Overview

Directed by Milos Forman and choreographed by Twyla Tharp, the film diverges from the stage version in unique ways although many core elements remain the same. In New York City for the first time while on his way to enlist in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War, Oklahoma farm hand Claude Hooper Bukowski (John Savage) meets up with a freewheeling group of Central Park hippies with shining, gleaming, streaming, flaxen, waxen hair who are led by the irrepressible George Berger (Treat Williams). When the unlikely friends meet upper-middle-class debutante Sheila Franklin (Beverly D'Angelo), sparks fly between the country boy and the city girl, and Berger's troupe attempts to keep the young lovers together amid fallout from the war.