Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop is part of a loosely delineated cinematic triumvirate that also includes Vanishing Point and The Driver. The first two films share sharper similarities in terms of general style and subject: ostensibly a muscle car race conducted on the open road. The Driver is more circumscript, confined to city streets that provide constant impediments to vehicular speed and coupled to a superficial noirish plot. Vanishing Point’s Kowalski is competing against himself, his cross-country road trip fueled not just by gasoline but also by the constant ingestion of amphetamines. Hellman’s film is lower key and more self-reflexively existentialist.
The characters are named succinctly after their identifying traits. Back-story is incidental. The Driver and The Mechanic are a couple of gearheads whose minimal banter consists mainly of meticulous car talk. Criss-crossing the country in a souped up ’55 Chevy, they eke a meager living seeking out others to race for quick cash. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson deadpan the roles to the hilt, their lack of dramatic training effectively emphasizing the characters’ social disconnection and single-mindedness. These attributes are mirrored in the car itself, devoid of distinctive features other than a coat of dull gray primer and a hood-affixed supercharger.
Warren Oates makes the film as GTO, an equally enigmatic man whose desire for self-invention and interpersonal connection borders on the pathological. Adrift in his lemon yellow Pontiac and garrulous to the point of parody, his defining traits run directly contrary to those of his opponents. Throughout the film, he picks up a succession of passengers including a notable turn by Harry Dean Stanton as a vaguely gay cowboy. Each attempt to connect with his riders ends in failure until the film’s final act when it seems he finally may have found an audience receptive to his self-referential flights of fancy. Oates brings a rich humanity and humor to role that contrasts sharply with the granite slab personalities of his opponents. Laurie Bird doesn’t fare as well as The Girl, a teenage waif who complicates the dynamics between the racers, and her presence tends to grate whenever she opens her mouth.
The race that forms the crux of the plot switches from defined to nebulous in short order, veering from antagonistic to amicable and back again as the character’s trajectories continually overlap. Even the agreed upon prize of vehicle pink slips is less a motivating factor than the lure of the constraints-free open road for its own sake. At several points, The Driver is tempted into a more emotive state, but soon recognizes the error of such a transformation and returns to a position of safety behind his purse-lipped faceplate. Hellman seems to suggest that any attempts to delve beneath the surface only expose the tenuousness of human relationships and that it’s wiser for his characters to keep moving than to come to rest for this very reason. It’s a cheerless sentiment echoed in the film’s nihilistic final frame.
Hellman shot the film in grainy film stock, setting up handheld cameras in the backseats of the cars to capture first-person vantage points. For all the fixation on cars and speed, most of the racing segments are curiously pedestrian. Static shots of roadside vistas and the drab small town environs the characters pass through prove far more interesting. Budget constraints are visible throughout, but Hellman continually uses them to his advantage by allowing the narrative to unfold in an easy, almost improvised manner. The film’s reputation as a Seventies cult classic is well earned and while not my favorite amongst the aforementioned triumvirate it still carries plenty to recommend it.
I fucking love this movie.
Now I'll go read this article!
Posted by: clifford at October 8, 2007 5:47 PMBeen on a Monte Hellman kick for a few weeks now - finally managed to get hold of Cockfighter too (just released over here in a great tripledvd box with The Shooting and Ride In The Whirlwind). I don't know the later films and haven't seen the early B-movies, anybody recommend anything?
Good Hellman site here:
http://montehellman.altervista.org/
Disagree with you about Laurie Bird - I think she's great. Oates is just magnificent - can't think of a film where he isn't to be honest.
And the ending.. nihilistic? Dunno.. enigmatic for sure. Thoughts, anyone?
This film actually makes for a nice contrast with Barbara Loden's Wanda too, a kind of existentialist road movie of sorts too.
Does your dvd have Hellman's commentary, Derek?
Cockfighter’s great. And I’m with you on Oates, but require some serious convincing when it comes to Bird. Taylor and Wilson are amateurish, but their acting naiveté works in the context. In her case, it’s just annoying. And the film stock self-immolating in the final frame qualifies as nihilistic in my book, but maybe enigmatic is a better descriptor. Either way, it’s another parallel w/ Vanishing Point, where Kowalski hits the bulldozer blades and everything goes white. I haven’t seen Wanda, but will definitely check it out.
