Remembering director Monte Hellman, who died yesterday at age 91.
It is a clear night on the backroads of some southern state, the names blurring together in the endless stretch of road. The Driver rolls down his window, with the Mechanic and the Girl sitting silently, watching. GTO slams the door of his flashy yellow car, storming up to the Driver’s beat-up, home-built 1955 Chevy. He rolls down his window as GTO marches up, offering a quiet “Hey, man.”
“Listen you creep, I don’t need any help from you understand? I’m in this race all the way and I don’t need to be patronized. Don’t put me on! I’ve been around a track too many times for that you understand?” GTO raves. The Driver, unfazed, simply offers: “We just wanted to let you know that we’re right along with you on the road. We’re all in this together, right?”
Monte Hellman’s unexpected cult classic Two-Lane Blacktop came out in 1971, fifty years ago. It is a film that still leaves much to discuss, though its stature in the eyes of critics and movie-watchers grew significantly in the decades since its release. This exchange, coming about halfway through the film, in many ways perfectly encapsulates the central conceits of this movie, of which there are many. Two-Lane Blacktop is a fascinating examination of expectation, anonymity, life- all in the unassuming package of a racing movie that clocks in at just under two hours. It is a masterpiece of film and reflecting human experience, and one that went largely unnoticed upon its release.
The movie follows the Driver (James Taylor) and the Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) as they drive around the country, making money by betting on races with their opponents. One day, the Girl (Laurie Bird) stows away in the car, joining them as they find themselves in a cross-country race with an older man, GTO (Warren Oates), in a new car looking for competition. In April 1971, Esquire published the entirety of the screenplay in its monthly issue, calling it “Our nomination for movie of the year” on the cover. However, they offered no actual commentary on the film and did not review it upon its release in the fall of that year. The film disappeared quite quickly after its initial appearance in theaters, leading Esquire to lampoon themselves at the end of 1971, calling their prediction regarding the film one of the Dubious Achievements of the Year.
The strange story of the release of Two-Lane Blacktop only adds to a film that already stands as a bit of an oddity. It is a racing movie that is deliberately slow. It takes two of the most popular and influential musicians of the time and places them in lead acting roles. It emphasizes anonymity in an incredibly intimate narrative. In all of that, Two-Lane Blacktop serves as a startlingly introspective examination of life and its meaning, one that feels very of its time and yet somehow still ahead of it. It is a movie that becomes intensely personal to the viewer, even if they have little life experience to directly apply to its explicit events.
Two-Lane Blacktop never names its characters. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are simply the Driver and the Mechanic, Laurie Bird only the Girl and Warren Oates merely GTO. This film centers around the anonymity of its characters and thus the universality of its philosophy. Even down to many of the driving shots being point-of-view from a seat within the car, Hellman’s direction emphasizes this notion of putting the viewer within the film, placing them in the same position. It is a film that very much lives by the idea that it could be anyone in this particular narrative, even you as a watcher. It does not really matter who the specific characters are; their search for meaning is one everyone goes through, making their names and backstories irrelevant.
This concept of anonymity within Two-Lane Blacktop receives a fascinating twist in its casting, and this is a film in which the performers portraying the central four characters are particularly crucial to its impact. When considering the idea of an unknown actor in 1971, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson do not immediately come to mind. Taylor was at the peak of his fame as a singer-songwriter in 1971, coming off of the success of his 1970 album Sweet Baby James. Although their popularity had waned somewhat at the time, at least relative to their early and mid-60s peak, almost no one in the country was unfamiliar with Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson. It seems bizarre casting, to say the least. However, it feels so inspired that it is hard to imagine anyone else in these roles.
Hellman asked James Taylor to do a screen test after seeing his photo on a billboard. A friend of the casting director suggested Dennis Wilson for the other role, a recommendation Hellman took because of the lived experience Wilson could bring to a movie about cars. Somehow, Hellman makes two of the most recognizable figures in American pop culture at the time disappear into the anonymity of these roles. A lot of that credit goes to Taylor and Wilson themselves, first-time actors who give unbelievably masterful portrayals. Still, Hellman’s quick eye for both of them and trust in the inherent vulnerabilities and charisma they bring creates something very profound.
