Two-Lane Blacktop: Classic or Dud?

new Criterion edition in two weeks!

this movie is okay but overrated

yes.

no.

if brilliant and overrated, who cares? Oates has the best lines, like the hamburger one.

Seeing it again recently for the first time in a decade or so, I'd forgotten what a dork Warren Oates character is.

love his rebuff to Harry Dean Stanton -- is it "I gotta concentrate"?

I wish somebody would issue "92 In the Shade" for the Oates/Stanton/Peter Fonda trifecta.

One of the all-time bits of gearhead movie triva: The 55 Chevy from TLB reappeared (after some paint and bodywork) as Falfa's car in American Graffiti

love his rebuff to Harry Dean Stanton -- is it "I gotta concentrate"?

I thought it was something like "This is a competition. I got no time to make tracks."

"this is competition, man. I've got no time."

"performance and image. that's what it's all about."

"that´ll give you a set of emotions that´ll stay with you. know what I mean? those satisfactions are permanent."

one of my favorite last lines, so perfect

Monte Hellman presented this in Tucson maybe a year or so ago and all I could think to ask him during the Q & A was if Criterion would ever release this, since it's pretty singular. I should have asked him how it was pitched instead. So James Taylor, Warren Oates and, I don't know, one of the Beach Boys are sort of racing and chilling across the country....

Does anyone know who does the version of "Hit the Road Jack" in this movie?

Jerry Lee Lewis

I should have asked him how it was pitched instead.

"it's easy rider, starring real rock stars" **

**naturally assumes that hollywood execs don't know the difference between dennis wilson / james taylor and "rock stars"

from what I understand the script created a real buzz, and esquire serialized it. then felt sheepish when it bombed in the theatres.

two-lane blacktop is like an american making a european film about america. it captures the rootless alientation of american life in this removed, critical way, yet it's still quintessentially american, nothing rings false.

Dave Kehr, NY Times:

The Criterion package includes a full disc of recent interviews conducted by Mr. Hellman with some of the film’s surviving personnel, including Mr. Taylor — who says he still hasn’t seen the picture.

ha!

well, neither have JT's fans.

God, I really do want this, but $29.99? That's a little steep, eh?

not for a newly released CC.

I guess. Me buying this is inevitable, but I think it'll be a post holiday gift to myself rather than an impulse purchase right now. I hope it's as great as I remember...

Speaking of which, Amazon has Vanishing Point on DVD for only $7.99!!

Now...make with White LIne Fever already!!!

http://originalalamo.blogspot.com/2008/07/in-honor-of-monte-hellman-and-two-lane.html

"performance by a driver" is supposed to be "performance by a drummer," it's always wrong when that list is quoted

http://www.citypages.com/2000-03-29/arts/austin-powers

Pretty damn cool.

This is the sort of thing you could find on Terrestrial TV, back in the day (which is where I saw it)

Now we have 50+ channels, of which 10 could conceivably play a movie on, and what do we get? Basic Instinct, repeated 3 times in a week, just in case you missed it...

just watched this, a wondrous movie. full marks.

warren oates 4eva

two-lane blacktop is like an american making a european film about america. it captures the rootless alientation of american life in this removed, critical way, yet it's still quintessentially american, nothing rings false.

― Edward III, Friday, November 30, 2007 3:58 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark

this is almost exactly how a friend of mine described dead man, and i think it's true of both movies. (as opposed to, like, wim wenders making movies about america and filling them up with poetry where they need prose.)

anyway, just watched this. pretty great. i already wanna see it again.

make it three yards motherfucker and we'll have us an automobile race

I first read about two-lane blacktop in danny peary's cult movies back in the 80s and spent the next decade or so trying to see it. once I finally did, I reread peary's essay on the film, and noticed he mentioned a nonexistent skinnydipping scene. I just assumed he was confusing two-lane blacktop with easy rider. every once in a while I'd come across a reviewer who would mention the scene, and thought people were just repeating peary's error.

well apparently it exists...

http://www.danaddington.com/denny/mag.html

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/maggroup4a.jpg

so did this film get edited in the 90s?

