James A. Davidson, “Hal Ashby and the Making of Harold and Maude” (McFarland, 2016)

The original script was sold to a major Hollywood studio virtually overnight; the screenwriter was working as a pool boy and driver for the producer; the director was considered an acid freak by the studio heads; the star was a 74-year-old actress who didn’t know how to drive a car. The film flopped upon release but later became one of the great cult successes of all time. The unlikely creation of Harold and Maude, shot guerrilla-style in the San Francisco Bay Area by a crew of “New Hollywood” filmmakers in the winter of 1971, is the subject of James A. Davidson’s Hal Ashby and the Making of Harold and Maude (McFarland, 2016).

James A. Davidson has written a number of articles for Images Film Journal and Taste of Cinema and is co-owner of Second Sight Video & Multimedia. He lives in Reno, Nevada.

Jasun Horsley is the author of Seen & Not Seen: Confessions of a Movie Autist and several other books on “extra-consensual perceptions.” He has a weekly podcast called The Liminalist: The Podcast Between and a blog. For more info, go to http://auticulture.com.

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