While pulling together last week's blog on Pontiac's demise, I was reminded of a movie from years ago in which a GTO was prominently featured. I first saw Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop when it was released in the summer of 1971. As an 11-year old, that poster in the theater lobby held the promise of fast cars... "no beginning... no end... no speed limit!" The basic premise was pretty simple... two street racers and their 55' Chevy meet up with a middle aged man and his 70' GTO (played by Warren Oates) who challenges them to a cross-country race.
Flash forward 20 years and I remember reading an article in the Boston Herald about how the movie had become a cult classic, even though copies of it were difficult to get (this was before DVD's and the internet). It had never registered with me that it was James Taylor who played the driver (his only film role) and Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys as the mechanic.
When Universal released a collector's edition VHS later that year, I immediately ordered a copy. Flash forward another 18 years to a few days ago when I found that same cassette (cover scan above) in a box of old tapes in the attic. With no VHS player in our house, I relied on YouTube for some condensed highlights. There's also a great site on Lakeland Raceway which was featured prominently in some of the drag racing scenes. A quote by it's author Louis Kimery is particularly poignant since it captures a moment in time before these cars had achieved legendary status. "The main (car) was a real street/strip 55 Chevy that pretty well epitomizes what a "hot rod" was during the early seventies. No one "restored" these cars in those days, and most were built for speed. The trend to make them ultra slick high dollar show pieces would take another 20 years to materialize."
The film seems to have garnered a new generation of admirers. Check out New York Times columnist's A. O. Scott's review.
0 comments:
Post a Comment