Monte Hellman in 2009
Credit: Roberto Serra - Iguana Press/Getty Images
Monte Hellman, who has died aged 91, was a writer-director working on Hollywood’s fringes who achieved semi-legendary status among cinephiles, in part due to a filmography consisting almost exclusively of cult items.
The most notable of these was Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), an anti-road movie that crystallised American anomie at the moment of Vietnam. Backed by Universal to replicate Easy Rider’s success, the finished feature proved perverse indeed. Its cross-country drag race proposed that speeding could be as enervating as sitting still; the inexperienced leads, the singer-songwriter James Taylor and the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson, gave muted performances.
Monte Hellman
He also helmed The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind, two sparse Westerns starring a young Jack Nicholson.
Monte Hellman, the maverick director and protege of Roger Corman who helmed the existential cult classics
The Shooting and
Two-Lane Blacktop, died Tuesday. He was 91.
Hellman died at Eisenhower Health hospital in Palm Desert a week after he had fallen in his home, his daughter, Melissa Hellman, a producer, told
The Hollywood Reporter. He was my best friend, she said.
Cahiers du Cinema, the influential French magazine, once called Hellman the most gifted American filmmaker of his generation, and critics likened the idiosyncratic director to Michelangelo Antonioni and Sam Fuller.
Monte Hellman, Director of Two-Lane Blacktop, Dies at 91 msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Print
The Burbank mother knew her high school senior would have a tough time competing for a freshman seat at a University of California campus in a year of record-shattering applications more than 200,000 students were vying for about 46,000 spots. Still, she thought her daughter with a 4.3 GPA, eight AP and honors courses and a host of extracurricular activities would have a shot.
She was floored in March when the campus notifications began rolling in. Out of seven UC campuses, her daughter was denied or wait-listed at all but UC Merced.
“It was heartbreaking,” said the parent, who asked for anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy at a time of great disappointment. “And I got really angry. We just got the rug pulled out from under us. What more could our kids possibly have done?”
Coronavirus Today: A new resource for parenting through a pandemic latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.