Two-Lane Blacktop - Production

Production

Two-Lane Blacktop originated with producer Michael Laughlin who had a two-picture deal with CBS Cinema Center Films. He convinced the production company to pay Will Corry $100,000 for his original story about two men, one black and one white, who drove across the country followed by a young girl which was inspired by his own cross-country journey in 1968. Returning from Italy after a film project had fallen through, Hellman was introduced to Laughlin who presented Hellman with two projects, one of which was Two-Lane Blacktop. He asked Hellman to direct, who found Corry's story "interesting, but not fully realized". Hellman agreed to make the film only if another screenwriter was hired to rewrite the script and Laughlin agreed. A friend of Hellman's recommended underground writer Rudolph Wurlitzer. Hellman read his novel Nog and was impressed enough to hire Wurlitzer. He began reading Corry's story, but gave up after five pages. Hellman and Wurlitzer agreed to keep the basic idea of the cross-country race as well as the characters of the Driver, the Mechanic and the Girl. Wurlitzer invented the GTO character and the rest of the supporting cast. To prepare for writing the script, he stayed in a Los Angeles motel and read car magazines, as well as hanging out with several obsessive mechanics and "stoner car freaks" in the San Fernando Valley. Wurlitzer said that he did not know much about cars, but did "know something about being lost on the road". He wrote a new script in four weeks.

In February 1970, Hellman conducted some location scouting and was a few weeks from principal photography when Cinema Center suddenly canceled the project. He shopped the script around to several Hollywood studios that liked it, but wanted a say in the casting. However, Ned Tanen, a young executive at Universal Pictures gave Hellman $850,000 to make the film and gave him control of the final cut. Hellman saw a picture of James Taylor on a billboard on the Sunset Strip and asked the musician to come and do a screen test. Four days before principal photography began the role of the Mechanic was still not cast. Hellman was desperate and tested people he met in garages. A friend of casting director Fred Roos suggested musician Dennis Wilson. Wilson was the last actor cast and Hellman chose him because he felt that the musician "had lived that role, that he really grew up with cars".

Principal photography began on August 13, 1970 in Los Angeles and lasted for six weeks with a crew of 30, three matching Chevys and two matching G.T.O.s traveling through the southwest towards Memphis, Tennessee. Hellman insisted on going across country, like the characters in the film, because he felt it was the only way to convince the audience that the characters raced across the United States. He said, "I knew it would affect the actors — and it did, obviously. It affected everybody". Hellman took an unconventional approach of not letting his three lead, inexperienced actors read the script. Instead, he gave them pages of dialogue on the day of shooting. The actors felt uncomfortable with this approach. In particular, James Taylor, used to having control when it came to his music, was upset at being unable to read the script in advance. Hellman eventually gave him permission to do so, but Taylor never did read it.

Hellman shot almost the entire script as written. The first cut of the film was three-and-a-half hours long. He was his own editor: "I can't look over someone's shoulder. I need my hand on the brake". He had control of the final cut, but was contractually obliged to deliver a film no longer than two hours. The final version ran 105 minutes. In their April 1971 cover story, Esquire magazine proclaimed Two-Lane Blacktop, "film of the year". Hellman initially thought that the Esquire article would be good publicity for the film, but in hindsight was not, because "I think it raised people's expectations. They couldn't accept the movie for what it was". There was a lot of advance buzz about the film, but Lew Wasserman, head of the studio saw the film and hated it. He refused to promote it and when it opened in New York City on the Fourth of July weekend, there were no newspaper ads promoting it.