Hal Ashby’s 1979 adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s novel follows Chauncey Gardiner, a sheltered gardener mistaken for a sage after stepping into Washington society. Peter Sellers delivers a performance of radical stillness, while the film’s craft — cinematography, editing, score — enforces a tone of calm, unblinking observation. It is satire without ridicule, comedy without punchlines, and a portrait of meaning-making as collective fiction.
Shampoo (1975), directed by Hal Ashby and co-written by Warren Beatty and Robert Towne, follows a Beverly Hills hairdresser across Election Day 1968 as he navigates overlapping affairs, professional frustration, and the quiet hypocrisies of his social circle. Shot by László Kovács and scored with period-appropriate music by Paul Simon and others, it uses romantic comedy structure to dissect sexual politics, class, and the erosion of public attention. Though commercially successful and awarded an Oscar for Lee Grant’s supporting performance, its satire remains understated, its pacing deliberate, its conclusions ambiguous.
Sidney Lumet's first feature takes Reginald Rose's 1954 teleplay and confines it almost entirely to a jury room, where eleven men ready to convict a teenager of murder are worked, one by one, toward doubt. Shot in three weeks on a budget of $340,000, it turns a single set into an escalating study of temper, prejudice and procedure, carried by an ensemble led by Henry Fonda, who also produced.
Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman play Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein chasing a break-in story that grows into the reporting that helped end a presidency, told almost entirely from inside the newsroom.