Even in crafting the anonymity central to the messaging of this film, Hellman takes advantage of the recognizable nature of his stars. A Time magazine cover story about Taylor from early 1971 compared him to Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, while another writer referred to him as “a cowboy Jesus.” Taylor’s persona was well known and clearly the subject of much discussion, and Hellman does not make any attempts to create a character any different from that. Rather, he pulls more of that out of Taylor, with much of the movie being the Driver brooding in various settings and situations. The casting of Dennis Wilson is similarly inspired, with his character being entirely believable as an easygoing, charming mechanic, all thanks to his reputation not only as a Beach Boy (with full albums of car songs to boot) but specifically as the daredevil, partier one. Whether or not we consciously recognize it while watching, the preconceived ideas we have of these two figures from the work they are known for informs our understanding of their characters, filling in many of the gaps left by the anonymity. While this effect may be less prevalent for modern audiences, it certainly still exists and is an integral piece of the depth of this film, especially as it pertains to its creation in 1971.
Laurie Bird, who plays the Girl, is another interesting case. She made only three movies before committing suicide in 1979 at age twenty-six, another with Monte Hellman and a bit part as Paul Simon’s girlfriend in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall. She was romantically involved with Hellman until 1974, at which point she began a serious relationship with Art Garfunkel that lasted until her death, also working as a still photographer as well as an actress through these years. If we look at the fame of Taylor and Wilson, Bird’s true anonymity provides a fascinating counterpoint. Bird comes into the film with a genuine unknown factor that makes her the most mysterious character in the film. She is hard to pin down; one can never really be sure of her thoughts or feelings, as the other characters soon discover. Even in the case of Warren Oates, playing GTO, many viewers have the general framework of his work in westerns and with Sam Peckinpah that informs their understanding of his character, knowing he is a tough guy kind of actor, and he establishes that pretty well regardless. Bird, however, does not have this. Hellman does not try to fill in these gaps. He lets the viewer fill in pieces or struggle to do so themselves, and it drives home this theme of anonymity and trying to understand those around us.
As such, Hellman asserts in this film that anonymity is not something reserved for ordinary people. Even the most famous of people can still be anonymous. They are only the images they create for us, and the ones in which we choose to believe. The real person is all but anonymous to us, just as we may be to those around us. Any one of us could be the Driver or the Girl, and perhaps that is the greatest challenge in life. Love and life come from giving up some of that anonymity to those around us, but as the Driver discovers, sometimes that leads to suffering. As Tim Kreider wrote in a now oft-quoted blog post in The New York Times in 2013, “if we want the rewards of being loved, we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” Two-Lane Blacktop exemplified this notion almost fifty years earlier.
In many ways, Two-Lane Blacktop plays with the idea of subverting expectations. One of the key ways this plays out is through the concept of quiet versus noise. The most obvious example of this is the fact that neither Taylor nor Wilson sings at any point, and while music is a prominent feature of this film, it is never their own. Admittedly, it would be strange for them to turn on the radio and have “Little Deuce Coupe” or “Fire and Rain” start playing. However, Hellman also experiments with this contrast through subtler methods. The beginning sequence of the film, preparations for a drag race interrupted by the cops, takes place in silence except for the noise of cars. We see people talking, but we cannot hear what they say, again playing on this theme of anonymity. The first we hear anyone talk comes from the radio in the opening credits three minutes into the film, with the first brief line of dialogue from a character coming four minutes in, and it falling silent again until six minutes in, with the first substantial bit of dialogue in the movie. The last sequence of the movie, another race, is completely silent, lacking even the ambient noises of the opening scene.
A considerable amount of this film is silent, just watching the Driver drive or observing the characters at various stops along their journey. However, there is a clear disparity between the Driver & Mechanic and GTO. The Driver and Mechanic rarely speak when it is just the two of them driving. They seem perfectly at peace driving in silence. When the Girl gets into their car while the two of them are eating in a diner, they ask no questions and just begin driving off with her in tow. She begins speaking to them, saying it is bumpy in the back and asking what kind of car it is, only to be met by silence. Then, Bird, with impeccable delivery, asks, “Hey, you guys aren’t the Zodiac Killers or anything like that are you?” It is only then that Wilson, as the Mechanic, begins interacting with her. Even after the Girl physically brings noise into their silence, there are still many quiet moments in the movie. Hellman allows the camera to linger in silent times, letting the viewer just observe extended scenes of life for these characters.
GTO, on the other hand, is seldom silent. He is constantly picking up hitchhikers, talking their ears off, and playing tapes in his car, frequently singing along. There is near-constant noise. This is a source of attraction for the Girl, worn out by the relentless quiet of riding with the Driver and the Mechanic. Over time, the four central characters end up forming a delicate truce, racing but staying close enough to one another to keep up a real level of competition and allowing a relationship to form among them all. As this develops, GTO tries to pull more out of the Driver, but he remains in his silence. The Girl, however, begins to gravitate toward the noise brought by GTO, something that initially pulls her to an evening rendezvous with the Mechanic while the Driver wanders around town, silently, of course.
