Two-Lane Blacktop - Plot

Plot

The premise involves two street racers (played by Taylor and Wilson) who live on the road in their highly-modified, grey-primered, brutal 1955 Chevy "One-Fifty" two-door sedan drag car and drift from town to town, making their income by challenging local residents to impromptu drag races. The movie follows them driving east on Route 66 from Needles, California. They pick up a female hitchhiker in Flagstaff, Arizona (played by Bird), although it is more accurate to say that she picks them up by simply getting into their car. In New Mexico, they encounter another car driver (played by Oates, driving a 1970 Pontiac GTO). An atmosphere of hostility develops between the two parties. Although Oates is not an overt street racer, and, in fact, seems to know little about cars, a cross-country race to Washington, D.C. is suggested. Taylor proposes that the prize should be "for pinks," or legal ownership of the loser's car. Characters are never identified by name in the movie; instead they are named "The Driver," "The Mechanic," "GTO," and "The Girl". The movie follows the group east through small towns in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee, but no character makes it to Washington, D.C. during the film.

After sleeping with both the Driver and the Mechanic during the journey, the Girl disappoints them by abruptly leaving with the GTO while they compete at a racetrack in Memphis. The Driver pursues them intently, finding them at a diner where the Girl has just rejected the GTO's idea to visit Chicago. The Driver proposes going to Columbus, Ohio to get parts, but the Girl rejects him. She hops on the back of a stranger's motorcycle, dropping her bag in the parking lot. The three men abruptly depart from the diner in their respective cars. The insecure driver of the GTO, who has told a different BS story about himself to the racers, girl, and to each of the many hitchhikers he picked up (including an opportuning homosexual hitchhiker played by Harry Dean Stanton), then stops for two soldiers on leave. He brags to his latest passengers that he won the new car while skillfully driving a home-built '55 Chevy, emphasizing the circular nature of the film. The film ends during a drag race at an airstrip in East Tennessee. As the Driver speeds down the runway, first the sound drops out, then the film slows until the frames of the film seem to catch in the projector's gate, stop, and then the hot projection bulb burning it through...