Loading summary
Transcript143 lines
- [00:03]
Ian
This could be considered a track.
- [00:04]
Evan
Not really though.
- [00:05]
Nick Newman
We don't want to do that.
- [00:07]
Evan
This is a little intro, you know.
- [00:10]
Ian
All right, here we go.
- [00:10]
Laurie Bird
Countdown time.
- [00:11]
Nick Newman
One, two, three.
- [00:25]
Evan
Welcome back to Jokerman at the Movies. It's been a minute.
- [00:31]
Nick Newman
Smell that popcorn.
- [00:32]
Evan
We've got a popcorn classic picture today. One that everybody has seen either in the theater or on home video.
- [00:41]
Nick Newman
One that's very easy to see at home, very accessible to everyone out there, regardless of whether you have a DVD player, a Blu Ray player, any of your streaming services. It's two lane blacktop, folks. Dennis Wilson's debut starring role here, directed by the great Monte Hellman. We're here in 1971, so we're sticking with the timeline and we're joined by a close personal friend of BOB Dylan, actually Mr. Nick Newman. Welcome, welcome back to the show. Actually, Nick, but I wasn't on the first time when you were on, so welcome, welcome back.
- [01:16]
Ian
When I was a kid, I didn't have a lot of ambitions and not a lot of hopes, but I often said that I would want to be a multi time guest on a podcast devoted to Bob Dylan and, or Lou Reed and John Cal and the Velvet Underground and, or the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson. So when I was invited on last year to talk about the John Cale live show in Brooklyn, I was so happy. I was so excited because I was on my way. But then more than a year passed and invitations didn't come and I hung out with Evan in Tokyo, no less, on the other side of the world. And the invitation still wasn't happening. And I thought it's time to put that dream high up on the shelf. But now I am here. The dream is fulfilled. Thank you, Ian and Evan.
- [02:02]
Evan
Please, the pleasure is ours. And it's true, we were able to convene in Tokyo. I mean, I think that it's just fate. It's destiny at this point. You were going to come back somehow. First we end up at the same John Cale show, then we end up in Tokyo. The day, the very day that the world became aware of your close personal friendship with Bob Dylan on X, the Everything app. And here you are. It's inevitable. We're meant to be together.
- [02:35]
Nick Newman
Excuse me?
- [02:36]
Evan
Just like two other great stars of the screen, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are meant to be together in their only appearances in an acting capacity.
- [02:49]
Ian
I think, Evan, you and I are kind of the James Taylor and Dennis Wilson of podcasting and that neither of us are really meant to do it, but nevertheless, somebody puts us here and we Try it. Despite perhaps excelling more in other areas, I can't speak to what your skills are, but I know it.
- [03:08]
Nick Newman
Does that make me worn oats in this case?
- [03:10]
Evan
Ian's maybe worn out. Ian's gto. I'm. I don't know if I'm the mechanic or if I'm the driver.
- [03:16]
Ian
I'd like to clarify that this is just me doing a little bit of an insult comic bit. Evan is great at podcasting. It is a natural inclusion for him. Evan also, people should know he bought me dinner and drinks in Tokyo.
- [03:27]
Nick Newman
Wow. On the. Is that. Was that on the company card?
- [03:30]
Evan
No, it just feels like Monopoly money. You know, you've got this time of days that you're in Japan as a tourist.
- [03:37]
Ian
It's like you have very little concept of how much money you're spending.
- [03:40]
Evan
Very little. Very little. But I was happy not to know. It felt good to spend it and see that Nick Newman smile.
- [03:46]
Nick Newman
Before we talk about this motion picture, Nick, you and I were DMing about this a little bit on Twitter. You and I have both recently seen a certain other motion picture. Evan has yet to see it. So I don't want to go too far in depth on this certain motion picture, but do you have any statements whatsoever to lodge for the Jokerman community regarding James Mangold's A Complete Unknown in theaters Christmas Day?
- [04:11]
Ian
I think this is an instance where it's wise to turn to the big man himself. And I'm going to paraphrase a little bit what the experience of watching a complete unknown was like. Will mock you and shock you. Will grin in your face. We've already got someone here to take your place. Friday, December 6th, the day that they blew out the brains of the king. Far from the greatest magic trick ever under the sun. Neither perfectly executed nor skillfully done.
- [04:44]
Nick Newman
Bravo.
- [04:46]
Evan
Well, we'll wait to find out if you liked it or not once the review embargo is done.
- [04:53]
Ian
I'll say one other thing. At the end of the film, like every biopic, there are text cards telling you what happened to the people after the events of the film. It says that Bob Dylan recorded 55 albums. I defy anybody to explain where that number is coming from.
- [05:13]
Evan
Okay, well, that's clearly the thing then. That is rumored to have been inserted by Bob Dylan.
- [05:20]
Nick Newman
No, no, no, no, no, no. Cause it was a line of dialogue specifically that Bob claims to have inserted in.
- [05:27]
Evan
Do you have an idea of what that was?
- [05:31]
Nick Newman
I don't have an idea of the dial. There was a scene or sort of a Thing. A meme almost that struck me as sort of like. Sort of asynchronous with everything else that was going on. Nick, I don't know if this did for you, but the whistle that seemed. That was ridiculous. I won't say any more for you, Evan, but I don't know what anyone. The amount of screen time devoted to that fucking whistle in the second half of that motion. I had no idea. Idea what they were on about with that.
- [06:04]
Ian
Yeah, that's something that I'm curious for the Dylan fandom to investigate when the time comes.
- [06:08]
Nick Newman
I'm sure we'll have plenty to say about Complete Unknown in the days and weeks to come. But today we're here to talk about an actually good movie starring actual musicians instead of things that don't star musicians and aren't good. It's like we said, it's truly in blacktop, 1971 Monty Hellman motion picture. Nick, you said you're a big Monty Hellman head, right?
- [06:31]
Ian
Yeah, massive.
