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Four people coming from nowhere, drifting, heading nowhere but rich in stories to tell, even if there are no words to describe them as their life is embodied solely in their racing vehicles or their never ending journey. This fiery classic by Monte Hellman has all the ingredients of a great cult movie: brilliant screenplay with extremely weird characters, passion, dark underbelly, fantastic photography and music. It’s one of these late 60’s & early 70’s artifacts, which made to the silver screen only due to the fall of Old Hollywood, using created gap. Financed by Universal, Hellman’s film flopped at the time of it’s release against high expectations and very favorable press reviews, which dubbed it “the best movie of 1971”. A blame in this case has been definitely on the studio executives, who folded the marketing machine promptly after the premiere and then tossed the picture down from big theatres to the drive-in circuit, where it played with exploitation goodies of freshly founded New World Pictures.

Nevertheless, the film eventually found it’s public by becoming an obscure night player on American TV. This was fortunate and helped a lot to shelter Hellman’s vision in fandom, which slowly has put it up to a cult status. By 2000 it was finally released on DVD after members of The Doors agreed to pass on the royalties to Moonlight Drive, one of many classic songs featured on the soundtrack. Since then “Two-Lane Blacktop” has begun it’s second, glorious run, discovered by next generation of movie geeks and die-hard diggers of auteur cinema. Justice has been definitely reclaimed as next to “Easy Rider” and “Vanishing Point”, this ravishing road flick is the shit, which shouldn’t be missed by any serious cinema fanatic… and it’s viewing is highly rewarding, bringing you these uncanny emotions of embracing the acid vision or a dream – both important levels of the epoch’s speech. “Two-Lane Blacktop” is indeed an unique piece of creative lunacy.

Monte Hellman was initially another chap, stepping up the ladder of Roger Corman’s “shoot today & edit tomorrow” film school in the 60’s, which served as a catapult for such personalities as: Francis Ford Coppola, Dennis Hopper, Martin Scorsese or Peter Bogdanovich. He was actually one of this legendary crowd, who glued together “The Terror” (1963) when Corman left it after shooting few nonsense scenes on leftover props from “The Raven” (1962). In 1965 Hellman managed to get $150,000 from Corman to direct two westerns almost simultaneously. They were “The Shooting” and “Ride in the Whirlwind”, both starring Jack Nicholson, released in 1968 and considered first “acid westerns” in history – today explained as a bizarre cross of revisionist western and hippiesploitation movies. Although these pictures never made a huge blast leaping high over exploitation pot boilers with their enigmatic plot structure, they are fascinating works, which have lead directly to Hellman’s early 70’s cult classics like “Two-Lane Blacktop” or “Cockfighter” (1974).

By the time Universal agreed to finance the production of “Two-Lane Blacktop” and forked $850,000, Monte Hellman has been already loking into a firm script by William Corry, but felt it’s essence was kind of subpar and should have been reworked to match his ideas. This was assigned to Rudolph Wurlitzer – a fresh writer who just published his experimental novel, Nog (1969) – and Floyd Mutrux, who never got the credit by losing his case in Writer’s Guild. Wurlitzer rewrote the screenplay completely, coming up with a copy of a more sophisticated nature, leaving a lot of symbolic space to play around for Hellman. Almost all shots were taken on Route 66, before it was transformed into a transcontinental highway and lost it’s mythical allure, and then… the main actors were actual cars: heavily tuned up Chevy ’55 and a brand new Pontiac G.T.O. ’70 – both machines representing diverse values of car culture.

The film hits as an experimental theatre on the road featuring two hot rodders without a name: The Driver (James Taylor – a cult singer) & The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson – The Beach Boys drummer) going after any fluke in their Chevy ‘55. They’re not really into money when dragging, they’re just simply looking for means to make next part of two-lane blacktop… always ahead in their machine, which seems undoubtedly a centre of the world due to Hellman’s witty frames, catching it as purely alienating space. Director seems to say with his camera: “That’s it, man. There’s nothing else” as dialogues are scarce and usually involve running a car or it’s technical problems (very nerdy stuff, understandable only for club members). Even when guys meet a young hippie girl – another Summer Of Love dropout – who sneaks into their car to get a lift, they are not destined to end in some place with her. It’s just another part of the game.

Action gets raised when they meet Mr. G.T.O. (fantastic role by Warren Oates) – a Pontiac driver, a guy who takes the road challenge and a compulsive liar, who keeps fabricating exploits about his life, passing them to hitchhickers… all for sake of going further down the road as if he’d like someone to cover his lack of purpose. The only moment when he starts to unveil his identity happens during the race, at front of The Driver, who squashes him immediately… as nobody really cares on the road, especially if they’re racing for the wheels and the only thing that matters is the moment – very 60’s psychedelic, hot rod ZEN message indeed. As they travel across America, the emptiness of their lives becomes strikingly apparent, but it’s the only thing left after countercultural dreams went under… a freedom to ride.

