Hair (film)

Hair is a 1979 musical war comedy-drama and film adaptation of the 1968 Broadway musical of the same name about a Vietnam war draftee who meets and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to the army induction center. The hippies introduce him to their environment of marijuana, LSD, unorthodox relationships and draft dodging.

Claude Hooper Bukowski, an Oklahoma farm boy, heads to New York City to enter the Army and serve in the Vietnam War. In Central Park, he meets a troupe of free-spirited hippies led by George Berger. They introduce him to their psychedelically-inspired style of living, and develop a kind of "odd couple" friendship with the naive and straight-laced young man during his brief time with them before his induction. Along the way they help him meet a debutante, Sheila Franklin, with whom he is taken when he encounters her in Central Park. This they do by crashing a dinner party at her home.

Improbably, their brief set of misadventures fosters a surprisingly strong friendship between the Tribe and Claude. When Claude is inevitably sent off to basic training in Nevada, Berger and the rest -- including Woof Daschund, LaFayette "Hud" Johnson, and pregnant Jeannie Ryan, along with the newly-rebellious Sheila -- follow him to give a sendoff. They are met at the base's main gate by a surly MP, who doesn't like their looks and demands that they leave. Accordingly, Sheila flirts with an off-duty Sergeant in order to steal his uniform, which she gives to Berger. He uses it to extract Claude from the base for a last meeting with Sheila, taking his place. However, while Claude is away, the unit is suddenly rallied and flown out to Vietnam; Berger, whose ruse is somehow never detected, is taken with them. The film ends with the main cast singing at Berger's grave, followed by scenes of a large anti-war protest outside the White House in Washington, DC.

The film imposes a plot upon the essentially plotless stage production, and makes several dramatic changes in its characters:

Claude: In the musical, Claude is a member of a hippie "Tribe" sharing a New York apartment, leading a bohemian lifestyle, enjoying "free love" and rebelling against his parents and the draft; but he eventually chooses to go to Vietnam. In the film, Claude is rewritten as an innocent draftee from Oklahoma, newly arrived in New York to join the military.
Sheila: In the musical, Sheila is also an outspoken feminist leader of the Tribe who loves Berger and also Claude. In the film, she is a high-society debutante who catches Claude's eye.
Berger: In the film, Berger is not only at the heart of the hippie Tribe but is assigned some of Claude's conflict involving whether or not to obey the draft. A major plot change in the film involves a mistake that leads Berger to go to Vietnam in Claude's place, where he is killed.

Where the musical focuses on the U.S. peace movement, as well as the love relationships among the Tribe members, the film focuses on the carefree antics of the hippies. It omits almost a dozen songs; others are reduced to background or instrumental music. Those that remain have often been shortened, sped up, rearranged, or assigned to different characters to allow for the differences in plot. Also, songs have been re-orchestrated to take advantage of the film's full orchestra (compared to the play's jazz combo), allowing for some truly stunning performances.

Tropes used in Hair (film) include:

Adaptation Distillation: Forman introduced a cohesive plot into a mostly lyrical free-form musical while preserving the content and meaning (for the most part) of the songs in a very anti-hippie era.
Anything That Moves: Woof.
Butch Lesbian: Definitely the look of the Prison Psychiatrist, probably to intentionally counterpoint her questioning Woof about his "deviations" from standard sexuality (as well as act as a punch line of sorts to the sequence).
Big Applesauce: The first half or so of the film takes place in New York City.
Chewing the Scenery: The tribe members, during their songs.
Country Mouse: Claude.
Creator Backlash: Gerome Ragni and James Rado, who wrote the original play along with composer Galt MacDermot, were unhappy with the film adaptation, saying it failed to capture the essence of Hair in that hippies were portrayed as "oddballs" and "some sort of aberration" without any connection to the peace movement. In their view, the screen version of Hair has not yet been produced.
Cut Song: An odd example due to the Alternate Continuity of song lists in the play to begin with. The soundtrack for the film and the film itself contain different song lists. See page for details.
Dark Reprise: Manchester England (The Flesh Failures) And how.
A Day in the Limelight: Each member of the tribe gets to sing a song that tells us a little about their outlook on life.
Death by Adaptation: "BERGER!!!"
Downer Ending: The famous shot of Berger walking into the bowels of the plane after inadvertently taking Claude's place.
El Cid Ploy: The ending.
Friend to All Living Things: The tribe in Central Park gets the park policemen's horses dancing during Aquarius.
The Ingenue: Claude. In the film, he's fresh off the bus from Oklahoma, on his way to be drafted, and the Tribe is in charge of swaying his innocent young mind after being wowed by his display of spontaneous horsemanship in Central Park.
Left Hanging: Jeannie's baby is completely wrapped in blankets in the final scene; we never find out if it's Hud's or Berger's.
Lyrical Dissonance: Walking in Space combines acid trip lyrical imagery with depressing scenes of military training (including a gas-attack simulation) and a sad-looking Vietnamese girl singing the lyrics. (Although a singer in her own right, Linda Surh was overdubbed by the angelic-voiced Betty Buckley.)
Messianic Archetype: Berger, role-reversed with Claude as The Hero Ingenue.
Mushroom Samba: Electric Blues; Hashish; Walking in Space (see above.)
New Age Retro Hippie: Trope Codifier.
Prim and Proper Bun: Appropriately enough, the Prison Psychiatrist who interrogates Woof on why he wears his hair long (and whether that makes him gay) in the title song sequence. Her hair is in a tight bun.
Race Fetish: The song called "Black Boys/White Boys", where two groups of girls -- one white, one black -- sing about how black boys and white boys (respectively) turn them on. The song is so very obviously about heterosexual race fetishism that it becomes very easy to overlook the fact that the song is also about homosexuality (with added Race Fetish) in the army: The male white officers agreeing with the white women that the black boys are delicious like chocolate, and the black officers agreeing with the black women about how kissable the white men are. By making the fetishism a mutual affair, the song makes clear that it's not about racism or sexism. Also, the focus on shallow beauty/sexyness is done in such a way that it sends an anti-racist message: The difference between races is a shallow difference, merely a matter of how you look. And in the end, each of us is lovable and beautiful to someone.
- The work is from the same time as the Civil Rights Movement. The black guy "Hud" is a fully accepted member of the otherwise white hippie gang, and the song can be said to say "not only are people of other races not evil, you may even consider having sex with them!" While Captain Obvious these days, it was a radical message back when it was made.
Soundtrack Dissonance: "The Flesh Failures" is given a different meaning by the film's shocking Twist Ending, which is different from the original play. May actually produce tears, which is quite different from the feeling most people get watching the play.
Spared by the Adaptation: Claude.
Spontaneous Choreography: By Twyla Tharp, who also appears as a Priestess in Electric Blues.
Straight Man: Claude (film only) is a square about to leave for Vietnam, whom Berger takes under his wing.
Twist Ending/Cruel Twist Ending: Berger leads the tribe to Nevada, sneaks into the army training camp and impersonates Claude to give him a chance to see Sheila one last time... on the day Claude's battalion ships for Vietnam.
The Vietnam War: It Got Worse.
Where Da White Women At?: Same as the play, plus a not-too-subtle Ho Yay with black and white draft officers singing the same song, intercut with the women's performance.