SARASOTA '09 PODCAST: Nick Dawson

On Saturday night, my final hurrah at this year's Sarasota Film Festival, the annual Filmmaker's Tribute paid homage to the wild and wooly career of the late Hal Ashby. The fest had already unveiled a near complete retrospective of Ashby's work (Harold and Maude, Shampoo, Being There, etc.), including the world premiere of a newly found and remastered director's cut of his most neglected film, 1982's Lookin' To Get Out:

"Alex (Jon Voight) and Jerry (Burt Young) are two small-time gamblers on a losing streak. Seeking to change their fortunes, the pair head off to Las Vegas with an all-or-nothing plan to bring lady luck on their side. But when Alex and Jerry meet a former call girl named Patti (Ann-Margret), things take an unexpected turn."

Film in Focus editor Nick Dawson didn't just help re-discover this rare version of the film, he literally wrote the book on Ashby: Sarasota's retrospective was conceived in conjunction with the launch of Dawson's wonderful new biography (from the first 100+ pages I've so far read!), Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel.

Though Dawson couldn't talk too much about the ongoing familial disputes he had come across in his six years of scrupulous research, he did reveal juicy anecdotes about Ashby's teeth, the films he never completed, and his own personal (if unusual) faves from the auteur's undervalued filmography.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

Posted by ahillis at April 6, 2009 8:45 PM