King - Hollywood Shaped My Hair

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Ive always loved this quip by the American author Erica Jong:

Where is Hollywood located? she asks, before answering her own question. Chiefly between the ears. In that part of the American brain lately vacated by God.

Well, if Hollywood is the new religion then Im a happy disciple. Inspiration, education, good old fashioned entertainment; every fan knows what riches movies can bring. Still, like some religious zealot of years gone by, Ive probably sometimes worshipped at The Church of Hollywood a little too enthusiastically.

Take my teenage obsession with Woody Allen. After accidentally discovering Hannah and Her Sisters on TV one Christmas, I decided that I needed to live the life of a cerebral Jewish New Yorker, the kind of guy that watches old movies and has passionate intellectual affairs. Hence my attempts one summer to find bijou repertory cinemas that showed Marx Brothers reissues and to woo sexually frustrated students of Existentialism. After all, if Woody was God then such a pilgrimage in his honour was merely my duty. The only problem was, I was fifteen. Thus any chichi picture houses or randy Sartre fans needed to be within cycling distance of the small Suffolk village that I lived in. The result was less Annie Hall, more Bugger All.

There was also the time in the late nineties when, somehow convinced that Josh Hartnett was The Saviour of Cinema, I decided to endlessly wear a long-sleeved white t-shirt with a short-sleeved black one over the top, just like his character Zeke from The Faculty. I waited months for like-minded Hartnett followers to congratulate me on both my cinematic and sartorial taste, but, alas, it was an homage that went completely unnoticed (even, when I interviewed him, by Josh himself). After his questionable career choices of Pearl Harbour, 40 Days and 40 Nights and Blow Dry I had a crisis of faith. Christ, even Joshs Grandmothers faith would waiver after hearing his attempt at a Yorkshire accent in that last one. Following a year or so of devotion, I hung up the t-shirts for good.

Style, attitude, sex. I cant deny that religiously following films has swayed the way I look at all of them over the years. However, there remains one thing thats had more cine-fuelled attention than any other: my hair.

If Erica Jong thinks that Hollywoods influence is between the ears then for me its around them too. After all, if a movie character impresses you so much that you want to live your life just like them, apostle-style, then an easy way to start is simply to redo your barnet in their honour. So much better than those painful operations you see on shows called things like Extreme Plastic Surgery Nightmares!, where strange people go under the knife to look exactly like their hero (which, for some reason, is usually Barbie). Easier, also, than cycling around the countryside looking for bookish nymphomaniacs.

Its not just me, of course. We live in an age where celebrities from all areas of the media sport, music, television are style leaders to millions. Everyone from Farrah Fawcett, with her sun-kissed seventies flick, to David Beckham and whatever cut hes currently rocking (at the moment its a sharp Mad Men style, but no doubt that will have changed by the time you read this) has found their follicles idolised. Some people worry that feverishly following anyone be they actor, athlete or The Almighty is a little lemming-like, but I like to think that, after years of mistakes, I can at least now see it more as fun than fanaticism. A child-like adulation of stars might even be good for you, too, keeping you feeling young and optimistic in the face of encroaching old age or a humdrum job. I suppose its like still relishing the magic of Father Christmas as an adult: silly maybe, but isnt it also rather charming? Watch Arthur Christmas or Elf and youll know exactly what I mean.

However, charm aside, I will admit that blindly copying the hairstyles of the famous can sometimes make you look a bit of an idiot. This is a book about those times.

In the beginning there was Grease. Grease was, is and always will be The Word.

Why? Well, obviously, a) its got groove, b) its got meaning, and c) its got that always entertaining teen movie thing of having actors way too old pretending to be high schoolers (Stockard Channing, as Rydell Highs resident bad girl Betty Rizzo, was 33 at the time of filming).

Most importantly for me though, watching Grease is my first big memory of really loving a movie, an explosion of Yankee teen poppiness that showered down on my rural upbringing like rain to a wilting desert crop. As the first film that I remember cherishing, Grease is what I grew from. Grease shaped my life. Grease shaped my hair.

I dont know exactly how old I was when I first saw it or even how, although Im presuming that I was about six or seven and it was on video (its amazing how weird, in this shiny, silvery, Tron-like world of streaming, it feels to type v-i-d-e-o). Of course, in that era (the early eighties), it probably should have been Star Wars I was obsessed with. But whilst my friends pretended to be Luke Skywalker using the force, I was Danny Zucko using a comb. I didnt care that Zuck would be pretty useless attacking the Death Star; at least he didnt have a pudding bowl hairdo. John Travoltas Zucko, you see, was the coolest guy at Rydell High. As soon as I saw him I knew thats all I wanted to be, too.

And, even aged five, I knew that to achieve that, Id need the hairdo.

The Zucko hairstyle is a work of art: rich black, lustrous, greased back carefully but not too neatly, a springy curl at the front breaking away from the pack and forming a cheekily loose and louche quiff (quiffn. probably from the French coiffure, meaning hairstyle). We dont see the back of his head much, but one can only imagine the perfection of the D.A. (D.A.n. [slang] short for ducks arse, most famously sported by actor Tony Curtis) that resides there, the two sides of his hair uniting at the rear to form a ridge as epic as the parting of the Red Sea. There are cinematic quiffs that have been tidier (James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause) and bolder (Brad Pitt in Johnny Suede), but none have been paraded with the effortless cool of Danny. Its like he knows hes in a movie, being watched by millions.

Movies were a big part of my school life. Unofficial video clubs took place in classrooms during lunch break, antiquated departmental VCRs secretly whirring away whilst the teachers were relaxing in the common room, blissfully unaware that gangs of kids were gawping at Bruce Willis slaying bad guys in