Huh.

hellman looking like henry spencer, love it

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y176/edwardiii/maggroup1.jpg

I'm going to watch this this weekend. My brother got me the Criterion a couple of years ago, and I've only managed to watch it once since then.

the skinnydipping scene is in the script (which is worth reading)

i have only heard of this bc of the mary heilmann painting named after it

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_3_467172_mary-heilmann.jpg

so wait I don't get it - scenes were cut from the DVD release? That seems really strange

anyone got the criterion release? these scenes are into it?

might be lost!

why would you base your reaction to this movie off of some reaction that randos in 2015 would have!

You misunderstand--their reaction has nothing to do with my reaction, I'm just interested in that kind of thing. And, as I said, the two things I singled out--the ending and the one line--are two things I love about the movie.

I've only seen it the one time on an old VHS I bought in a liquidation sale, but I remember quite liking Cockfighter.

Cockfighter is pretty solid for exploitation level material, but Two Lane is a legit great film.

Suddenly very interested in Dennis Wilson (already true after Shakey and the Manson bio I read). I downloaded Pacific Ocean Blue yesterday, and I'd love to read this if it weren't so ridiculously expensive ($50 minimum online).

http://thejonstebbins.com/photos/rbbbook.jpg

One thing I wondered watching Blacktop the other night: did it have more language (specifically, the use of "fuck") than any studio-released film up to that point? I'd have to check Joe--I think that probably has more but milder profanity. I can't think of anything else offhand.

I have that book, it's good

not much in it about the movie tbh

The inflated-value of this book really doesn't make much sense to me in view of its comparatively recent publication date (2000) and the fact that it basically looks to be a standard-issue celebrity bio (which is not to say that it isn't good). Checked the Toronto library system, and the only copy they have doesn't circulate.

I can't remember how much I paid for it, it was several years ago. I'm sure the inflated value is due to the (assumed) small print run in proportion to the level of fanaticism (and Dennis fans can get p fanatical)

xp do an interlibrary loan to get it from outside your library system.

One thing I wondered watching Blacktop the other night: did it have more language (specifically, the use of "fuck") than any studio-released film up to that point? I'd have to check Joe--I think that probably has more but milder profanity. I can't think of anything else offhand.

Probably. "Shit" had only started popping up in the late '60s, and "Fuck" (and derivatives) only made it's studio debut the year before in M*A*S*H* and Myra Breckenridge. In the Rudy Wurlitzer commentary on the TLB Criterion, he mentions that James Taylor was the first White guy to say "Motherfucker" in a Hollywood film.

New noise: thanks, I didn't know libraries do that--will look into it.

One thing I like was how the profanity wasn't treated as a big deal. I only barely noticed it until it occurred to me after the film that this was unusual for '71.

Which contradicts my previous post--it was really after the film that I thought about it.

Fixing to see this in 35mm.

nice

this movie is such a trip

G.T.O.: I'm not into that!
hitchhiker: I just thought it might relax you while you drive.
G.T.O.: This is competition, man. I've got no time.

i love this movie so much. SO MUCH. hope you can see it on 35mm! (i've managed to see it that way three times, though spaced about 8 years apart.)

It looked fantastic! But the projectionist did a weird thing where they let the classical music they'd been playing prior to the screening continue quietly under the film. For the most part it wasn't noticeable, but it became very obvious under the final, mostly dialogue-less scenes.

wait, that's really weird and wrong. you should get yr money back!

The box office was already closed :-(

Speaking of the music in the film*, how did Hellman latch onto Terry Allen's "Truckload of Art" for the soundtrack a good number of years before it was available commercially?

*One of my favorite small details in this film full of them is how the source music is pretty much all songs about cars, travelling, hitchhiking etc.

Monte not too high on contemporary cinema

https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/seeing-clearly-in-the-dark-a-profile-of-monte-hellman-in-present-day-los-angeles

decided to skip the Oscars and watch this instead. love it more now than i did before. what little dialogue there is remains so memorable. love the scene where JT tries to make random go-nowhere philosophical small talk with Laurie Bird about cicadas and she cuts him off and he wanders away and she says, "You bore me."

