414 Two-Lane Blacktop

[GringoTex]

It's the roaring exhaust of existentialism.

That too. In cinema, existentialism seems to love to interwine with alienation. There is a profound sense of alienation and rootlessness in Blacktop.

At the risk of splitting hairs, I define alienation as not being in harmony with one's environment. Hellman's characters are very much in tune with their environment because they have chosen a subculture they can excel in (mining, cowboying, street racing, cockfighting). Hellman's characters are lonely because of the existential choices they make. It's active. I think of alienation as a passive refutation of mainstream culture.

[zedz]

It's the roaring exhaust of existentialism.

That too. In cinema, existentialism seems to love to interwine with alienation. There is a profound sense of alienation and rootlessness in Blacktop.

At the risk of splitting hairs, I define alienation as not being in harmony with one's environment. Hellman's characters are very much in tune with their environment because they have chosen a subculture they can excel in (mining, cowboying, street racing, cockfighting). Hellman's characters are lonely because of the existential choices they make. It's active. I think of alienation as a passive refutation of mainstream culture.

Maybe 'dislocation' is a better fit. What I see with the Driver and Mechanic is that their relationships (with one another and with the outside world) are entirely mediated through their shared passion, so they come off as borderline autistic when they have to operate outside that framework, as with their interactions with The Girl. I've struck this kind of thing amongst enthusiasts enough times in real life (hey, we're living it on this forum!) to now see Two-Lane Blacktop as much more documentary and much less 'abstract' than on my first encounter.

I was fortunate enough to see it in a great 35mm print recently, and it revealed itself to be much more carefully constructed than I'd previously thought as well: more purposeful and less drifty. Nevertheless, it's not my favourite Hellman, and if this didn't quite match your expectations, Michael, I'd suggest tracking down Cockfighter (for my money a much more audacious film) or The Shooting - even though you're unlikely to find it in its original aspect ratio, it's a must-see.

[Jack Phillips]

Maybe 'dislocation' is a better fit. What I see with the Driver and Mechanic is that their relationships (with one another and with the outside world) are entirely mediated through their shared passion, so they come off as borderline autistic when they have to operate outside that framework, as with their interactions with The Girl. I've struck this kind of thing amongst enthusiasts enough times in real life (hey, we're living it on this forum!) to now see Two-Lane Blacktop as much more documentary and much less 'abstract' than on my first encounter.

I'll go along with this (and also endorse GringoTex's definition of alienation). That's why I feel the final frames of 2LB are a betrayal of all that goes before, as if the director felt compelled to reach for a Big Statement at the end rather than allow his film to simply document the lives of his characters at a particular moment in time. Or [sudden thought occurring] do those final frames in fact lend support to such a reading?

[colinr0380]

I've struck this kind of thing amongst enthusiasts enough times in real life (hey, we're living it on this forum!) to now see Two-Lane Blacktop as much more documentary and much less 'abstract' than on my first encounter.

Yes, I have been called an idiot savant a few times in my life (though usually people forget to add the 'savant' part)!

[GringoTex]

Nevertheless, it's not my favourite Hellman, and if this didn't quite match your expectations, Michael, I'd suggest tracking down Cockfighter (for my money a much more audacious film)

Zedz recommended this to me and I agree with him. The excellent Anchor Bay edition is OOP, but can be Netflixed.

[Michael]

Cockfighter now netflixed. More Oates is always a good thing. Thanks.

Two-Lane Blacktop was the first film I watched after cycling the cycle of von Sternberg/Dietrich films twice in the past two weeks...I loooooove them. I think that those films still hovering over me had a lot to do with how I watched Two-Lane Blacktop...the truth is that I was filling in its long silences, its long pauses with too much "junk". Still not strong enough to break the von Sternberg/Dietrich spell.

[GringoTex]

Cockfighter now netflixed. More Oates is always a good thing. Thanks.

Forgot to mention that the Cockfighter DVD has an hour-long documentary on the life and career of Warren Oates that's heaven.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

Hey, I was looking through the booklets, and can't seem the find the mentioned Tom Waits appreciation. Anyone know if I'm insane, or is it not included?

[thethirdman]

Hey, I was looking through the booklets, and can't seem the find the mentioned Tom Waits appreciation. Anyone know if I'm insane, or is it not included?

It is on page three of the smaller booklet. It is very short.

A RACE FOR PINK SLIPS
between a '55 Chevy and a GTO
across a long-gone America
when the road was much more
than a shopping aisle.
Three road hogs
and an underage girl
riding in back with the tools.
The nights are warm
and the roads are straight.
This one's built from scratch,
and as Warren Oates says,
"Those satisfactions are permanent."

TOM WAITS

"Those satisfactions are permanent" is also written on the bottom of the slipcase.

