Two-Lane Blacktop was released the same year as Vanishing Point (1971), and though it does star a souped up, stripped down 55 Chevy built to blow the doors off every challenger, this isn’t much of a car film. If you’re looking for chase scenes, spectacular crashes, and cars going up in flames, you’d best look elsewhere. If you’re looking for an American art film with a car in it that is heavily influenced by the French New Wave, this is your film.
There are many aspects of this film worth writing about, but what I find most interesting is its use of non-actors in the starring roles: James Taylor is “The Driver” and Dennis Wilson is “the Mechanic.” Yes, the guitar strumming, “Fire and Rain” James Taylor and the skin-pounding Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. When you watch the film, you can’t help but ask, “Why?”
Because it was 1971 and director Hellman could, seem to be the answers.
We can’t judge the “performances” of these two non-actor musicians the way we judge actor Peter Fonda’s car seat performance in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, say, because this film is trying to do something beyond the mainstream. There is no plot, no real beginning, middle, or end, and the dialogue is mostly about car parts; naturalism isn’t the goal.
And yet there is a natural moment in this film that blows me away.
Wilson sits in a diner and listens to an Arkansas drag racer talk trash. He slouches in his chair, crosses his legs, tilts his head to the side, smiles, sets his head straight, and unfurls a smirk to rival the Grinch's (the animated one, of course). It’s such a simple moment, so real, so enjoyable to witness. What’s equally fascinating is that he’s doing this next to Warren Oates, one of those great, manly-man, actor’s actor from the 70s. (Not surprisingly, Oates has the bulk of the dialogue and he makes the most of some pretty priceless lines. Make no mistake, a non-actor could not deliver a line like, “I’d like a hamburger and an Alka Seltzer,” the way Oates does in this film.)
In the DVD extras, director Monte Hellman says this about working with the Beach Boy while the smirking scene plays:
I don’t think I ever worked with an actor who was so unselfconscious. He had no awareness of the fact that there was a camera, or even that he was acting in a movie. He got so involved in what was going on, not as a character, but just as an observer with these other people that he really related to everybody in a completely realistic way. It’s the perfect definition of what acting should be. He believed everything that was happening.
Hellman also reveals that perfectionist James Taylor was often angry at Wilson for constantly flubbing his lines.
This sums up what it’s like to work with non-actors: One minute you’re capturing the sublime, the next you’re pulling your hair out.
With my film, Tango Octogenario, I wasn’t interested in making a quasi-experimental, Bressonian type film; I was interested in marrying a Hollywood musical with a New York-style film aesthetic. Before casting I had to accept that I wasn’t going to get fine elderly actors who could do convincing sacadas, so I looked for fine elderly tango dancers that had presence. Since the dialogue was minimal, I thought I could guide them through their lines and what I got would have to do. The film was all about the concluding three-minute dance--that’s what people would remember. When I found my stars, Alex and Jean Turney, I knew they could pull off the tango.
The first day of shooting we tackled the film’s non-dance shots, and boy, were the Turneys unhappy with me. They didn’t really grasp why we had to start shooting so early in the day, why there was so much waiting around, why they had to walk up a flight of stairs more than once, why they had to stand so far apart for a certain set up. Their first takes were often their best performances, but that didn’t mean that first take was the best take, or even usable. When I got home that night I ordered Chinese food, drank more beer than I usually allow myself, and swore I’d never work with non-actors again.
The second and final day we shot the dance sequence. The Turneys were in their element. By the end of the day, everyone loved everyone else and everyone was happy. Well, almost everyone. I wasn’t happy, I was about to have a nervous breakdown, but that had little to do with working with non-actors and a lot to do with running out of film stock. Months later, when I saw the completed the film, I was very happy with their performances; it seems audiences were moved by the Turneys as well.
Four years have passed and now and after watching Two Lane Blacktop, I ask myself, would I work with non-actors again? Yes, but. I would not cast them in the leads and I would only cast them in roles that mirror their lives: if a supporting character in a script was a fisherman, I’d think about casting a fisherman.
I say this now, but when the day comes to direct them, I know that night I’ll be asking for more than a hamburger and an Alka Seltzer.