I caught this again recently on a cable channel here called Indieplex, so no commentary. But Criterion is scheduled to release a double disc dvd on December 11th w/ the features described below. It’s about time as the Anchor Bay sets from the late 90s have been out of print for years.
Hellman really got the Hollywood shaft in his later years. Reduced to second unit director work on The Big Red One and Robocop when he should’ve been in the driver’s seat on his own stuff. It took a producer’s credit on Reservoir Dogs to get him back on the industry radar. That’s sad.
[New, restored high-definition digital transfer supervised and approved by director Monte Hellman
- Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack
- Two audio commentaries; one by Hellman and filmmaker Allison Anders, and one by screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer and author David Meyer
- New interviews with Hellman, star James Taylor, musician Kris Kristofferson, producer Michael Laughlin, and production manager Walter Coblenz
- Rare, never-before-seen screen-test outtakes
- Performance and Image: a look at the restoration of a '55 Chevy from the movie and the film's locations today
- Color Me Gone: photos and publicity from Two-Lane Blacktop
- Original theatrical trailer
- PLUS: Rudy Wurlitzer's screenplay, reprinted specially for this release; new essays by Kent Jones, appreciations by Richard Linklater and Tom Waits; and a reprint of the 1970 Rolling Stone article "On Route 66, Filming Two-Lane Blacktop."]
I've got what looks like a UK version on Universal, with the commentaries but nothing else in the way of bonus. Those Criterions sure are tempting.. but cost a packet over here.
I think Bird HAS to be annoying, as you put it, to make sure that Oates ends up as the most intriguing personality in the film, esp as he drives off with the two soldiers telling them the story of the film (another tall story? or a true story?).
Haven't seen Vanishing Point since schooldaze, but I remember one great line from the black DJ "speed is the freedom of the soul".. (am I right?). The other great road movie it should obviously be compared to is Easy Rider - in both films the drivers head EAST.. in Blacktop we can suppose they're still heading east at the end, whereas in ER they're probably on their way back to Cali from Mardi Gras (or are they?). Both great soundtracks too, but in Blacktop the music is less in yer face of course. I watched Easy Rider just last week and was pleasantly surprised to find it hadn't dated as much as I thought it had last time I saw it (ten years ago).
Wanda, yeah.. that's a trip. Like a cross between early Mike Leigh and Cassavetes. A monumentally depressing film, but totally original.
On another point, I was wondering if Richie, the gawky teen in Mars Attacks, wasn't based on James Taylor in Blacktop.. the same gangly body, timbre of voice and wonderfully dumb lines (compare JT's rap about the crickets in the tress with Richie's "why don't we all live in teepees" at the end of Mars Attacks). Hilarious!
Have you checked out the two Hellman westerns, Derek? Nicholson is fucking awesome in both of them. Always wondered what a Samuel Beckett western might have been like.. think I know now
We should probably post a spolier warning in the comments section here, though plot points are pretty much incidental in this particular case :-)
Interesting take on Bird. I guess I just think she’s annoying for the wrong reasons, more out of ineptitude than deliberate characterization, but maybe that’s taking away something from Hellman. I find GTO’s story to the soldiers hilarious because he basically flips roles, claiming original ownership of the Chevy and reinventing himself yet again. The soldier’s responsiveness and his subsequent shit-eating grin are priceless.
I’m not as keen on the corollaries to Easy Rider and see the two as pretty different films. I mean, other than the road and social disconnect of the characters there’s not as much to connect them. Also, the soundtrack is surprisingly superfluous in Blacktop. GTO uses his tape collection like the wet bar in his trunk, it’s bait to entice interpersonal contact. His actual interest in the music seems feigned, just a means to an end. And over in the Chevy, the radio gets turned off pretty early on and is replaced by sporadic car talk. The only song that (unfortunately) stuck in my head was Bird’s out-of-tune singing of “Satisfaction” in the Diner as she absently plays pinball.
Dunno about that parallel w/ Mars Attacks!, but it sounds spot-on. I did notice one scene in Blacktopwhere Taylor noticeably flubs his lines, a hard thing to do when you’ve got like 500 spoken words in an entire film!
That Vanishing Point quote sounds right too. It's funny, but the escalation of the whole Cleavon Little/Super Soul DJ subplot was the weakest part of the flick for me.