[colinr0380]

Updated Mondo Digital review

[Tribe]

From today's NY Times:
[quote]December 18, 2007

By DAVE KEHR
TWO-LANE BLACKTOP

This Monte Hellman 1971 road movie — perhaps the definitive example of the genre — has now come full circle. Oversold on its first release, when Esquire magazine printed its screenplay under the title “Movie of the Year,â€

[skuhn8]

I watched this last night and can say this easily made my top five CC's for the year (still thinking up my CC Awards entry). Though it reminded me a little of Easy Rider--to which 2LB can owe its existence--what really came to mind was The Hired Hand. Two-Lane Blacktop is to the road movie what The Hired Hand is to the Western. Stripping it down to its essential elements and leaving that great Scandinavian Cinema Silence to help push you over and pull you in...ok maybe an artsy Bergman reference is a bit much for a film like this, but there really is something captivating and Hellman's appreciation for Antonioni and Bergman definitely come through.

As for the characters: The Driver and The Mechanic not only lack names but seem to have absolutely no backstory; their characters seem to refute the very possibility. When GTO tries to engage in some personal history The Driver shuts him down: "It's not my problem." What is his problem? Nothing(ness). They just move endlessly forward like Kerouac characters moving for the very sake of moving, and in a vehicle that takes that to the extreme.

If these two deny any attempt at backstory--and the girl is really little more than a prop like the tools she sits amongst--it's Warren Oates who is constantly struggling to create one, pull something from the void that he drove in out of. [And just as in The Hired Hand he can't but help steal the show--what a performance!] Working with jets in Bakersfield? How much of these little snippets of history are gleanings from previous interactions on the road? He's an amalgamation, a synthesis, of the hitchikers' lives he glimpses.

I had never even heard of this film before the rumors here on the forum. What a great surprise.

[Nothing]

I find this to be one of the great American movies, a passion I don't share for Cockfighter (more of a staight-up character study), The Shooting (atmospheric and engaging if a little slight) or Ride in the Whirlwind (more of a classic western, but solid and thoughtful, Anthony Mann-esque), although they're all nice films. If I had one criticism it would be that Oates' more traditional performance is slightly out of sync the rest of the cast. The Driver, The Mechanic, The Girl, you buy them 100% (James Taylor? Who the hell is that?). However I hesitate to label this a criticism, as it is clearly an intentional choice, I can't think of a better way of portraying that particular character as written and it does ultimately work in the grand scheme of things. Of course, some of the credit must also go to Rudy W for his wonderful script - Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid being his other great masterpiece - and it's really a shame that there's so little prime Wurtlitzer that has made it to the big screen over the years. I guess the same could be said for Hellman. They should collaborate again! Someone put up the finance...

Certainly wouldn't say that Criterion rediscovered this film on DVD - the screencaps look very similar to the Anchor Bay edition, which is also director approved and used to be the highlight of their catalogue, one of the best early DVDs. Hell, if Anchor Bay had held onto it we might have seen an HD disc by now... Now if Criterion had decided to 'rescue' China 9 Liberty 7....

[Satanas]

If I had one criticism it would be that Oates' more traditional performance is slightly out of sync the rest of the cast.

I think that out of sync quality is what makes G.T.O. work as a character; hell, the entire film would be a vastly different beast if Oates acted in the same flat, closed-off style of the other actors. It works because G.T.O. IS out of sync with the other characters. The Driver, The Mechanic, and The Girl are zen drifters, each completely at ease and absorbed in their respective roles. They don't attempt to connect/interact with others (hell, they all barely speak to each other) because they are so purely focused on their lifestyle. G.T.O. is an outsider, someone constantly trying to connect with anyone he meets, trying to act the Big Shot, yearning to be somebody. The other 3 main characters are lifelong residents of this nomadic world; G.T.O is a tourist desperately trying to fit in. Look at the scene when they both park on the side of the road late at night, after G.T.O. gets away from the cops. The Driver and The Mechanic are checking out G.T.O.'s car and they notice the mechanical problems it has. When they tell him, he has no idea what they are talking about. They speak gearhead like it was the language of their birth; its obvious from Oates reaction to them that they may as well be talking to him in Esperanto. Notice the subtle contempt/amusement they show towards G.TO.'s car ignorance, at the colossal joke of Mr.-Big-Man-Driving-Across-America not knowing the first thing about what's going on underneath his own car's hood.

The other thing about Oates' performance that makes it so necessary is that he is far more sympathetic than the other "Bressonian" characters. He's rootless and grasping for companionship, eager to communicate; he's the kind of actor who is trying to engage and entertain an audience, whereas the girl and the musician-actors seem to be completely unaware of the fact that they are actually in a movie. If Oates was as robotic and insular as the other characters, it would deprive 2LB of its soul, its wounded humanity.