- [06:32]
Nick Newman
Tell us about that.
- [06:33]
Ian
I mean, I saw tulane blacktop in 2016 vis a vis the Criterion release, which is how most people have seen that film, and I think how most people of a certain age even know who Monte Hellman is. And then over the years, I developed kind of an interest in him because he came from a similar background as a lot of the great American directors of that era, the Scorsese, the Coppolas, in that he was an apprentice of Roger Corman and was a close associate of both Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton. And watching the films that they made together, like the Shooting or Ride in the Whirlwind, two great Westerns, one of which was written by Nicholson, or Flight to Fury, which is a great exploitation film also written by Jack, really endeared me to him. And then after he died, I watched the rest of his films. And when I made a sight and sound list in 2022 of the 10 best films ever made, I put his 1988 feature Iguana on it, which I really think is one of the best films I've ever seen.
- [07:40]
Nick Newman
Wow.
- [07:41]
Ian
Maybe fans of this podcast would take interest to know that for the film, Joni Mitchell was commissioned to record a cover of the traditional song Wayfaring Stranger, which plays over one of the most astonishing final shots of any film ever. Joni Mitchell also traveled with James Taylor for a lot of the shooting of Tulane Blacktop. So she has a bit of a preexisting relationship with Monte Hellman by the time that came around. But I think Hellman is At his best, he's as good a director as your Scorsese, Coppola's, Spielberg's De Palmas of that era. At his worst, he's still pretty good. And I think Tulane Blacktop is more than pretty good.
- [08:24]
Evan
It's very interesting to note that he is an apprentice of Roger Corman. His films to me feel the most of those directors that you mentioned, like he didn't change too much from the Cormann formula, but he just decided I'm going to be very serious about what happens in the movie. It's not like he added a lot of bells and whistles. There's not a ton of. In fact, his films are like typified by like the lack of bells and whistles. There's like negative bells, negative whistles. And yet, I mean, we were as much as a complete unknown. Apparently has whistles like this does not have that. But yeah, there's a Spartan just we're making the movie, get it done quality that never feels like it's. Feels like he made an artistic choice to keep that aspect of Corman in play, I think.
- [09:27]
Ian
So the films are, I think both by necessity of what means they had to be produced, but also Mon Monty Hellman sensibility are rather stripped down. They're Spartan in nature. I mentioned two of those westerns that he made with Nicholson. He has another film called China 9 Liberty 37. And those films are some of the least ornate, least opulent westerns you'll ever see come out of the United States. Film like Iguana is actually quite lush, quite opulent, but is very arid, doesn't have a lot of stuff in it. You know, it's set on a desert island and the most pronounced period detail are the clothing. Corman. Roger Corman was a film producer, writer, director who had a company called American International Pictures that would produce films at an extremely cheap rate, a very fast clip. And he gave many of the greatest filmmakers of our time their first start. If you look at the list of directors whose careers he helped facilitate, it's really mind boggling. You realize that without him giving them that chance, modern cinema just not only would it not look the same, it might functionally not exist. Corman was also a very good filmmaker in his own right. He would later show up in films as an actor on behalf of many of the directors who he first gave a start. Some of his acting credits, Sounds of the lambs, Godfather Part 2, Philadelphia, Manchurian Candidate, Apollo 13, Looney Tunes back in Action. These are all directors who he gave a Start to. He's a guy who commanded a lot of loyalty and a lot of good feelings. And when he died recently, you just saw this outpouring of love for him. They say that the way people talk about you after you die is a good marker of what kind of person you were. And in Corman's case, I think that says quite a bit.
- [11:32]
Evan
He is kind of the Bob Dylan of his medium in some ways. The type of person who, without them, it would be basically impossible to even come up with an idea of what the landscape would look like, who else would come about. I do think there is a really similar level of influence and the place that he had everything from putting movies out on a technical, business level to making movies as artistic statements or pop art. And I think Hellman's career is one of the most interesting to have emerged from that Corman influence.
- [12:18]
Ian
Yeah.
- [12:18]
Evan
Ian, you'd never seen this movie, right?
- [12:21]
Nick Newman
No, I hadn't. I had not seen this movie. And, you know, I had really not been much aware of Monte Hellman, you know, as a director in general, before coming to it. You know, I have known this as the Dennis Wilson movie. You know, the movie that Dennis Wilson is in with James Taylor, for whatever reason. And that is ostensibly why we're. Why we're assembled here today to talk about it. It is, I guess, just for context for the Beach Boys side of things. Monte Hellman puts this movie together. There's some back and forth about the script. I think it was adapted from someone else's screenplay or story. And then Hellman didn't dig it, so he brought in one Rudolph Wurlitzer. And the two of them kind of rehash this story, rework it into this, I guess. I don't know. Existentialist, I think, is the word that seems to come up often in descriptions about this movie, at least in reading some of the criticism about it. Road Movie kind of following on the heels of Easy Rider a year or two later. But a very different film than Easy Rider, even as similar as it might appear on the surface. And Hellman ends up casting James Taylor as the driver, the protagonist, that's his name, the driver. And then the mechanic, the driver's partner in this film. Sort of side character, but definitely kind of like top line. Name is left uncast until from when I read four days before production is about to begin, and someone says, hey, what about Dennis Wilson? He grew up around cars. He loves cars. And this is a movie about cars, so let's get him in there. And sure enough, he's brought in and the rest is history. I do just love that aspect of how Dennis Wilson gets involved in here is because we've talked at length on the Beach Boys series about how, you know, they were fake surfers. They're really kind of fake car guys and everything. You know, it was really a put on, you know, a branding exercise. And yet now here Dennis Wilson is cast as this like, almost like whiz kid, you know, car mechanic thing. I can't count the number of times he says, I gotta check the carbs, the carburetors in this movie. Just because of that sort of faux, false association with cars that the Beach Boys had been trading on for a decade at this point. It's a really fascinating kind of cultural ouroboros at this point.