I’ve seen The Shooting, but not Whirlwind. Enjoyed it a lot. For other psychological/existential Westerns you should check out Budd Boetticher, Dan. The Tall T (reviewed here) and Seven Men From Now are both great in that vein. The Anthony Mann/Jimmy Stewart ones are good too, but I like Budd better.
Read the description of Wanda and it oddly reminded me of Minnie & Moskowitz and to a lesser degree, Faces, so the Cassavetes name drop is nice to see.
Posted by: derek at October 9, 2007 8:19 AMThanks for the tips Derek. Another fave western of mine is Peter Fonda's The Hired Hand (also with the mighty Oates o' course). Beautiful movie.
Posted by: Dan Warburton at October 10, 2007 10:24 PMNeed to screen a few more flicks (hopefully enroute from my Berlin connection) to be certain, but I think Randolph Scott just might hold the tin star in my personal Western actor pantheon. The dude brings the signifiers “leathery” and “laconic” to sublime levels.
Haven’t seen Hired Hand, but Fonda & Oates sounds like a solid combination. You ever watch Deadwood, Dan?
Posted by: derek at October 11, 2007 5:58 AMAin't got no teevee, bro. Just the DVD player.
Posted by: Dan Warburton at October 11, 2007 8:01 AMI can't throw stones since I still don't own a cell phone. But you don’t need no TV: All three seasons are available on DVD.
Posted by: derek at October 11, 2007 8:21 AMJust got Hellman's later spaghetti western "China 9 Liberty 37", once more with the mighty Oates, Fabio Testi (a bit wooden), Jenny Agutter (irresistible, and that's what gets Testi into trouble) and Sam Peckinpah, who plays a sinister dime novelist. A scary little cameo. Odd film - strange homages to Fellini (what's a travelling circus doing here?) but with a great final gunfight and a splendid ending which I won't spoil. Just don't do what I did and shell out for the cheapo shit four-fillums-on-one-deeveedee edition (Western Classics, Mill Creek). The sound's shit, the image worse than a divx rip and the picture cropped round the edges. Hellman really deserves better. Thank god the French have reissued Cockfighter & the two earlier westerns in a cool edition.
Posted by: Dan Warburton at October 21, 2007 8:58 AMI just saw 'The Last American Hero' with Jeff Bridges and I would take 'The Driver' out if I was going to form a trilogy with 'Vanishing Point' and 'Two Lane Blacktop'. Son of a moonshine maker needs money to help Pop with lawyer costs and takes his driving skills to the circuit. Bridges might not have any sort of Southern accent (always sounding the California boy) but the script is surprisingly free of most cliches and features an adorable Valerie Perrine.
D, I have a copy of 'Wanda' on one of your pending discs. Funny that it came up here. Sorry I am so slow on getting the package out.
Posted by: Ted at October 21, 2007 10:42 PMHaven’t seen that Hellman you mentioned, Dan. Once again, the cast & content sounds interesting. Busy weekend of movie watching so I’m planning a summary post.
T, I hear you on the relative incongruity of The Driver. It's made well after all of the others, plus there’s the urban noir angle on it. O’Neal’s lead is stamped from the same mold though, his personality traits sanded off to an almost comical degree.
Last American Hero was on the indie retro station here recently, but I missed it. Speaking of Jeff Bridges, is it me, or is he one of the most consistently underrated actors around?
Posted by: derek at October 22, 2007 7:58 AMI have been going on about Jeff Bridges for a while, mainly because his career is a true rarity--one that has been consistently good. You'll see this film soon enough and I think you'll really enjoy it.
I want to see those Hellman westerns, too. Never understood Hellman's so sporadic career. What happened in the late 70s through the 80s? The guy is still around and I know he knows lots of people in the industry, what was/is his day job?
Posted by: Ted at October 22, 2007 10:53 PMHe works anonimely in hundred of films (Hollywood or indeperndant) as scrip or editor doctor (he was already doing this thirty years ago for Coppola on the editing of "Apocalypse Now"). I'm afraid than, at over seventy now, he has no desire to direct films anymore. His career has been a mystery and a collection of miss because of his peculiar personnality. In this domain he is Welles + Gilliam (bad luck, self-detruction, ego problems,etc.).
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