3/21/2023 0 Comments Gto need for speed 2 movieThe two automotive stars of Two-Lane Blacktop: a primer-gray 1955 Chevy and the “Orbit Orange” 1970 Pontiac GTO. “Warren Oates’ GTO (as he’s credited) is every pontificating drunk, every reformed junkie or born-again proselytizer, every guy who moves to a town to begin again.” “This nameless driver has bought the James Bond ideal of the well-rounded man, but he prefigures Woody Allen’s Zelig in the desperate speed with which he adapts himself to every new situation and passenger,” details Kent Jones in his essay “Slow Ride” for the movie’s 2007 Criterion Collection release. He may be truly self-deluded, believing some part of the false biography he invents anew with each hitchhiker who climbs into his brightly painted Detroit muscle. The more we see of GTO, the clearer he emerges as a tragic dreamer: one of those guys who will invest far too much money into his pursuits without investing any actual skills, all to hopelessly override the emptiness of his supercharged mid-life crisis. “It was the perfect brutal reflection of a smug self-satisfied year when the shit of the peace and love era was really hitting the fan,” writes Adam Webb of the movie. Its existential themes of nihilism and alienation against the open road with a contemporary rock soundtrack recall its road-themed predecessors like Easy Rider and Vanishing Point. Released two days after Oates’ 43rd birthday, Two-Lane Blacktop was filmed in chronological order and on location, capturing the waning pre-interstate days of Route 66 as our drivers’ journey snaked across the southern United States from California into Tennessee. Along with his friend Harry Dean Stanton-who cameos as a hitchhiking cowboy whose advances are swiftly rejected by GTO-Oates contrasts the inexperience of the actors occupying the primer-gray Chevy as “an actor and a half,” as marveled by Michael Goodwin on his October 1970 chronicle of the movie’s production for Rolling Stone. His craggy features suited him well to early roles as cowboys and criminals, though he rose to more prominent stardom through the ’70s beginning with his co-starring role as the garrulous, tragi-comic motorist who impulsively bets his showroom-bought Pontiac GTO in a cross-country race against James Taylor and Dennis Wilson’s “homegrown” ’55 Chevy in Two-Lane Blacktop.īest known as musicians, neither Taylor nor Wilson had ever acted on screen-nor would they after-bringing a uniquely raw presence that was complemented by the inexperienced Laurie Bird as “The Girl” who shakes up the duo’s dynamic… as well as their ultimate rivalry with the man they know only as “GTO”. One of my favorite actors, Oates was born 94 years ago today on Jin Depoy, an unincorporated community in western Kentucky. “Because there was once a god who walked the earth named Warren Oates,” Richard Linklater included among the sixteen reasons why he loves Two-Lane Blacktop, Monte Hellman’s low-buedget 1971 road movie that has become a cult classic. This one’s built from scratch, and, as Warren Oates says, “Those satisfactions are permanent.” - Tom Waits The nights are warm and the roads are straight. Three road hogs and an underage girl riding in back with the tools. Warren Oates as “GTO”, an otherwise unnamed former TV producerĪ race for pink slips between a ’55 Chevy and a GTO across a long-gone America when the road was much more than a shopping aisle. Warren Oates in Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) Vitals
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