This bitterswitness, soaked in post-revolutionary depression is a crucial undercurrent here, making “Two-Lane Blacktop” such a great picture. Even if we desperately try to grasp the meaning, it sneaks away as soon as the characters make another 100 miles. We basically run in the passenger’s seat for this whole time just to get, that there are no simple answers, light always comes with a shadow and life will keep carrying on, no matter if you’ve already moved on or you’re still hanging in there… the ending of the movie stands out as one of the greates scenes of American auteur cinema movement being correspondingly bold and confusing.

Though I wish nothing more than to love a Bressonesque journey into the heart of America, Monte Hellman’s rush of gear headed existentialism kind of left me twirling my hair in the uncomfortable back seat waiting for someone to yell over the loud rumbling of the 55 Chevy. Many cultists say ‘Two-Lane Blacktop’ is ten times the movie ‘Easy Rider’ ever was but I’m going to have to disagree on that one. Hopper’s movie may be poppy, irresponsible, and dated, while Hellman’s minimalist gaze retains a timeless artfulness to it, but it had so much optimism, rage, and life crammed into each frame that it surpasses its mere place in film history and remains a fascinating entertainment. I think superiority shouldn’t be measured in this case since it’s a matter of what does it for you. All I can say in the end is that I’m glad to have ridden along with it and that’s about that with that ride- the experience has burned out along with the final frame of the film.

Though it might have been too late to the decade party, I take Two-Lane Blacktop as what 60s nostalgia-trippers and film critics want everyone to see in Easy Rider: two guys roaming the country, living by their skills alone. James Taylor is The Driver; a Beach Boy is The Mechanic. Their names should hint at how laconic the film is. The two guys pick up hitchhikers, make bets, race, eat, and sleep. Not much happens, but they live free and semi-feral, doing their thing across the US, unbound by society and culture. The characters are cut off psychologically from the viewer, and probably one another. Their speech is also laconic. There is only one character who chatters, and he regurgitates marketing he thinks will impress others. The content of his chatter is meaningless, and the only seemingly truthful thing he says points to pain as his impetus for driving around. The characters don’t seem to think about anything other than the road, the car, the next town, and the next race. In my experience, this is in essence what Easy Rider is pitched as. But in Easy, I only see drug taking and selling that is then waxed into mumbling about freedom. When I don’t get it, there is always the back-up lie that understanding the 60s is contingent on context (“You weren’t there, maaan,” in my best Dennis Hopper). In Two-Lane Blacktop, the guys drink and smoke up, and they drive. It is beautiful and tedious, but both men are dangerously free. I don’t hear about their freedom secondhand, and my understanding doesn’t need to be informed by the counter-factual of having grown up in the 60s. The film is a solid thing, a bluish gray exoskeleton of a car racing endless miles, that speaks to the nature of freedom, and gives nothing away that isn’t already on the screen.

As I sit and watch the film for a 4th time, I post my thoughts from August 2008 when I first saw the film:

A film of alienation, loneliness, obsession and the masculine inability to communicate like only America can do. It is a wonderfully slow burn.
This is probably a film to have made George Lucas jealous.
While James Taylor’s Driver and Dennis Wilson’s Mechanic can’t relate their feelings beyond car talk Warren Oates’ GTO can’t shut up and yarns a good bullshit story to no one in particular. It’s an interesting contrast; the young guys in the supped up old Chevy and the older man compensating in the brand spankin’ new one, race for their car’s pink slips cross country.

And then you have Laurie Bird as the Girl, the epitome of restlessness; the desire to make a connection, to be noticed, but to be alone all the same. Wow.

I know Two-Lane is compared to Easy Rider a lot, usually Two-Lane being cited as the better film. I like both very much for different reasons. Hopper’s Easy Rider explores a more vicious, up front route of America through the drug and hippie culture. Violence boils over in that film while in Monte Hellmann’s Two-Lane it is just a transient shadow passing by every once in a while, which in many ways is much more freighting. While Hopper focuses on the sex and drug outcasts, Hellmann focuses on everybody else, creating a band of characters far less stereotypical.

As I sit and type this, the film grows more and more fascinating to me. I’ll have to watch it again soon.

I guess you either have to be really into cars and/or 70s counter-culture philosophy to appreciate Monte Hellman’s snail-paced cult hit. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are bland cyphers with their amateurish performances, and Laurie Bird is incredibly annoying – only Warren Oates manages some mild entertainment value. Really, and incredibly boring film of long pointless takes and long silences. Maybe I’m just not of “the era” to understand it.