- [14:46]
Evan
For the record, I think he like being the only one who surfed. He actually also knew a thing or two about cars.
- [14:54]
Nick Newman
He was the biggest car guy of the Beach Boys. Yes. But I don't think Dennis Wilson was out there literally drag racing on a nightly basis the way that the driver and the mechanic are in this motion picture.
- [15:05]
Evan
Maybe not on a nightly basis, but you get the feeling watching it. There are two possibilities. He's either an extremely gifted actor, a total natural, or he's pretty good at car stuff. I think that it's somewhere in the middle. But being his only appearance in a film, I got to think that maybe he was just really comfortable around cars. And, like, what's captured in his performance I think is great. I mean, there's an extreme lack of what looks to be acting coming from him.
- [15:41]
Ian
I'd like to note two things. One is that Rudolph Wurlitzer wrote Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. So good connection. In a way, he is responsible for an entire Bob Dylan album.
- [15:51]
Evan
Yeah.
- [15:52]
Ian
But also I had read about the casting of James Taylor, who was put into the film because Monte Hellman saw him on a billboard in la. And the quote is, I just flipped over his face. Which I think is a good reason to cast somebody in a film.
- [16:09]
Nick Newman
He's got a great face. I mean, especially at this moment in time. He's sort of. I don't know about you guys. I'm more familiar with James Taylor as sort of like the wizened, bald, kind of kindly old gentleman singing his simple guitar folk songs. Nice stuff, but certainly not a very intense or striking individual. That was one of the most shocking things about this movie to me, is he is like tall and reedy and sallow boiling. Almost about to boil over with this intensity And Fury. I was kind of shocked that this is the same James Taylor that I know from his very different reputation at this point in time.
- [16:45]
Evan
I've seen Fire and I've seen Rain.
- [16:48]
Nick Newman
Yeah, very different. You know, before we talk about the movie in general, I guess it makes sense just to like lay out a little bit about the plot, such as it is. You know, plot and storytelling is not necessarily the point of this motion picture. But basically you've got Taylor and Wilson, the driver and the mechanic. They go on, they start in Los Angeles as all good car movies do, and decide to hit the road just because. For not really much reason at all. And then wind up along the way meeting up with the girl that is her name, the girl. And then later GTO worn Oates in a show stealing role as far as I'm concerned. And it kind of turns into this weird four way love triangle that's ostensibly based around a supposed race to Washington D.C. like Cannonball Run that no one actually really participates very seriously in. And along the way you just kind of see the great American nation along Route 66, such as it was in 1971. I don't know if you guys have any further things to add in terms of literally the story beats, but that's about it.
- [18:00]
Evan
They meet the girl, they meet GTO the other characters. Yeah, it's more about a general circumstance, scenario.
- [18:12]
Nick Newman
It's much more about, yeah, vibes, circumstances, individual scenes, feelings. Much more about that than it is about, you know, any sort of story, you know, formal three act structure worth noting.
- [18:27]
Evan
That because they had in the script a destination that they needed to get to, they were actually going there. It was shot chronologically. They were actually doing a cross country road trip in the process of filming the movie. And in interviews, I think that's the most interesting insight I got from. There's an interview between James Taylor and Monte Hellman. Taylor, who never saw the movie maybe one time decades later actually watched it. He was sort of saying, yeah, I think about it as something that happened in the fall of 1970. Like, I don't know, we, we went and did this trip and yeah, we repeated things and there were cameras present. But there is a documentary quality to the way that the movie presents itself and to just the nature of it, which I think helps to understand where it's coming from, that it's fully embracing that, I think.
- [19:28]
Ian
So I like how the film starts almost in media res at this nighttime racetrack and I think does a brilliant job of beginning to immerse you in the film. Milieu in its visual sense. This is a film that has either some of the most stunning pastoral shots of America in any film or some of the most ink black dead of night, endless night, nocturnal sequences that you can think of. It's a film that exists in absolutes in that way for me. It's not a movie that I find it easy to have middle of the road feelings about or reactions to which runs somewhat contra how refined but loose and detailed but open ended the movie is in its visual structure, in its design. And I think that maybe speaks a bit to Monty Hellman as this weird kind of master craftsman who it would be a little hard to put a straight ahead auteurist stamp on in the sense that you can't necessarily look at something and say, oh, that's a Monty Hellman shot. But there is a kind of, to use a somewhat simple term, there is a refinement and there is just a very shot by shot distinct sense of control which I think plays into the fact that Monty Hellman is also the editor of the film, which is somewhat unusual. It's not often a director edits their own films. The rough cut of this film was originally about three and a half hours long. And Hellman said that they were contractually obligated to deliver a two hour movie. So they lost about half of the script. Three and a half hours would be, you know, 210 minutes. The movie as it exists is 105, which suggests that there was some force of cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting, cutting until you have half of the film, exactly half of the film left. And Hellman has expressed some regret about this, that there were sequences that he really loved. But ultimately the film had to come out as it was. And I don't know, I don't think the film is entirely perfect in its construction. I do find that certain attempts at pathos or a kind of character relationship in the last stretch isn't so interesting is the weird ambivalence and uncertainty that runs through it up to that point. But for the most part I do think the movie has a sense of almost like having been found and assembled from lost parts, but not feeling unintentful, incomplete. Sure, yeah, yeah. And if that sounds contradictory, that's because it is. Because the movie for me is somewhat beguiling in its intentions and its effects.
- [22:25]
Nick Newman
I'll say, yeah, beguiling, certainly, man. The ending is.
- [22:30]
Ian
From the moment that they're credited as the driver, the mechanic, GTO and the girl in the opening credits, you kind of have a sense of what film is being teed up for you, I wonder.
