Shampoo

Although set in the 1960s, specifically election night in 1968, Shampoo is a prime example of '70s movie making, the era when the director and writer had more control than the studio, which allowed for fresh takes on society, rather than canned studio products. Written by Warren Beatty and Robert Towne, and directed by Hal Ashby, Shampoo was released in 1975, just after Watergate, the heart of the decade.

Though the election of Nixon looms in the background of the film, it's really something of a distraction, as though viewers in 1975 could chuckle at seeing Nixon pronounce his happiness at winning knowing his downfall, Shampoo is really about sexual politics. Beatty plays George, a Beverly Hills hairdresser who juggles many different women (he admits he went to beauty school to meet women, and come to think of it, other than a rock star or a professional athlete, hairdressers, straight ones that is, must get a lot of frim). 

Ostensibly his girlfriend is Goldie Hawn, but he is also sleeping with a client (Lee Grant, who won an Oscar for the role). He wants to open his own shop, but can't get a bank loan, so she recommends he see her husband (Jack Warden) for investment capital. This cozy, awkward turn--a man asking for money from a man whom he's cuckolding, represents the laissez faire sexual mores at the time.

if that weren't enough, Warden has a mistress, Julie Christie, who is Beatty's ex-lover. They rekindle their feelings, and at a party thrown by Warden to watch the election returns, all the principles are there. Later, they all go to a Hollywood party, where Hawn and Warden both see Beatty and Christie fucking. But Hawn has just agreed to go home with a director (Tony Bill) and Warden of course is a philanderer, so these characters, except for George, cling to the myth of monogamy without practicing it.

Later in the film Warden confronts Beatty for sleeping with both his wife and his mistress Little does he know that Beatty has also slept with Warden's teenage daughter (Carrie Fisher, in her film debut). It's an odd scene, as Fisher initiates the sex--"Wanna fuck?" she asks. I doubt that scene would be included today. 

In the end, Beatty realizes he wants Christie and proposes to her, but she isn't convinced and neither are we. She chooses to go off with Warden, while the implication is that Beatty will never settle down. Oddly this mirrors Beatty's own public persona, a lothario who didn't marry and have children until he was in this fifties.

I have read that Beatty had wanted to make a film about this type of character and it was initially going to be What's New, Pussycat? but he left the project when Woody Allen, who wrote that script, made his part increasingly larger. Shampoo is the result. What entirely different movies.