American Dreams needs Shampoo

Hey people! How you all doing? been a while since I wrote anything on here. I had to resubmit my email with a new password, guess my old one expired. Man there are so many messages I would like to write on here with my favorite movies, I'd never leave the house! Just looking over the messages on shampoo and was impressed with what I read. You guys make some good points about the film.As you see in my title I wanted to comapre a few small things between Shampoo and the recently canned tv show American Dreams which I thought was the best tv show in a long time.

First off to me Shampoo was one of the great classics of the way back 70s along with other greats such as Chinatown, Cuckoo's nest and many others. Talk about great acting, full live characters and a such a cool story you wonder how they could have come up with it. Ya know lots movies today that portray the 60s and 70s have over the top carictures: the druggie hippies, radical protestors, conservitive, older folks. Plus in those films they alway's overdo it with soundtrack music hearing one after another that it becomes repetitive, seems like when things get boring or sloopy dialouge throw a song on. Shampoo didn't have any of those bad qualities, the characters were real and genuine not phony carictures and the soundtrack was kept to a minimum, not a song a every 5 minutes. Just the look and feel of the movie gave you the impression you were in the 60s. Hal Ashby does that with all of his films in that you really feel for his characters and are so full of life in ther actions it's like you want to be there hanging with them. Does that make sense? I felt the same with The Last Detail and Coming Home. He def was up there with all the other big boys like Spielberg, Coppla and Scorese. it's a shame he never got the recognition of say even Coopla who scored big with Godafthers but even that wasn't as big as Star Wars. I think Ashby was more like Woody Allen his movies made impressions on certain people but never got hudge mainstream attention. Lets face it Shampoo isn't the type of movie to draw in busloads of people like Star wars. Seems like lots of people just want instant fast action and little dialouge short attention spans I guess! Ha why you can find any big blockbuster summer flick in any video store but have to get shampoo or Brewster Mccloud over the internet!

Anyway I just wanted make a little comparison bewtween American Dreams and Shampoo. To me American Dremas really tried to be a real life good quality tv show that didn't want to be a typical schtick tv sitocm with the taped laugh going on in the background. Family matters was a good example of this" you have terrible acting and bland characters just getting in a nice mesage in 30 minutes. Come on No one acts like Urkel in real lfe. When I was in sch geeks were people who wore different type shirts, urkel was just a cartoon. American Dreams really tried to have a real life characters that you could relate to and feel their emotions, mutil demensional guess you could say. Plus they had a good nostolgic feel with the music, American Bandstand scenes and the music which was a prety good choice I must say from golden oldies to the classic rockers. I liked they way you saw the kids growing and changing with their familes and friends, meg staying out to late, getting her drivers license and worrying about JJ over in Nam. I got the feeling maybe the producers were against the war they way they had a lot of protestors going on about it and jj coming back and chaing his tune about the war. All in all one of the best tv shows I had seen in a long time and it was family oriented yet. I don't watch too many tv shows most are bad.

I was wondering if the producuers of the show watched some of Ashbys films like Shampoo or Coming Home. To me both had such real life characterers that you literally feel them off the screen. Real people living real lives in the 1960s going through changes and growing at the same time such as from the party scene in shampoo to Megs family sitting around watching the Beatles on ED Sullivan. It gives you that nostolgic feeling but doesn't go overboard. I got from watching American Dreams that it has a little Ashby touch to it. Maybe I'm way off who knows! There is just that strong feeling you get from watching both that makes you feel what the characters are going through. I know there are major differecnes between them also. American Dreams was a family oriented show that tried to be better then most other shows of that type and with other then someone smoking or drinking and a few light war scenes was kept at a wholesome viewing. Shampoo on the other hand was clearly aimed at adults Warrens Beautys Character was screwing around with all these different women, didn't have much respect for them. There were pretty adult themes throughout the story people cheating on another, casual sex, some of the dialouge you wouldn't hear on American Dreams: I would like to suck his! Plus I got the feeling there was more of a political stab in Shampoo with all the Nixon hoopla going on where as American didn't really have much politcally themes. But hey if you could take the party scene from Shampoo and put it in Amercain Dreams it could work just as well. I could picture cute Meg walking in with Sgt Peppers playing on with people everywhere having a good time. She meets a nice cute boy and they talk some then go out for a stroll and get more intimate, maybe try for a kiss while lucy in the sky with diamonds play in the background. I think that would work great. Ha the producers should have brought the characters back from shampoo for an episode of American, Lester could help megs dad with the business, Felica could be their next door neighbor and George well lets just keep him away from all the girls!

Hey I know this was a little long once I get typing I never stop! I hope I made a few good points about the show and Shampoo. Both were really good acurate portrails of living in the exciting liberal 1960s. Like I said before whenever something different coems along that doesn't involve fast action and typical bland characters usually doesn't grab the majority. American Dremas was yanked off the tube in only like 3 yrs! It's a shame I would have kept watching it. Oh well there's always Paris Hilton! There's some high quality programming! Hey write back and give me your thoughts would love to hear them. Take care. Beatles1.