[At left: My brother Joe "The Mechanic" and Wayne "The Driver," c. 1975]
Lately, I’ve been watching films about cars that go real fast. Why I’m doing this isn’t important. Okay, if you must know, it’s because I want to drive out of my life as fast as possible these days; this is a fantasy because, for starters, I don’t drive.
But I can do it vicariously through film.
I prefer old school to the more recent auto-erotica films like The Fast and Furious (those aren’t cars, those are toys), Speed Racer (great cartoon, awful film). I prefer street racing to sanctioned racing (Days of Thunder, Grand Prix). And though I have occasionally enjoyed the stupid comedic car movies (Talladega Nights, Gumball Rally, and Smokey and the Bandit) and the future looks really bleak car movies (Death Race 2000, Mad Max),
they are not what I’m after right now; driving out of your life is a
serious theme. I also prefer this business to be taken care of by an
American muscle car from my youth.
It is 1971 and I’m 10 years old. Gasoline was $0.30 a gallon. I lived on 10th Street in Union City, NJ. Around the corner from my home there was a movie theater, the Summit Theater. The Summit
Vanishing Point’s anti-hero, Kowalski, makes an absurd bet with his drug dealer that he can deliver a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T from Denver to San Francisco in a handful of hours. He’s fueled on amphetamines and victim of the
occasional flashback. He’s a groovy guy, Kowalski is, he fearlessly
raced cars and motorcycles professionally, he was an honest cop that
protected and served the citizenry, he had a relationship with a
beautiful post-hippie type woman who died in a surfing mishap. Somehow,
this all led him to where we find him in his present, wearing a leather
vest, speeding on roads, eluding bumpkin and high tech cops alike
through three states, “the super driver of the golden West.” It is one
extended car chase with a rumbling high-octane 440 V8 sound track,
courtesy of the film Bullitt.
When I saw it as a kid, I didn’t know what the fuck it was about, but I suspected it was about something BIG, something bigger than just a car going fast from point A to point B. At the time, I seemed headed down Kowalski’s road. My eldest brother was a motorhead and had just bought an Oldsmobile Cutlass. He souped it up and put fat tires on it and started going to Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ.
He teamed up with a drag racer that owned a Firebird and acted as his mechanic. I tagged along.
Numerous horrific car crashes cured me of my autophilia and speed thrills (a blog post on Cronenberg’s Crash may be coming soon), but still, when the light was right, Vanishing Point sparkled like a diamond splinter in my brain. What would I think of it now, seeing it for the first time in 30-plus years?
Now I think it deserves its cult status and should be high on the list of classic films from the early 70s. The cinematography by John Alonzo (he’d go on to shoot Chinatown) is spectacular--look at those vistas of the American West, landscapes dissected by highways meant for automobile travel at maximum velocity. The chase scenes still hold up. The snapshots of the weird psychological make-up of America in 1971 (media sensationalism, desert cults, racism, car worship at any cost) are as relevant today as they were then.
And now what do I think the film is about?
His soulmate, the blind DJ Super Soul (Cleavon Little in his first and most inspired film role) calls him, “The last beautiful free soul on this planet” and later “…the last American hero, to whom speed means freedom of the soul.” As long as Kowalski is in that black bucket seat behind the wheel, he doesn’t need a house with a pool, he doesn’t need a woman or a man, he doesn’t need law and he doesn’t need god. (He does need gas and bennies, but let’s not quibble.) Whatever society is selling, he’s not buying it. This is not to say he’s a nihilist. He has compassion; he makes sure that the drivers who challenge him are able to walk away from the wreckage left in the wake of their high-speed duel.
And the much discussed ending? Notice the bright light between the bulldozers beckoning him. Look at Barry Newman’s expression as he approaches his destination on his terms, full throttle. Notice the sudden change in light on his face. Listen to the gospel music. He delivers himself from his nagging past and the present nowhere of his life to a higher place. It’s pure transcendence.
Vanishing Point’s influence on pop culture can’t be overestimated. See Tarantino’s Deathproof
for his homage. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect Bruce Springsteen
enjoyed the film at least once. Take a look at what a 1971 Challenger
goes for on E-bay—almost as much as a Richard Prince. And for an
interesting article on what it meant to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski
(The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List) when he saw it in communist Poland.