have to be distasteful.’ About the less-than-explicit scene, Being Hal Ashby author Nick Dawson wrote, ‘Ashby wanted to show the beauty of young and old flesh together, something that he knew the younger generation, the hippies, the heads, the open-minded masses, would dig, but Evans said it would repulse most audiences, so it had to go.’ In the end, Ashby won by sneaking the footage into the film’s trailer.

“Cort refused to do any PR for the film if the studio didn’t give Ashby creative control over the edit. During postproduction, Paramount Pictures stripped Ashby of his power to edit his own movie. So, in solidarity with his director, Cort told the film’s PR team that he wouldn’t do any publicity for the film unless Ashby got his movie back. According to the Guardian, control over the footage was handed back to Ashby save for a kissing scene between Harold and Maude that Paramount head honcho Robert Evans despised.”

author: Jennifer M. Wood

title: Mental Floss: The Curious Movie Buff: A Miscellany of Fantastic Films from the Past 50 Years (Movie Trivia, Film Trivia, Film History)

publisher: Weldon Owen