- [22:41]
Nick Newman
And I'm fascinated to think about the three hour version of this movie. Whether it actually does resemble a more standard narrative focused picture. And he chopped out a lot of that narrative so that it's almost this decontextualized montage at a certain point, or whether it was really just what we have in the finish cut taken to the nth degree. Just three hours of this almost directionless, formless, floating journey across the country with these nameless characters. Yeah, one of the most arresting aspects of this. You were talking about this a moment ago, Nick. But just like the shots, the imagery, the settings that you get in this motion picture, it really is like a document of the United States from west to east, at least up until a certain point. I think the film concludes when they're in Arkansas or Memphis. Right. Tennessee. But especially at the beginning, starting in Los Angeles, you see very consciously the topography and the geography of the country flashing before your eyes. They're in Southern California. To start just driving around in this area that almost looks like Hawthorne, where the Beach Boys were from. When they pull over to that little parklet and Dennis starts to change a tire. And then I think it just jump cuts to and Arizona Mesa. And then all of a sudden they're in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And then they're on into like the big flat, endless stretches of what appears to be Texas. And then you get further on into the American South. That aspect alone I was kind of blown away by. And it isn't something that anyone comments on or really forces directly into your face, but I was thrilled by just that sequence of images of settings, you know, presented one after the other.
- [24:21]
Ian
Yeah, it's a mythic quality that I think you can find in a film like the Shooting, which is mostly Jack Nicholson leading a man to his death in the wide open western plains. And in Iguana, which is set on a tropical island with very little around it but the flora and the fauna. That's something that Hellman, maybe as an existentialist, is getting at. Where I look at these landscapes and I start asking myself, do these places even exist anymore? Do they ever exist as we see them in the film? Or are we getting this mediated representation of it?
- [24:59]
Evan
I think that his fixation on these types of places or the landscape as being this kind of scrolling, nameless thing, it's less about the actual character of America. It is more like. Or like a Becket play takes place. It's just kind of a nowhere, like a Limit, like the edge of something. Whether it's the sea or if it's like the desert, the west in his other films, where it's just totally barren and arid. Or if it's the road, you have this one thing that allows you to navigate it, this car, which, like, all they care about in this film is the maintenance of the car. Keeping the car as fast as possible, as mobile as possible. Especially in this film where it's so much getting from point A to point B. There's a certain lack of importance of meaning given to the landscape. It's literally just something they have to get through. The central relationship in the movie is, I think, the one between GTO and the drivers. In the sense that Warnotes character is an seeming guy.
- [26:22]
Nick Newman
Like the more relatable fellow, the only human seeming guy.
- [26:26]
Ian
Well, Taylor and Wilson look like permutations of the same God, right? There are times where I couldn't tell. I mean, I figured it out further as I was going along. I've seen this film before, but not in a while. And truth be told, I don't quite have a visual recall of James Taylor or Dennis Wilson. And so they took. There's one kind of wide shot where somebody is walking. And I'm thinking, is this Taylor? Is this Wilson? And then he opens and speaks. And his speaking voice just sounds so hilariously like James Taylor singing, let's make.
- [26:57]
Laurie Bird
It 50, make it three yards, motherfucker.
- [26:59]
Ian
And we'll have an automobile race. And I went, okay, yeah, that's James Taylor. But there are early shots of them where they just, you know, one has stronger eyebrows than the other. But GTO is just a beautifully drawn character and just incredibly portrayed.
- [27:16]
Evan
It's worth noting the difference in the cars, too. The ways that these two cars that are really the other stars of the film appear. GTO's car, the GTO is what might sound on paper to be the car that has more of a personality. It's bright orange, and I think there's at least one other color going on, some reddish trim. It's a total peacock of a car. And yet the car that actually has all the character is this sort of ghost, like, wraith of a 55 Chevy with this massive, cumbersome hood scoop obscuring the whole middle of the windshield on the hood.
- [28:05]
Nick Newman
Yeah.
- [28:06]
Evan
Full disclosure, I did have to look up that. It's called a hood scoop.
- [28:09]
Ian
This is a funny case of you guys being the Dennis Wilson expert, me being a total neophyte with him, me being the Monte Hellman expert. And Then when it comes to cars, we are all fucked.
- [28:18]
Nick Newman
We're all out to see. Exactly.
- [28:20]
Evan
We're all the Lori Bird character, the girl who is completely uninterested in the actual car maintenance side of things. So the girl has relatable qualities. She has nothing to do with this, like, death drive to just always be on the road. But she's very aimless. She's a drifter. She's the most explicitly aimless of a cast of characters who are all aimless in one way or another. The driver and the mechanic are like the reptilian brain or like a shark. Aimless except for the need to keep moving and to survive. And Warren Oates's character is kind of this tragic figure. His existence doesn't, on the surface, appear as empty as the drivers or the girl. But he's no less haunted by this aimlessness. And maybe more than anyone. Because unlike the others, he doesn't necessarily seem committed even to this aimless life.
- [29:33]
Ian
He lies about his origin, doesn't he?
- [29:36]
Nick Newman
Yeah. I mean, yeah, he's like the Joker. He's literally like the Joker. He tells a different story.
- [29:40]
Ian
I was going. I'm glad. Yeah, I'm glad you made that joke before I did. Not that I was going to make it, but yeah. That detail of him making up a life for himself. Something I love about that is things like him saying that he worked for some engineering company.
- [30:01]
Nick Newman
He's, like, testing planes or something. Right.
- [30:03]
Ian
And then him saying that he was some kind of television producer.
- [30:06]
Nick Newman
Right, right.
- [30:07]
Ian
I love those because they indicate that there is an outside world here and there are real people in this world. But this is a film about racing past it, letting it pass you on the periphery. Or even in the end credits. Everybody in the film is credited just as the photographer. Cop one, COP two, Man at Roadside Restaurant. Nobody in this film actually has a name. And it is a movie about living in an America that's on the margins. And like I said, in some ways, maybe never even existed. You know, it's taking a very modern context then. A modern context and making a kind of mythology out of it. But where it conforms to reality is much more in the atmosphere and the detail and the texture of these places and in the faces. It's not so much who the people are. Every person in this movie just about is some kind of archetype. Down to the tent scene in the restaurant where the guy is just a hair's breadth away from saying, we don't like your kind around here.