Warren Oates is incredible, he goes between hilarious and moving so quickly. and the scene w/Harry Dean Stanton's hitchhiker coming onto him is (for the era) pretty understated and not especially homophobic.

In the Rudy Wurlitzer commentary on the TLB Criterion, he mentions that James Taylor was the first White guy to say "Motherfucker" in a Hollywood film.

i gotta use this to stump someone in 20 questions one of these days.

Warren Oates is amazing in this.

(xpost) Fantastic piece of trivia. Take that, Lester Bangs.

I swear I'll like this movie one day.

Who was the first person ever to say that on film?

^^Somebody in Myra Breckenridge, iirc.

RIP Monte Hellman

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/78/4f/f2/784ff2394a3747d7c6049344dec16205.jpg

Still haven't seen either of his two 1966 films, Ride in the Whirlwind or The Shooting.

There is a quote about the original pitch of the movie in Warren Oates biography that I kind of wish existed in tandem because it’s wildly unlike the finished product.

By August, Oates would be playing a drifter again, with horsepower gunning in place of a horse's hooves. Two-Lane Blacktop had a meandering origin. Its original screenplay, by Will Corry, was the story of two men, one black and one white, who drive across the country with a young girl. Michael Laughlin, one of Hollywood's youngest producers at thirty-two, optioned the script for $100,000 for Cinema Center. Laughlin approached Monte Hellman with Corry's script, which the director told Brad Stevens was "The Gumball Rally." "Only it was a Disney version of that, if you can imagine such a thing. It was the most insipid, silly, sentimental, dumb movie you can imagine."

It was completely written by Wurlitzer.

Up until recently, China 9... was a free title on Prime (now a rental starting at $1.99). However, Cockfighter is up on there and still free to view (can't vouch for the quality; hopefully better than the grey market DVD I have somewhere).

I saw The Shooting late at night on TV, it's a severely underpopulated but well-made dusty existential Western. They were showing Ride in the Whirlwind right afterwards, but I'd heard it wasn't as good.

Now James Taylor has free rein for his movie comeback, Three Lane Blacktop.

xp agreed but I think the idea that the final script came from was Corry’s.

it’s too bad there’s not documentary footage from the shoot. I find it fascinating some of the seedlings that would become Joni Mitchell’s Blue grew during the shooting of this movie.

Oops, I meant REwritten. Yeah, it was Corry's concept, and Floyd Mutrux did some uncredited rewriting as well (iirc he was responsible for most of the technical car talk).

Aw. Monte Hellman was a very fun facebook follow, even when he bafflingly stanned for "Blame It On Rio".

TLB is not on the Criterion Channel currently (Ride in the Whirlwind is). Is there a legitimate stream out there?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MDNTdnw0fE

james taylor squirming is a delight to watch

Great clip, thanks

JT does not seem chill

Do people like his last film. Road to Nowhere?

Expiring soon from MUBI USA. Seems intriguing.

Forgiveness is the killer of snakes, my friend.

my

They’re all planets, they only reflect light.

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52025/sonnet-xxv

I haven't seen Road To Nowhere, but casting both Dominique Swain and Shannyn Sossamon was some serious 'keeping the millennium--era hawt dream alive' move for 2010.

quick callback to the discussion above - I think this is the sweater JT mentions which Joni knitted for him, with the two-lane blacktop across the middle:
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/10/25/63/10256381b7a9e9c5a35a13fb246b19f3.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/GZ7UYFG.jpg
(bit of a Nirvana Unplugged vibe for me)

Watched The Shooting the other day. Not quite as radical as Two Lane tho it does end in a similar way.

I haven't seen Road To Nowhere, but casting both Dominique Swain and Shannyn Sossamon was some serious 'keeping the millennium--era hawt dream alive' move for 2010.

(bit of a Nirvana Unplugged vibe for me)

Son of Kurdt and Krist.

xp to self
Guess he had to end it somehow. Anyway really enjoyed watching this, thinking about it and reading about it.