pmw
05-04-2004, 10:18 PM
Thought I'd start one about Monte Hellman. Dont think anyone's written about him yet. I actually haven't seen much so I'll be brief but hopefully others know more than I do.
I saw the George Hickenlooper documentary on Hellman on the Two Lane Blacktop DVD. Hellman seems like a man who stuck to his guns pretty much throughout his career, and never was very commercially successful. He's a director with very unique collaborative efforts to his credit (with Nicholson, with Oates, with Wilson/Taylor), and beyond that with real filmmaking assuredness.
Two Lane Blacktop - 1971 - A really great film. Perhaps the greatest American road film (say some). Dennis Wilson, James Taylor, Warren Oates and Laurie Bird star. They make for a very convincing cast, Taylor and Wilson play car fanatics with a fair bit of sadness/displacement on their sleeves. Bird, a girl with high hopes for the future but quite a bit of uncertainty, and Oates, a broken man with his own sense of reality. The four have a hard time staying to any one path (this is perhaps the coolest thing about this uber-cool quartet - they live free), and the film suggests that perhaps there are no paths for them.
It's such a nice film, and to those who were around in the 60's/70's apparentally a fitting end to an era. Next up for me: Helman's Cock Fight (also starring Oates and Bird). Incidentally, Bird, who is stunning in Blacktop did only 3 movies, ended up living with Art Garnfunkel in his penthouse in NY and eventually committed suicide in 1979.
I saw the George Hickenlooper documentary on Hellman on the Two Lane Blacktop DVD. Hellman seems like a man who stuck to his guns pretty much throughout his career, and never was very commercially successful. He's a director with very unique collaborative efforts to his credit (with Nicholson, with Oates, with Wilson/Taylor), and beyond that with real filmmaking assuredness.
Two Lane Blacktop - 1971 - A really great film. Perhaps the greatest American road film (say some). Dennis Wilson, James Taylor, Warren Oates and Laurie Bird star. They make for a very convincing cast, Taylor and Wilson play car fanatics with a fair bit of sadness/displacement on their sleeves. Bird, a girl with high hopes for the future but quite a bit of uncertainty, and Oates, a broken man with his own sense of reality. The four have a hard time staying to any one path (this is perhaps the coolest thing about this uber-cool quartet - they live free), and the film suggests that perhaps there are no paths for them.
It's such a nice film, and to those who were around in the 60's/70's apparentally a fitting end to an era. Next up for me: Helman's Cock Fight (also starring Oates and Bird). Incidentally, Bird, who is stunning in Blacktop did only 3 movies, ended up living with Art Garnfunkel in his penthouse in NY and eventually committed suicide in 1979.