What is the point of drawing such a clear contrast between silence and noise? Hellman is quite deliberate in doing so, and it adds a significant layer of complexity to a film that already leaves so much to unpack. It relates to that idea of anonymity. GTO talks for the sake of being known. He is lonely and uses noise as a way of making himself real to others and preventing himself from having the time to reflect on the tragedies he has suffered and only briefly alludes to in the film before quickly moving on to something else. Conversely, the Driver seeks to retain his anonymity. Both the Girl and GTO discuss their pasts to various degrees, and the Mechanic is open to conversation at the very least. However, by the end of the film, it is hard to think of much we know about the Driver in terms of personal history. What led him to this point? We can only imagine, coloring in the lines of his anonymity and seek to know him through small gestures or looks that may reveal some larger driving force. The Driver only looks at people when they are not looking at him to know; he refuses to make his vulnerabilities known. He remains steady the whole time, keeping his eyes fixed on the road, hands on the wheel, mouth shut. He wants to remain anonymous, and silence is his refuge.
On the surface, Two-Way Blacktop is a racing movie. However, the deliberate emphasis on anonymity and specific uses of noise and silence make it evident from the outset that there is something larger at play here. For a movie about cars and racing, it moves at a purposefully slow pace. Sure, it is about a race, but it symbolizes something much deeper than that. The film is a much deeper examination of life and its purpose than it may appear. Much of its runtime is slow sequences of driving and traveling. It makes the viewer feel as if they are in the car, riding along on this somewhat aimless journey. It is a race of life, a race against an unknown opponent to an undefined destination. There is only an endless stretch of road ahead of us, one that we can keep driving, eyes never moving from the road like the Driver or stopping for detours like GTO.
The film is so dedicated to realism in its characters and visuals that one cannot help but feel a part of it. Perhaps the best example is the way the Girl enters and exits their lives the same way. When she enters, the Driver and the Mechanic sit next to a large window in a diner, eating. They are talking and laughing, but we cannot hear them, as a loud version of “Hit the Road Jack” drowns them out through the entirety of the scene. As they frame the window, a psychedelic-looking van pulls up and parks. The Girl gets out, grabs her bag from the back, and walks toward the window, the camera only then panning to follow her, shooting through the glass on the door to see her slide into the back of the Driver and the Mechanic’s car. At the end of the movie, when she leaves all three of them for a handsome young motorcyclist in a diner, it is almost a direct parallel of this sequence. The camera remains fixed as she stands up and exits, we see her pulling her things out of GTO’s car through the diner window. It is only then that it cuts outside to show her getting on the motorcycle and riding off with the new man.
The only two times the Driver takes his eyes off of the road when driving are to briefly look down at the Girl’s hands as they rub his shoulders earlier in the movie, and in the late third act when he turns to demand the location of GTO and the Girl, who has run off with him, when the Mechanic mentions they passed them a few miles earlier in their race. This film is as much about love as it is about life. All three men love the Girl in different ways, but the quietly sensitive Driver is the one most affected and consequently most devastated by it. He concedes some anonymity and pays the price for it. However, as Hellman paints, this is all part of the giant road trip that is life.
Two-Lane Blacktop is a cult masterpiece, and fifty years on, it still feels as fresh and affecting. This film is very much a product of the late counterculture, from its stars to the attitudes of the youth characters and the way it presents its themes. It roots itself so deeply in its notion of anonymity that one can see themselves reflected in at least one of the characters and their desperate searches for something. In that way, it portrays the human experience in a manner so raw and universal that it feels immensely timely, even in 2021.
Its anonymity holds a mirror up to the viewers and forces them to recognize themselves in these characters and their experiences. However, this did not make me uncomfortable in the way that some films aim to serve as this mirror to cause discomfort. Instead, I felt a strange kinship with these misfits out on the road just looking for something. I related to each of them in some way, and I connected with their attempts to find meaning in the seeming meaninglessness of life and their journeys. It became an immensely personal watch because of the way it balanced intimacy with anonymity and introspection. It is the journey that creates meaning, making the most of that open road while you are still traveling upon it.
There is an inherent romance to driving out on the open road, no destination in hand. This film plays to that, infusing just enough of the counterculture philosophy to make this journey feel like a liberating experience. However, I felt torn between the freedom of an endless stretch of road and the intimate struggles they endured. In that way, it felt like a deep reflection of life, always yearning for that freedom but being sidetracked by one thing or another. Two-Lane Blacktop does not propose a solution but rather suggests that this is the central conflict of life: the battle between anonymity and the liberation that comes with it and the noise and struggles of being known. This is the common thread in the human experience. As the Driver tells GTO, “We just wanted to let you know that we’re right along with you on the road. We’re all in this together, right?”