Word: hal
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...computers. The usual human sense of scale, the proportion between size and capability, the time ratio assumed between thought and action, are swept into a new and surreal terrain. Consequently, people tend to anthropomorphize the computer; they are superstitious about it. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the companionable computer HAL turns rogue in outer space and methodically begins assassinating its masters. In a B-movie called Demon Seed, the world's most advanced computer actually impregnates a scientist's wife, played by Julie Christie; it is so smart that it yearns to be alive?and scarily succeeds. Some manufacturers...
COMING HOME Directed by Hal Ashby Screenplay by Waldo Salt and Robert C. Jones
...comedy Shampoo, Director Hal Ashby drew a scathing portrait of privileged Americans living in selfish bliss during the Viet Nam War. Shampoo was set in Beverly Hills against the pointedly ironic background of the 1968 presidential election; its characters were upper-middle-class philanderers whose lives revolved around the chic local beauty salon. Throughout the film, sad news from Southeast Asia blares forth from radios and TV sets, but no one in Shampoo bothers to listen. They are all too busy getting ready for a Nixon victory party that night to care about a war that seems a million miles...
More than in Christmases past, Americans spent money for high-priced quality items. "It was a luxury kind of Christmas," says Hal Silver, chairman of Kaufmann's in Pittsburgh. Adds Gordon Cooke, senior vice president for sales promotion at Bloomingdale's: "Price was no object." The French-made metal-housed Cuisinart, which slices, dices, chops, minces and shreds faster than conventional individual tools, sells for $225. Yet it and lower-priced competitors (La Machine, Omnichef) flew off shelves so fast that almost no store could seem to keep them in stock. Neiman-Marcus in Houston sold 24 West...
...example, Reynolds did a favor for his friend Hal Needham, a stuntman who had the opportunity to direct if he could get Reynolds to star in the picture. The result was a little number called Smokey and the Bandit, nothing much more elaborate than a 90-minute car chase, with Jackie Gleason playing a sheriff in hot, exasperated pursuit of Reynolds' good-ole-boy trucker. The film cost about $4 million. The last time anyone looked, it had grossed about $100 million, second only to the phenomenal Star Wars for 1977. Reynolds' latest picture, Semi-Tough, has been doing business...