I had a few chats with Dennis Wilson back in the mid ’70s, and one of those times we briefly discussed Monte Hellman‘s Two Lane Blacktop (’71). And I can tell you that Wilson wasn’t a fan. I can’t recite an exact Wilson quote as it happened too long ago, but his basic opinion was that Hellman had missed the potential…that he didn’t really understand what the film was about or didn’t appreciate the glory of high-octane engines….something like that. Wilson felt he understood the fast-car aesthetic better than Hellman, and that he understood more fully what it should have been about.
