Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Two Lane Blacktop plus 37 years
They are less characters than cultural manifestations: The driver and the mechanic; James Taylor undeniably beautiful and one of the Beach Boys. A 55 Chevy and a 70 GTO. A weird BS artist and likely alcoholic played by a great character actor of the era. And a (probably) jailbait quasi-hippie chick with a duffle bag nearly as big as she is. (The duffle ends up on the side of the road and the girl on the back of a motocycle.)
Two Lane Blacktop is a curious product of the times. Director Richard Linklater gives his tribute to it and summarizes nicely when he says: "...it's both the last film of the '60s -- even though it came out in '71 -- but it's also the first film of the '70s. You know, that great era of "How the hell did they ever get that film made at a studio/Hollywood would never do that today" type of film." It is definitely a US road film with European sensibilities. The Wikipedia article on Two Lane Blacktop lumps it in with Easy Rider, which it resembles in many ways, and Vanishing Point as an existential road picture.
Taylor and Dennis Wilson kind of flounder around throughout Monte Hellman's film. Thank goodness for Warren Oates in the yellow GTO.Performance his great screen presence as he delivers a different backstory to all of the hitchikers he encounters and delivers such line as. "Peformance and image, that's what its all about." about the GTO. Or as raps on to the sleeping girl, "If I don't get grounded pretty soon, I'm going to go into orbit." Or in challenge to hustler/drag racer in reality rock star owners of the 55 Chevy: "If I wanted to bother, I could suck you through my tail pipe." But best is the scene where he sings to a cover of Chuck Berry's Maybeline with goofy abandon.
Two Lane Blacktop has held a kind of cult classic status for movie buffs for a very long time. I was curious and finally dropped the recent Criterion disk into my player. Ultimately it is an audacious cultural artifact. The first forty minutes seems like it is going to be a set up for a race across country with the vehicles themselves up for grabs, but near Arkansas, big meandering sets in. Warren gets drunk. Dennis Wilson sleeps, James Taylor does the drive shift seduction to Lori Bird. But hey it's the cusp of 60s cruising into 70s and the journey still seems more important than the destination.
posted by well-executed buffet at 8:30 PM
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