- [31:17]
Nick Newman
Right.
- [31:17]
Ian
Doesn't quite get to that level, but it is brushing up against it, approaches it.
- [31:21]
Nick Newman
Sure thing. Yeah. I was kind of amazed at sort of the sleight of hand that I feel like Hellman ends up pulling by the second and third act of this movie. Or maybe it was me just not having a clear picture of where it was headed and it was all on my end. But like when the GTO and the mechanic driver rivalry, for lack of a better term, starts up and they agree to be on this cross country race and they're doing it for pinks and it's clear, it becomes clear that GTO kind of doesn't really have the skill or the natural inclination for this type of thing that the driver and the mechanic do. I was thinking at this point, like, oh, this is going to be a very clear sort of dichotomy that's drawn between these two. And James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are kind of the cowboys, right? The real, you know, masculine, self sufficient men, you know, kind of what America used to stand for. At least a certain mythic version of what America used to stand for. And GTO is sort of this cucked consumerist, you know, modern American who's obsessed with his status and his driving gloves and his fucking endless parade of rainbow colored sweaters, which is one of the funniest things that I've ever seen in a movie. He just shows up in a different color of the same sweater like every single time it cuts.
- [32:37]
Ian
And he just looks terrific wearing it.
- [32:40]
Nick Newman
And he's got the ascot. Yeah. And the big popped ocbd. It's a fantastic look anyways. But that dichotomy to me gets set up at the beginning and then it gets completely subverted. And by the end of the movie I feel like they've all kind of formed this uneasy bond or at least come to meet one another where they're at and accept each other for who they are. And they're all kind of equally. They're all equally kind of adrift at sea, confused by this world that they're confronted with. And I really liked that. That was kind of one of the most exciting aspects of the movie by the end of it.
- [33:15]
Ian
And part of what surprises you about that, what keeps you off balance, is that he's played by Warren Oates, who anybody listening to the show who doesn't know what War Notes looks like should just Google him for a site of kind of one of the gruffest, manliest seeming men of American movies of that era. And so when you see him driving around, initially, I think at least on my part, there is the sense that this is a guy who could do some real damage and has a real dark background. Probably bodies left behind him, you know, cars left in wreckage that he just walks away from without looking back. And when the girl gets in his car earlier in the movie, he just immediately, without airs or pretense, talks to her in a way that is so much more about loneliness than libido. I don't know. Oates's performance in this movie is, I think, probably one of the best that I've ever seen. And I say that as somebody who obviously loves movies, has a lot of opinions about film form, but acting is something that I somewhat struggle with as far as an assessment or reaction goes. And this is one of those performances where it just blooms out of any conception that might have been on the page so vividly and so beautifully. And the character is strange too, because again, like I say, you could imagine him being a really tough customer. And there's a scene probably around halfway into the movie where a man played by an actor named H.D. stanton.
- [34:53]
Evan
Yeah.
- [34:54]
Ian
Gets into the car and you see him in this beautiful long held shot, you see his hand just slowly creep over the GTO's leg. And you think to yourself, this could lead to a really nasty sequence that effectively takes the film into the realm of hate crime. But instead he just says, I ain't.
- [35:14]
Evan
Into that one line in particular. The exact thing that I was like, hold up. And I had to go back and watch it again, is that when he tells him to get out of the car, it's pouring rain. And Stanton, Harry Dean Stanton.
- [35:31]
Nick Newman
Oh, is that who it was?
- [35:33]
Evan
Yes, that was the same.
- [35:34]
Ian
Oh, fuck.
- [35:36]
Evan
His character makes this pass at GTO and it's pouring rain, but GTO is not having it and tells him to get out. But Stanton's drifter character is just defiant and pathetic in his refusal to get out of the car. And he's at the verge of tears. And so GTO finally relents, but he says, I ain't got time for that. It's a very subtle difference and it goes by quickly. But if you read between those lines, it's not a refutation of the advance in a full way, it's a lateral move. And so even this character's sexuality is up in the air. It's another layer of opacity to what this character really desires. It's not clear to us, and it seems on some level, like it's not even clear to him. Yeah, he seems determined to prove himself in terms of this race, even as the terms of that become unclear. And I think this is pretty ingenious on a meta textual level, if we can go there. Because GTO seems to want the kind of thing that's usually in a movie like this. He wants there to be like some glorious big finish. He wants it to be cinematic, but he's like trapped, racing against these people who have no interest in cultivating that kind of pleasure or romance.
- [37:11]
Nick Newman
No, they're a little interested in romance and pleasure. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson both get down with a seemingly prepubescent Lori Berg.
- [37:20]
Ian
Sure, there is something mythic about becoming Eskimo brothers with somebody.
- [37:25]
Evan
They've all got desire, that's for sure. But it manifests in very different ways. A great bit of characterization, for example, is the character's relationship to music, respectively. The girl is always humming or singing along to music when it's around or even when it's not. I can't get no satisfaction GTO listens to music, but the driver, there's like one part where there's some radio playing and he tells the mechanic to turn it off because it gets in the way. And then they just continue driving in dead silence like 90 miles an hour through the night.
- [38:07]
Nick Newman
Yeah, sound wise, it should be noted, you know, you think of a movie, James Taylor, Dennis Willis and oh, there's gotta be some great tunes on this one. And you know, there's virtually no music in the entire thing. There isn't a Christofferson song that is worth remarking on. But really, I mean, me and Bobby McGee. Yeah, great song. RIP to Kris once again. I mean, the sound of this movie, the soundtrack of this movie is just that fucking roaring engine that is like. I mean, it becomes overwhelming at a certain point. I was watching on the big screen with my big stereo speakers last night and it's just like, it is, it's kind of innervating, you know, at a certain point I enjoy it, but like, it also starts to like. I also found myself getting this almost like anxiety, you know, producing effect. Just the incessant powerful scream screech of that fucking engine.
