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Two-Lane Blacktop
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Two-Lane Blacktop
Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 American road film directed and edited by Monte Hellman, from a screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry. It stars musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird in the leading roles. The sparse, existentialist plot follows a group of street racers during a cross-country race through the American Southwest.
Universal Pictures commissioned the film in the wake of Easy Rider's monumental success. Hellman, who had previously worked in low-budget and independent films, developed the screenplay with Wurlitzer, then-known mainly as an underground writer, during an actual cross-country road trip. Filming took place in locations around the Southwest between August and October 1970.
On initial release, the film received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. Over the years, it developed the reputation of a sleeper hit and a cult classic, and has been reevaluated as a major work of the New Hollywood movement. In 2012, the US Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Two street racers—the Driver and the Mechanic—live on the road in their highly modified, primer-gray 1955 Chevrolet 150 two-door sedan drag car, drifting from town to town and earning income by challenging locals to impromptu races. While driving east on Route 66 from Needles, California, they pick up the Girl, a hitchhiker they meet at a diner in Flagstaff, Arizona. Though the Driver develops a crush on her, she sleeps with the Mechanic while he is out drinking.
In New Mexico, they encounter another driver, GTO, on the highway. A tense rivalry forms between the groups. Despite GTO not being an obvious street racer and displaying little automotive knowledge, a cross-country race to Washington, D.C., is proposed. The Driver insists the prize should be “pinks” (i.e., ownership of the loser's car). Along the way, GTO picks up several hitchhikers, including an insistent homosexual man. When GTO's inexperience becomes clear, he, the Driver, and the Mechanic form an uneasy alliance; the Driver even takes the wheel for a stretch when GTO grows fatigued.
Needing funds, the trio competes at a Memphis race track. After the Driver finishes his race, he discovers the Girl has left with GTO. He chases them to a diner, where the Girl has just rejected GTO's suggestion to visit Chicago. The Driver proposes a trip to Columbus, Ohio, for car parts, but she rebuffs him as well, instead leaving with a stranger on a motorcycle and abandoning her belongings in the parking lot.
Later, GTO picks up two soldiers and boasts that he won his car by defeating two men in a cross-country race involving a custom 1955 Chevrolet 150. The film concludes abruptly with the Driver racing a Chevrolet El Camino at an airstrip in East Tennessee.
All of the characters in the screenplay and in the film are officially unnamed, although about midway through the film The Driver, while talking to GTO, refers to The Girl as "Higgins, whatever her name is"
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Two-Lane Blacktop
Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 American road film directed and edited by Monte Hellman, from a screenplay by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Corry. It stars musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, Warren Oates, and Laurie Bird in the leading roles. The sparse, existentialist plot follows a group of street racers during a cross-country race through the American Southwest.
Universal Pictures commissioned the film in the wake of Easy Rider's monumental success. Hellman, who had previously worked in low-budget and independent films, developed the screenplay with Wurlitzer, then-known mainly as an underground writer, during an actual cross-country road trip. Filming took place in locations around the Southwest between August and October 1970.
On initial release, the film received generally positive reviews, but was not a commercial success. Over the years, it developed the reputation of a sleeper hit and a cult classic, and has been reevaluated as a major work of the New Hollywood movement. In 2012, the US Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Two street racers—the Driver and the Mechanic—live on the road in their highly modified, primer-gray 1955 Chevrolet 150 two-door sedan drag car, drifting from town to town and earning income by challenging locals to impromptu races. While driving east on Route 66 from Needles, California, they pick up the Girl, a hitchhiker they meet at a diner in Flagstaff, Arizona. Though the Driver develops a crush on her, she sleeps with the Mechanic while he is out drinking.
In New Mexico, they encounter another driver, GTO, on the highway. A tense rivalry forms between the groups. Despite GTO not being an obvious street racer and displaying little automotive knowledge, a cross-country race to Washington, D.C., is proposed. The Driver insists the prize should be “pinks” (i.e., ownership of the loser's car). Along the way, GTO picks up several hitchhikers, including an insistent homosexual man. When GTO's inexperience becomes clear, he, the Driver, and the Mechanic form an uneasy alliance; the Driver even takes the wheel for a stretch when GTO grows fatigued.
Needing funds, the trio competes at a Memphis race track. After the Driver finishes his race, he discovers the Girl has left with GTO. He chases them to a diner, where the Girl has just rejected GTO's suggestion to visit Chicago. The Driver proposes a trip to Columbus, Ohio, for car parts, but she rebuffs him as well, instead leaving with a stranger on a motorcycle and abandoning her belongings in the parking lot.
Later, GTO picks up two soldiers and boasts that he won his car by defeating two men in a cross-country race involving a custom 1955 Chevrolet 150. The film concludes abruptly with the Driver racing a Chevrolet El Camino at an airstrip in East Tennessee.
All of the characters in the screenplay and in the film are officially unnamed, although about midway through the film The Driver, while talking to GTO, refers to The Girl as "Higgins, whatever her name is"