“Make it three yards, motherfucker, and we'll have an auto-MO-bile race."

Our homage to Beach Boy Dennis Wilson's existential 1971 road movie Two Lane Backtop references the film's first release on video cassette during the 1980's, a move that allowed a new generation to discover this forgotten work and ensure it's rightful place as a cult classic. Limited to a print run of 50 on our organic cotton TSPTR Vintage White tee in eco friendly water based ink.

As stripped-down as its ’55 Chevy, Monte Hellman's Two Lane Blacktop rolled up at cinema's in the wake of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider whose success convinced Hollywood studios that cheaply produced, counter-culturally themed road movies could hit the box-office jackpot. Halfway through the movie actor Warren Oates’s character plays Me and Bobby McGee on his Pontiac GTO’s stereo. ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose…’, sings Kris Kristofferson, which frames this cult masterpiece perfectly, as early ‘70’s American youth strove to find deeper meaning in their existence. 

Dennis Wilson (The Mechanic) and James Taylor (The Driver), strike out from LA across the States in a ’55 Chevy rod, drag-racing along the way for $300 stakes. Motoring east, they pick up The Girl (Laurie Bird) with no questions asked, who makes her home in the seat-less back of the Chevy. They’re goaded by Oates (‘GTO’) in his shiny orange Pontiac, who plays a confidence trickster, prepared to risk losing his car’s ‘pink slip’ if the pair beat him to Washington DC. His chameleon-like persona juxtaposes brilliantly with the rodders who, you sense, are just trying to authenticate their young lives. As pared down a film as you can imagine, even the characters names are unmentioned. Restrained and distant, unobtrusively observing its characters go about their business, the film allowing the protagonists to emerge organically without any explanation of their motivations. 

Two Lane Blacktop opens with the monotonous roar of engines over the Universal logo, subtly suggesting that its lonely vision may not just be applicable to the US. Leaving its characters unmoored and going in circles, the film stock literally burns itself out at the end. Though its conclusions are less obviously violent than those of Easy Rider, they easily surpass that picture’s force with a biting sense of sadness and desolation. In many ways, the film’s examination of a world without cohesion rings just as true today as it did in 1971.