- [39:01]
Ian
Yeah. The lack of music, I think is also facilitating for me. One of the most brilliant things about this film is that I have rarely if ever seen a film that so conveys the emotional experience of sharing a car with somebody. And the way that Hellman does that is this use of side profiles where you don't have a lot of front facing shots. Like something you'd get in an abuse kirostimi film where the camera is placed on the windshield of the car, looking in at them full profile. It's these side profiles where you can almost like a painting, you can just read their expression with two or three lines in the face. And that is something where these two guys are in this car moving forward. And the relationship that is established from essentially half of the human face, which any actor will tell you is the greatest tool for conveying emotion to me, is really incredible. There's the scene where Dennis Wilson is driving the GTO and Warn Oates gets into the Chevy. And the use of side profiles ensconced in darkness in that scene with the glow of the yellow GTO is just an unbelievable display of power on Hellman's part. And I wonder if having music could undercut that. Characters singing along, characters nodding their head. At least you're hearing what they're hearing. You're having some emotional apartment from the music. So the characters must too. In this case, none of that. I think we all know what it's like to sit in a car that is just driving down a straight ahead stretch of road and you are left with nothing but your thoughts. And depending on who you are, that can be terrifying.
- [41:00]
Nick Newman
Yeah, absolutely. They even comment on the lack of music in a sense, because when the girl gets into Warn Oates car at the gas station, that's part of the characterization of Warn Oates and the GTO itself. She pulls out these cassettes and she's like, oh, these are great records. And he's like, oh, you should put on whichever one you want. And I don't think we end up really seeing much of that. But the fact that Warren Oates and the GTO have music, that music can even exist for him in his car as opposed to this jalopy that the other two are driving, is very much part of that dichotomy that's drawn.
- [41:36]
Evan
It's another really interesting detail that suggests something about the nature of GTO and his situation. It says that he hasn't fully renounced a worldly life. He is out in the wilderness, but he hasn't fully let go of these things that offer a sense anyway, of a connection back to civilization. Whereas with the driver and mechanic, you do get the sense that they gave up caring about anything like that long ago. There's a line about how there's no heat in the car.
- [42:17]
Nick Newman
Slows it down.
- [42:18]
Evan
Slows it down.
- [42:19]
Nick Newman
Yeah.
- [42:20]
Evan
It's like it's not too comfortable in here. It's not about comfort, you're saying, Nick, about how the Movie seems to be about being alone with your thoughts on the road. GTO seems to be very afraid of ending up in that situation. He's always picking up hitchhikers and or listening to music. He's never really putting himself there alone with his thoughts. Even entering into this race seems to be part of him avoiding that situation of really feeling alone. So we're kind of left to wonder why the driver is even interested in this race at all. I think after a certain point, there's a suggestion that he's found an equal in gto, like an equally empty rival. And I think this is summed up perfectly in the last scenes of GTO and the driver, respectively. If we want to get into the ending.
- [43:22]
Nick Newman
Yeah, I mean, we can. We've said our piece, I think, about a lot of the movies so far. I mean, the ending, like, there is no ending. Basically, the kind of the denouement of this movie, like the final kind of climax, if you even want to call it that, is everyone recollects in a diner, roadside diner. First it's Wuornotes and the girl, and James Taylor and Dennis Wilson end up coming back after they've passed them. James Taylor is hunting for them, hunting for the girl after she's taken off with Warnotes. And then Dennis at a certain point says, we passed them five miles back. And then Taylor whips the car around and races back there to get to her. And they all kind of sit down at this table. There's almost no dialogue there. Eventually, this other young hunk just gets up from his seat at the bar and walks out and hops on his motorcycle. And the girl follows him out and gets on with him, and she's just gone. And then Warn Oates goes a separate way from James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. And then the two of them, the last couple minutes, they find themselves drawn into another race. And that's kind of where things end at a very unexpected point in time, just after this final drag race has begun and James Taylor is taking off. And very memorably, the final shot is from the backseat of the Chevy over his shoulder, looking forward down this kind of endless stretch of road. And then the film kind of like haltingly slows down until eventually it just kind of hits a freeze frame and then burns away. Literally, the film burns away, and then it fades to black. Fascinating way to conclude the picture.
- [45:02]
Evan
Right before that, though, the last significant dialogue is GTO picks up a couple of young army guys again picking up hitchhikers, and he lies to them about what has Happened. He tells them that he got this car, he won this car, the gt, his gto. And that he was driving an old beat up Chevy. The last line, he says, yeah, I won it flat out. I was driving a 55 stock Chevy across the country and I got into a race with this GTO for pink slips. I beat the GTO by three hours. Of course, the guys in the GTO couldn't drive worth a damn. But I'll tell you, there's nothing like building up an automobile from scratch and wiping out one of these Detroit machines that gives you a set of emotions that stay with you. You know what I mean? Those satisfactions are permanent, this kind of haunting moment, because you just get the feeling that he is telling this to himself. In a way, he's killing himself an idea of himself with this little monologue, killing himself.
- [46:14]
Ian
But who's to say that this process won't just repeat again and again and again? And he'll come up with new narratives and new scenarios for where he came from and where he's going. And he'll lie to himself and come up with new excuses for why he needs to go across the country.
- [46:33]
Nick Newman
Right?
