The result is a globetrotting blend of intrigue that vexes and intoxicates in the tradition of Vertigo and Mullholland Drive. It's not perfect, nor does one get the sense Hellman -- best known for indelible cult hits like _Two-Lane Blacktop, Cockfighter and The Shooting (not to mention shepherding Quentin Tarantino's debut Reservoir Dogs to the screen) -- would even want it that way. The director spoke with Movieline about his 22 years away, how Road to Nowhere both imitates and defies his own life, and why cult-legend status isn't all it's cracked up to be.
Welcome back!
Well, I haven't been away.
Gotcha. What's been happening?
I'm not complaining, but the only vacations I ever have are when I'm invited to a film festival and I get to take a few days off. But it's a constant process. A lot of times you'll get to the starting gate, and they won't let you run the race.
It's been two decades, though. How many times are we talking about?
I think in Brad Stevens' book, it's been 56 times over my career. So...
Does that just stop being frustrating after a while? Just part of the business you become accustomed to?
It's not unique, and I wish it weren't the case. But I was inspired by guys like Jean Renoir, who complained about the same thing, you know?
So, for the record, how did Road to Nowhere come about?
It was an idea of [screenwriter] Steve Gaydos. He kind of complained jokingly that this was the first time in 40 years that I ever liked one of his ideas. And because I did like it, he was so excited that he went off and wrote the script. We brainstormed it with a couple other people, he did a rewrite, and that's what we made the movie with.
But you two have collaborated a few times in the past, right?
Right, but usually on adaptations of other material. This was the first one of his.
How did you two get to know each other?
I guess he sent me a letter 40 years ago. He'd just finished some studies at California Institute of the Arts, and he sent me some samples of his writings -- some poems and other things. I responded, and he came over and we chatted. We've been friends ever since.
What appealed to you about Road to Nowhere?
I think it was the idea of just kind of showing the process -- kind of chronicling a lot of the adventures we've had making movies. It seemed like an obvious thing because it's what I know best: Dealing with the materials that we have at hand. It was exciting.
Yet for this movie's filmmaker, Mitchell Haven, the process is so easy. Everything just happens for him and his film.
Yeah, that's not typical of my movies. But when it does happen, it happens like that.
To what extent did you want to reflect your career, then, and to what extent was this just a story you wanted to tell?
I was more interested not so much in telling the story of my life, but in demonstrating just how it's done. And it's easy; we just used the materials that were at hand. We shot the stuff the stuff that we had. We shot our crew. We shot our grip truck, our trailers. It was one camera shooting the other camera, back and forth. It was the infinite mirror effect.
You've said you ultimately realized this was a story that "came from two wonderful friends who led tragic lives." Can you elaborate?
We didn't know that when we made the movie. It's just something we realized after the fact. But every work of fiction has to come out of something in the writer's life. These experiences are there; we live through them, and then we forget about them, and then they come back in the form of an artistic endeavor like this. One friend tragically got drunk and shot his wife. Another friend died tragically in a similar situation. We kind of put the two together. But we didn't know about this while we doing it. This all came up after the fact.
That's another, more general discovery you've cited: That you didn't know "where this story came from until after it was in the can." What kind of exploration did you find yourself doing in post-production?
It was exploratory during every part of the process. Any kind of collaboration is a matter of mutual trust. I always have to find new ways of doing things; that's part of my creative process. In Two-Lane Blacktop, I had an idea that I wouldn't let anybody read the script. I wanted to see what would happen. In this one, what I wanted to try was to see what would happen because so much of the training to act -- or to do whatever we do in this kind of work -- is based on analysis. All kinds of intellectual processes lead to a very intellectual approach to creating. I wanted to see what would happen if we just cut that stuff out and just let the subconscious take over. And this involves a kind of mutual trust -- not just with the actors, but all the other creative people -- to not only trust me, but, most importantly, to trust themselves. I said, "Let's just see what happens -- if we can put ourselves in touch with this kind of community subconscious."
I don't know how successful we were, but I know that strange things happened. Things that I've never experienced before on a movie set, where we'd do six takes, and somebody would say, "Do you mind if I try something different?" And I'd say, "OK, go." And it would be mind-boggling. It would be so exciting and so powerful and change the whole course of the movie.
As viewers of Road to Nowhere, we're on the set ourselves. I'm watching these characters -- and in turn, these actors -- and I did wonder how much they even knew what's happening in both movies. Obviously there is a story and characters and arcs, but to what extent did they really know the plot as it went along?
The only who did, because it was part of her creative process, was Shannyn. She understood everything. She did a lot of her own wardrobe, and she had to know what the chronology was and how to develop that aspect of her character -- so she would know where she was in the timeline. The other people got confused by that part of it. They didn't know where any given scene was in the timeline, and it was frustrating. And then they said, "I'm just not going to worry about that." Because it doesn't matter. Any given scene is the present tense at that moment.
Did you encourage that?
I encouraged that.
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]