Two-Lane Blacktop

February 24, 1993

Twenty years back when I was just 18 years old, I saw what as I recall was one of the worst films ever made. My friends and I still joke about Two-Lane Blacktop – how terrible it was, a classic case of bad film making if there ever was one. So it was with trepidation that I went to screen it recently at the Red Victorian as part of their Road Series of films. And so it was with jubilation that I exited the theatre as my 20-year hindsight has been subject to an overhaul.

Two-Lane Blacktop is the ultimate road film. It stars folk singer James Taylor and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson as two restless, directionless drag racers in a souped up '55 Chevy who head east across the southwest with little money and no definite destination in mind. Along the way they pick up hippie hitchhiker Laurie Bird as they also befriend another driver headed nowhere fast in his new GTO, the square yet likeable Warren Oates. Taylor and Wilson stop in small towns to race local yokel motorheads for money, while Oates picks up hitchhikers as often as he can – even a young Harry Dean Stanton in a hilarious cameo performance – boring each one with different tall tales about who he is and where he is headed. Oates challenges Taylor and Wilson to a long-distance race, to Washington, D.C., for pink slips, yet neither

side has any real intention on actually going there.

In short, Two-Lane Blacktop, directed by Monte Hellman, is a great cult classic. The handsome Taylor is brooding and laconic as the Driver, and Wilson is wooden and emotionless as the Mechanic. They deliver what few lines they have so flatly that they are perfectly cast as two outsiders in this film about loneliness and alienation. Oates, as GTO, is masterful, a real pleasure to watch. The actors have no names, and there is no real plot. The movie, like the characters, meanders down that long, lonesome highway at high speeds searching for a purpose. It is a wonderful metaphor for the end of the flower-power era.

Two-Lane Blacktop played last week at the Red Victorian, and I'm told it will be out on video sometime this year.

 Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

April 7, 1993

Are you one of those "informed" individuals who sets their radio alarm to KGO, peruses the Chronicle over cappuccino, reads Time and Newsweek on the bus ride to work, eats dinner with Dan Rather and then dozes off at night to Night Line? If so, and if you feel like you've got a good grasp as to what is going on in the world, then you're going to have to see the new documentary called Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media.

I know, I know. "Noam who?" you're asking. That is Noam Chomsky, the renowned linguist, intellectual and political activist who is also a professor at MIT. Chomsky is easily the foremost critic of the media coming from the left, and he is practically a lone beacon of reason in a TV world that force-feeds us so-called "balanced" shows like Crossfire, Firing Line and The McLaughlin Report. With the likes of Morton Kondrake and Sam Donaldson representing the counterpoint to reactionaries like Pat Buchanan and Henry Kissinger, it is surprising that Chomsky doesn't get more airtime. However, after watching this film and hearing what he has to say, it really isn't a surprise after all.

Chomsky can speak at length and very intelligently on any number of topics but the main thrust here is the media. He says the media elite – such as the New York Times and the TV networks – are the agenda setters, and that advertisers and big corporations influence what is and is not presented as news. He adds that there are dangerous diversions like the supermarket tabloids, TV Guide, and sports publications that distract people from things that really matter. In short, folks, Chomsky is here to inform you that you are misinformed.

Chomsky is not without his detractors, however, and fortunately the filmmakers go into such. There is excellent editing in this entertaining and enlightening documentary, as the directors use a myriad mix of early footage and visual images to make this just shy-of-three-hour film hold your interest and, with any luck, have you, like the bumper sticker says, questioning authority.

If you're one of those Rush Limbaugh loonies who says, "I don't agree with him but I find him fascinating," if you think big changes lie ahead just because a Democrat is in the White House, or if you'd like to see an extremely brilliant, articulate individual who has a lot to say but seldom has a chance to say it on national TV, then you must see Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, which plays April 9-15 at the Castro Theatre, with opening night this Friday being a benefit showing that you should call the theatre for information about.