- [46:33]
Evan
To me, the essence of what the movie is about is located in this moment and the scene that follows it. The famous last moments with the film burning up, I think serves as a complete refutation of what GTO has just said of this fabrication. He says those satisfactions are permanent, but I don't think satisfied is what you would call the driver character. Permanently satisfied seems to be the exact opposite of what he is. As if to visually illustrate the lack of satisfaction, the last moments of the film at this race where GTO starts the car, it just slows down to a literal stop and then just disappears. It's a denial of that satisfaction. That's the irony of this last bit of dialogue from gto when he imagines himself as the driver posing as his idea of him to these strangers. They might think he's the real deal, having just met him. But what we see, having followed him through the film, is this desperation. We see somebody who desperately wants for some permanent satisfaction to be a real thing and to be embodied in the world. And as he says this, we know that he knows deep down that it's not true.
- [48:19]
Nick Newman
Which then colors obviously all of the previous fibs or false introductions that he's given to other people throughout the movie. How much of those stories did he steal from other people that he had encountered on the road? And where is he going to go from here? I Walk away from this movie with a pretty firm understanding, or what I believe is a relatively firm understanding of who this guy is. We might not know his biographical details, but I feel like I have a good sense of who this guy is, what his problems are and why he's behaving the way he's behaving. The other two, though, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. I don't know about you two, but I feel as confused or sort of at a distance from the two of them now at this point, having spoken about the movie for an hour already, as I did two seconds into the film. I don't know if either of you have sort of an understanding or a reading of either one of them or both of them that I'm missing out on, but they're complete unknowns to use a full circle.
- [49:24]
Evan
Bringing it all back home.
- [49:25]
Nick Newman
Bringing it all back home, exactly.
- [49:26]
Ian
Yeah. The depriving of Satisfaction and the Climax, I think, tells me something about the driver, at least in that he finally is in this race. It feels, in a way, like 99 out of 100 versions of this movie would have been building towards this race and would have made it a big moment. But the expression on his face doesn't really change much when he's at this race, as it does when he's driving on the empty stretches of road. And the deprivation of Satisfaction in that burnout, which I have heard some stories of projectionists freaking out when they show this movie and don't know about the ending in that way. This film is especially worth seeing on 35 millimeter. Not only does it look especially beautiful, but that moment is more powerful. But the sense of a world ending. It's both that their world is kind of ending in that moment. And there is this apocalyptic quality to how time slows down. Sound goes poof, cut to black. But it also does, like I said with gto, it almost suggests that this is just the end of one particular journey that they've had. And there will be a projectionist who will come around, they will fix the film. The movie will keep playing. We just don't get to see it. The particular reel of film that we're watching it on is broken. So we have to go home. But who's to say there won't come a time when someone else comes around?
- [51:04]
Evan
It ends with a mechanical issue that just needs to be fixed.
- [51:08]
Nick Newman
Gotta check the carbs.
- [51:09]
Ian
Yeah.
- [51:10]
Nick Newman
I think it's notable that James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are both baby boomers, born, I think, early mid-40s. And Warren Oates, obviously is sort of like a pre war, Pre World War II. It's a generational gap between the two of them. Same thing as Gen X versus millennial or whatever. And the girl, I think, is kind of like sort of the beginning of the next generation or the very tail end of the generation to which James Taylor and Dennis Wilson belong. So everyone has their own unique American experience. They come from their own niche in the culture at this moment in time, but they're all equally empty and absent and without something. What they are without is different for each individual person, but the circumstances remain the same, that they are all missing something. And so they've all turned to this life on the road for an answer. And it seems to me deeply unsatisfying to all of them. Ultimately, even as great a driver as the driver is, like, the film is not really at all concerned about, like, oh, this guy's the best. He's a real badass. He's the ultimate kind of man behind the wheel. He just so happens to be that guy. But he's still a, to me, a tragic character ultimately.
- [52:33]
Evan
Yeah, he's like an incel with a huge dick. What are you gonna do with this?
- [52:38]
Nick Newman
Yeah, it's like there's no joy to any of these races. At a certain point, they're just moving from hamburger stand to hamburger stand, searching out some sort of hubristic local with their souped up hot rod that they can win another two or three hundred dollars off and then drive on to the next place and just repeat that thing all over again. There's no catharsis, there's no emotional reaction to any of that. It's just like harvest everything that you can from this one spot and then on to the next. It's kind of a terrifying vision of a way to live your life. At least until they come around the corner and make one false move and tumble over and break their neck. Like that one scene in the sort of like end of the second act type thing that was.
- [53:26]
Evan
They happen upon a car wreck that, yeah, could have been them, like will be them.
- [53:33]
Nick Newman
You know, to Nick's point, you know, just the next reel of film that burned out here. Presumably, were we to get the opportunity to see it, it would include Dennis snapping his neck like that.
- [53:46]
Ian
Something about the line. He broke his neck while he's lying on the ground completely still, covered in blood. And it's framed in such a way where you can almost imagine how the impact of the car and the crunching of the car affected his body directly. The itemizing of it of he broke his neck seems almost beside the point when you're looking at that shot. I want to ask you guys, because, as I said, you're much more the Dennis Wilson experts. How would you say this character performance could connect to Wilson's music? Do you have any thoughts on that?
- [54:27]
Nick Newman
I find them at odds with one another. I mean, to some extent at least. I think that Dennis was cast mostly for his image. And what he represented in. In the popular imagination at large at this moment in time. And to that end, does a great job. Looks amazing in his dirty dungarees and his white T shirt and his beautiful denim jacket. He's got his big shaggy hair and a permanent five o'clock shadow.
- [54:49]
Evan
Sideburns.
- [54:50]
Nick Newman
Oh, the sideburns. Incredible. Just the fits on everyone in this motion picture. That's a whole other conversation. Everyone looks unbelievable. But in terms of the character, to me, and we talk about this on the show all the time. Dennis is sort of like the. The heart of the band. He's the heartthrob, right? And he ultimately ends up graduating into this very talented and straightforward and direct, emotional songwriter. We've started to see that on records like Sunflower, which we discussed recently. And this character in the film is without all of that. That really kind of heart and soul aspect. He does end up fucking the girl. And so I guess that's true to life as far as the Dennis Wilson character goes. But beyond that, he's sort of like. He's got the surface image of Dennis Wilson. But without any of what is inside of Dennis Wilson that makes him Dennis Wilson. If that makes sense.