[Greathinker]

I would argue that the driver and mechanic are the only two rooted characters, knowing what they want out of their existence and how to operate within it. But they become sandwiched between the two other characters who don't know what they want out of life-- they are both doomed followers trying to find truth in a life other than their own. The girl constantly tags along hoping for someone to take her "there", and GTO being the male counterpart, is a constant smokescreen and thinks he's making his own way because he has an impressive car. You could very well see the two as remarkably alike, and what adds so much to the mythos is that you don't know a thing about either of them.

I think the film's center, most simply an essentially, is in the relationship between these two groups. Driving across America is such a beautiful apt metaphor-- you wonder if those who do know where they're going are going to be run off the road, taken off their path by those who don't. Despite wanting something from the driver/mechanic themselves, the girl in her very image means something to at least the driver, and GTO could possibly be seen as the other material pursuit, who offers his car as reward but is a leech that hangs on. But it's only by the way of fate that driver/mechanic shake them loose, whereby the film ends.

I don't know about zedz's assessment that this is more documentary than abstract, nor do I think it matters, but it just goes to show how incredibly ripe artistically this film is. Enough to make me feel foolish for throwing a bit of analysis on it, which I in fact don't hold as higher than any other interpretations. But simply that it works on so many levels. James Taylor's performance is a small miracle, and Oates is remarkable. All the talk about myth may even downplay his contribution. That he can play that role with such, ostensibly, unconscious self-deprecation.

[miless]

I just got this and was surprised to see one H.D.Stanton... finally, he's in the collection.

[arsonfilms]

I just got this and was surprised to see one H.D. Stanton... finally, he's in the collection.

Well, aside from Fear and Loathing and The Last Temptation of Christ. I mean the guy is in EVERYTHING, I'm almost surprised he's only in the collection three times.

[Cronenfly]

I just got this and was surprised to see one H.D.Stanton... finally, he's in the collection.

Well, aside from Fear and Loathing and The Last Temptation of Christ. I mean the guy is in EVERYTHING, I'm almost surprised he's only in the collection three times.

And in three cult-y Universal movies, to boot.

[miless]

ah, I knew I left out a few.

[Gregor Samsa]

Going back to that comment a while back about the ending, its interesting that The Girl is the only character who even has a possibility of escaping the frame. We don't know how her relationship with the nameless biker will develop or if she'll just keep on drifting from person to person, but in her own way she does ride off into the sunset. The Driver (and The Mechanic) disintegrate along with the film, and G.T.O goes on in the same way he has before. His fate may be the saddest of all, because we know his 'permanent' satisfactions are fleeting at best.

Something else that impressed me about Two-Lane is how it subtly brings in its early 70s context without letting that immediate time dominate the film, like with the early reference to a badly stoned driver or The Girl asking about the Zodiac killer. (Its also interesting to see excised scenes in the screenplay include contextual references to environmentalism and the like too...) It adds to the film by adding to its characters. G.T.O's fear of needing to be grounded or 'going into orbit' for instance really gains an extra resonance to me with its backdrop of the end of the 60s.

This, Complete Monterey Pop Festival and Gimme Shelter would make a fine 'Birth and Death of 'The 60s' set, if such a thing existed.

[kaujot]

A question for anyone in the know:

During Wurlitzer's cameo, James Taylor says, "Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we'll have ourselves an automobile race."

David Meyer asks Wurlitzer, "Is this the first time a white man ever said 'motherfucker' in a film?" Wurlitzer doesn't know.

Do any of you?

[domino harvey]

Myra Breckinridge

[Macintosh]

Myra Breckinridge

Playing at Anthology all next week,FYI.

[Narshty]

I sat down and watched this a second time. The first 40 minutes or so are riveting, then it just peters out. I can't quite explain why I find the latter half of the film so uninvolving - while conceptually it sounds intriguing, in reality it's rather drab.

Much better along the same lines is Hellman's earlier Ride in the Whirlwind which has the same existential journeying to who-knows-where but is so much more compelling and a much sadder, lonelier film, and significantly shorter too; there's none of the padding of Blacktop. Tests of masculinity, the elusive girl, the unknown destination and the compulsive travelling are all there, but bound up in a remarkable small-scale Western with much more compelling performances all round and a script easily as good; apparently Jack Nicholson borrowed liberally from journals of western men of the period for the dialogue, and it's fabulous.

[MilkManX]

I can't describe in words how much I love this film. It really is just there and you have to take it all in. Once you do,you get caught up in the characters.

GTO is the guy that does all of the talking but has no idea what to do with his life anymore.

The Driver and Mechanic are just there to race. One quarter mile at a time.

The Girl is as lost as GTO but wants someone to find her.

Mix that all together and it creates a specific dramatic narrative.

I loved it.