Monte Hellman on Road to Nowhere and How He Spent 22 Years Between Features

A few technical things: Without giving too much away -- though it is in the trailer -- there's a pretty stunning visual involving a plane and a lake. How did that come about, and how did you accomplish it?

Well, first of all, we do the same scene several times -- as we did other scenes. There's the scene with the cop and his situation with the Taschen character. We showed scenes from different points of view. Not to emulate Rashomon -- though it has the appearance of that -- but to emulate the director toying with different ideas and find alternative ways of telling the story. So we see scenes in different ways. It doesn't mean they both happened; it's one or the other.

Technologically, though? How did we do that? I'll just say that we had the benefit of a lot of money spent on research and development that we didn't have to spend. Our visual effects supervisor was Robert Skotak, who did Aliens and Titanic and a number of other Cameron movies. So they spent all the money, and we got the end result.

Also, this is kind of a globetrotting film -- you've got characters in Havana, Rome, London and, of course, Hollywood, among other locations. But I didn't get the sense that it had to be that way. What prompted that element?

There's an aspect of the movie about memoir. I just wanted to make the movie in... Well, first of all, picking locations is a lot like picking actors. It's another part of casting. You cast the actors, you "cast" the director of photography -- in this case someone [Josep M. Civit] I've worked with 20 years or more -- and the art director and the composer. You cast all of these people. And you cast the locations. And in this case, it was locations that had significance for me -- that were part of my life. It was just part of the memoir aspect of the movie.

You've done plenty of films featuring guns and gunfire, but the sound of gunfire in this film really caught me off-guard. We hear guns fired in movies all the time, but you never hear that unnerving, affectless "pop" the way we do in real life. How did you settle on that sound?

Again, it's casting. I cast a great sound effects editor!

Am I reading too much into it?

No! It's great that you caught that, because all these things are important. We don't people to think about them, obviously, but every aspect like that... I wanted the guns to be authentic, but I also wanted them to be shocking -- as guns are. I'm terrified of guns.

Me too!

The funny thing was that when we had a scene where a gun was actually brought on, Tygh's first reaction was not to be nervous. He said, "This is a friend of mine. Why should I be nervous about it?" I said, "Tygh, I don't know about you, but any time somebody's got a loaded gun in my presence, I'm nervous." I just felt like this kind of authenticity is something that should not be noticed by the audience, but it is a very significant part of their emotional response to a movie.

You teach film at Cal Arts. How long have you taught, and what have you learned about your filmmaking from teaching others?

I've been teaching for about six years -- seven years, I guess. I learn from my students all the time. There are only two or three things that I can teach; there's no great mystery to making movies.

What are those things?

I teach the effect of lenses, and I teach casting. And simple geometry: The famous [180-degree] line that we don't cross over. Very simple stuff. How you stage four people sitting around a table.

Are your students as well-versed in cinema as you think they should be? Have they seen enough films?

Some have, and some haven't. I think the fact that some haven't is a fault in the system. I know that the few things I did get out of studying cinema at UCLA was a grounded history of cinema and seeing movies from 1900 on -- from the very beginning. From the 1890s, even, you know? I think they don't get that today. Some do; some manage to seek it out. But a lot of students don't. For them, the history of cinema begins in 1991 or something. That's too bad.

Well, yeah: Reservoir Dogs, which you executive produced!

[Laughs]

For better or worse, there is a Tarantino effect on this generation. He's a brilliant filmmaker, but we've seen this kind of post-Tarantino genre that you had a hand in. How do you feel about that?

My only feeling about Quentin -- and I think he's fabulous, he's a great friend, I love him dearly -- but my last wife, of all my movies, Reservoir Dogs was the only one she liked! I don't blame Quentin for that, but it is kind of an unfortunate consequence.

Whenever we hear people talk about Monte Hellman, they talk about "cult filmmaker Monte Hellman," or "cult legend Monte Hellman." Do you ever resent that label?

The only thing I resent about that is that it implies a small group. I would like to be part of a bigger group, you know? I think one of the biggest thrills of my life was inviting my London agent to come and see the opening of Two-Lane Blacktop on the screen at Islington on the Green. He went to the theater and couldn't get in because it was sold out.

So how do you move beyond that?

I want to move to massive audience! People who can't get into the theater -- that kind of thing. That's my goal. You want to communicate with as many people as possible.

So what's next, then?

I have two pictures that I'm preparing. One I've been working on a long time; it's called Love or Die, a supernatural romantic thriller. A ticking-clock, time-bomb movie. The other one is an adaptation that Steve Gaydos is working on.

Can you elaborate?

Not really. I don't know too much about it yet.

Road to Nowhere opens today in limited release. Read Movieline's review here, as well as Monte Hellman's installment of My Favorite Scene.

[Top Photo: AFP/Getty Images]

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