- [55:48]
Evan
I don't know. I think on some level he is representative pretty directly of Dennis Wilson in the Beach Boys. And in ways that are kind of haunting, if you want to. I mean, the movie invites it because of its documentary like nature. It does invite sort of asking like, well, this seems real. They're really doing this. They're really out there, you know. He was hired because of his familiarity with the subject matter as much as his image. And I do kind of see an eerie parallel between Denys and his role here as the mechanic that keeps this dead car alive. And his role as the drummer in the Beach Boys. Relentlessly touring and playing with this band that's highly dysfunctional. And always running into crazy shit. There's also the aspect of his character which differs from the James Taylor driver. The mechanic does smile and to some degree has a sense of humor, of an affability. That is just basically never there with the driver. But that Manifests in a very flattened way. Like when the girl asks, where are we going? Instead of saying nothing, he says, east. Like, that's the. That's what makes him the friendly one in this duo. But he is also able. You can tell he's taking a little bit more joy or trying to take some pleasure in it more often than his counterpart. And obviously, like, the doom that surrounds Dennis Wilson himself. And we haven't even mentioned that Laurie Byrd also died very young.
- [57:47]
Nick Newman
She was 25, eight years after, I think, 1979.
- [57:51]
Evan
So she was super young in this movie.
- [57:53]
Nick Newman
She was like 16 or 17. And I think was actually with Monty Hellman to some extent.
- [57:57]
Evan
Yeah.
- [57:58]
Nick Newman
Do you know anything about that?
- [57:59]
Evan
Nick and Art Garfunkel?
- [58:01]
Nick Newman
Well, she was later with Art Garfunkel, but I read it somewhere that, like, literally, she and Monte Hellman were an item. You know, as this. As this film is being shot, obviously.
- [58:12]
Evan
Is not in canonically in the movie in any way. But there's something about Dennis, to get back to that question of, like, I do think that you see a side of him taken totally out of the context of the Beach Boys. He still ends up in this movie being kind of party to this relentless forward movement of a kind of art and its accompanying lifestyle, which is sort of replete with omens that it might not be sustainable.
- [58:55]
Nick Newman
I think that his role here is part of what makes this such a brilliant film, to me at least, is that, I mean, Monty Hellman obviously is very aware of Dennis Wilson, particularly at this moment in time and where the Beach Boys stand in American culture and this film, by casting Dennis Wilson in this role, and to me, at least using parts of Dennis Wilson, but also drawing a distinction between the mechanic and the real life Dennis Wilson. In my reading of it, at least, that's Hellman taking that Beach Boys myth and story that has been manufactured and sold to the American public at large at this moment in time, and really kind of, you know, tearing the mask off and looking it dead in the face and saying, you know, this all we know what everyone likes to think of these guys, hot rods and hot babes on the beach and whatever. But, like, this is what life is actually like for someone who builds their life around this, you know, a way of living. And the reality of this romantic, again, manufactured image is so much more terrifying and morose and brutal than whatever I get around or four or nine. I think the film becomes much more powerful because it has that whole Beach Boys legacy injected into it. And you can't help but read this as a commentary on that image that existed in 1970.
- [60:30]
Evan
It is kind of a perverted endless summer. That fantasy of we could just keep going and going and going. And I think the film suggests that at the time there was a real feeling of of course you would want to escape this insane world. And I think that Tulane Blacktop is about how that kind of freedom could also be like a curse. I think that it's a movie that I don't always enjoy every moment of when I'm watching it, but I always have the feeling like I need to watch it again. And every time I do, there's something there. So three stars.
- [61:29]
Nick Newman
Yeah, it's a three star, three star picture for me. Two line Blacktop. I give it three stars in one. A frosty bottle of Coca Cola. Because at just about every gas station they stop at in this motion picture they got a nice red cooler of Coca Cola sitting right out front. And I was thinking to myself every time I saw one, boy, I sure could go for an ice cold Coca Cola right about now.
- [61:50]
Ian
Yeah, three stars for me. I know I expressed some reservations about some third act resolution based stuff, but I don't really care. It's certainly not a one star movie. The idea of it being two stars and less kind of a give or take middle of the road, no pun intended to me. Just doesn't comprehend what the rest of the movie. Tulane Blacktop is a three star picture. Perfectly executed, skillfully done, beautiful. James Mangold. You could stand to learn something or unlearn.
- [62:26]
Nick Newman
Well, thank you for joining us Nick. This was a delight. Where can folks find you, read you, hear you, see you online.
- [62:34]
Ian
Well, I was not tagged on Twitter by Bob Dylan so you'll have to search for me. It is just my name, Nick Underscore Newman Underscore is my middle name. Thefilmstage.com you could follow the film stage on Twitter and Instagram. Maybe there'll be some Jokerman adjacent miscellaneous sometime on there. Maybe a completely unknown will be occasion for me to just post some good Dylan related stuff to the larger film stage following.
- [63:06]
Laurie Bird
What you got?
- [63:07]
Evan
390 horse?
- [63:08]
Laurie Bird
Yeah, 390 joker. Man, I want it flat out. I was driving a 55 stock Chevy across country and I got in racing with this gto, the Pink Slips. I. I beat the GTO by three hours. Of course the guys in the GTO couldn't drive worth a damn. Well, I'll tell you one thing. There's nothing like building up an old automobile from scratch and wiping out one of these Detroit machines that'll give you a set of emotions that'll stay with you. Know what I mean? Those satisfactions are permanent. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose Nothing left is all she left for me Feeling good, wise, easy love when Bobby sang the blues but if that was good enough for me Good enough for me and Bobby McGee.