In a lot of ways I feel like Road to Nowhere is my first movie everything else… (Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times, Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)
May 14, 2011|Kevin Thomas Monte Hellman, the most idiosyncratic of the talented filmmakers mentored by producer Roger Corman in the '60s and '70s, is drawing raves for his latest film, "Road to Nowhere," an intense, romantic movie-within-a movie.
Hellman and his longtime colleague, writer and Variety executive editor Steven Gaydos, have taken classic noir elements -- a stunning, seductive young beauty (Shannyn Sossamon), her rich and powerful middle-aged lover (Cliff De Young), a missing fortune and a suicide -- and blurred the line between fiction and reality.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday, May 18, 2011 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 News Desk 1 inches; 21 words Type of Material: Correction
Monte Hellman: An article about filmmaker Monte Hellman in the May 14 Calendar section misidentified producer Arthur Gorson as Albert Gorson.
When it premiered at the Venice Film Festival last year, Hellman was honored for his contributions to world cinema, and it received rapturous reviews upon its release in Europe. It will premiere Saturday at the Egyptian as the final offering in the American Cinematheque's three-day Hellman retrospective and subsequently open June 17 in Los Angeles.
It's a lot of hoopla for a filmmaker who hadn't made a feature in 21 years. Hellman, however, is a prime example of quality rather than quantity, making such enigmatic, spare films as his two westerns with Jack Nicholson, "The Shooting" and "Ride in the Whirlwind." They were made in the '60s but not released until 1972, the year after his "Two-Lane Blacktop," which Universal Studios more or less let escape rather than release. That didn't prevent this tale of two young guys, played by singers James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, who get in a cross-country car race with Warren Oates, from becoming a revered cult film. Indeed, all three plus "Cockfighter," with Oates in the title role, have made Hellman a cult favorite.
Of his two-decades-plus absence from feature filmmaking, Hellman sums it up as being in "development hell." He was busy, he says, teaching two years at USC, six more at CalArts, executive producing "Reservoir Dogs" for Quentin Tarantino and struggling to get numerous projects of his own off the ground. He's currently working on his next project, called "Love or Die."
"This is going to sound terrible, but in a lot of ways I feel like 'Road to Nowhere' is my first movie -- everything else before it was a rehearsal," Hellman said in a recent interview. Asked if it was a matter of feeling at last in total control, he replied, "Just the opposite. This movie seemed to have a mind of its own -- it seemed to know better. I'd make a choice, fail and then wind up with something better. I have always tried to move the audience, to evoke an emotional response."