Long Distance Sun
Deadhead Miles (1972)
directed by Vernon Zimmerman
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Cinefile
Days of Heaven was important to me at eighteen because it was beautiful and its landscapes limitless and because of the inarticulateness and unwashed handsomeness of Sam Shepard’s farmer. Terrence Malick was a Texan, but no place in Texas really looked like that, so the movie was made in Alberta. Later, I watched Badlands and looked for the characteristics I admired in Days of Heaven. I found them, but in doing so, I missed the humor in Badlands. The screenplay is wry but gentle; Days of Heaven, by comparison, is humorless.
Terrence Malick never directed a movie half as good as the movie he wrote for his friend Vernon Zimmerman. Malick lived in the hills of LA in the early 70s and ran around with guys like Warren Oates (well, at least a little). When someone tells you that screwball comedies only exist in black and white, show them Deadhead Miles.
That isn’t quite right; Deadhead Miles is gentle, but there’s a rhythm to its humor. In the opening scene, Alan Arkin and his buddies steal a big rig, and then Arkin steals it again. A chop shop repaints and conceals the details, and the next 90 minutes are open road and blue skies. More jokes occur with the eighteen-wheeler in low gears than high gears.
Most road movies are buddy movies, but Arkin, in spite of the people he runs into, is alone. The other characters don’t really react to his ramblings and jokes, so finally it’s up to the audience to be the companion Arkin never finds. GTO from Two-Lane Blacktop might be a good reference point, but the desperation in Rudy Wurlitzer’s screenplay is a little too... grounded, I guess, for Deadhead Miles. Arkin is frayed but not torn. He’s more independent than GTO, more watchful, and burdened by fewer generational dissatisfactions.
Police encounters aren’t funny in Two-Lane Blacktop, but in Deadhead Miles, there’s nothing cops can do to threaten Alan Arkin. His mind is miles ahead. When highway patrolmen tell him to lose some weight from his trailer, Arkin shoves the truck into reverse and dumps contents at random onto the pavement. Zimmerman shot the movie in New Mexico and Knoxville and put Dave Dudley and that big Peterbilt engine on the soundtrack. People on IMDB generally like the eighteen-wheeler but not the film, but as of this moment, there are few movies I love more.
Cormac McCarthy lived in Tennessee in 1971; whatever was in the water that made Child of God the perfect funny novel got brewed into coffee for the cast and crew of Deadhead Miles. Unreleased in theaters or on video but broadcast in the 80s on A&E, it exists now in copies of copies but also in nine parts on YouTube. As a kid I got bored on car trips – even the magnificent ones - but I don’t now. I think of roads when I’m not driving, and the dreams I dream look just like Deadhead Miles.
directed by Vernon Zimmerman
rating: 5 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Cinefile
Days of Heaven was important to me at eighteen because it was beautiful and its landscapes limitless and because of the inarticulateness and unwashed handsomeness of Sam Shepard’s farmer. Terrence Malick was a Texan, but no place in Texas really looked like that, so the movie was made in Alberta. Later, I watched Badlands and looked for the characteristics I admired in Days of Heaven. I found them, but in doing so, I missed the humor in Badlands. The screenplay is wry but gentle; Days of Heaven, by comparison, is humorless.
Terrence Malick never directed a movie half as good as the movie he wrote for his friend Vernon Zimmerman. Malick lived in the hills of LA in the early 70s and ran around with guys like Warren Oates (well, at least a little). When someone tells you that screwball comedies only exist in black and white, show them Deadhead Miles.
That isn’t quite right; Deadhead Miles is gentle, but there’s a rhythm to its humor. In the opening scene, Alan Arkin and his buddies steal a big rig, and then Arkin steals it again. A chop shop repaints and conceals the details, and the next 90 minutes are open road and blue skies. More jokes occur with the eighteen-wheeler in low gears than high gears.
Most road movies are buddy movies, but Arkin, in spite of the people he runs into, is alone. The other characters don’t really react to his ramblings and jokes, so finally it’s up to the audience to be the companion Arkin never finds. GTO from Two-Lane Blacktop might be a good reference point, but the desperation in Rudy Wurlitzer’s screenplay is a little too... grounded, I guess, for Deadhead Miles. Arkin is frayed but not torn. He’s more independent than GTO, more watchful, and burdened by fewer generational dissatisfactions.
Police encounters aren’t funny in Two-Lane Blacktop, but in Deadhead Miles, there’s nothing cops can do to threaten Alan Arkin. His mind is miles ahead. When highway patrolmen tell him to lose some weight from his trailer, Arkin shoves the truck into reverse and dumps contents at random onto the pavement. Zimmerman shot the movie in New Mexico and Knoxville and put Dave Dudley and that big Peterbilt engine on the soundtrack. People on IMDB generally like the eighteen-wheeler but not the film, but as of this moment, there are few movies I love more.
Cormac McCarthy lived in Tennessee in 1971; whatever was in the water that made Child of God the perfect funny novel got brewed into coffee for the cast and crew of Deadhead Miles. Unreleased in theaters or on video but broadcast in the 80s on A&E, it exists now in copies of copies but also in nine parts on YouTube. As a kid I got bored on car trips – even the magnificent ones - but I don’t now. I think of roads when I’m not driving, and the dreams I dream look just like Deadhead Miles.
posted by NPK at 11:29 PM
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