"Monte Hellman, American Auteur" (199?; w/d George Hickenlooper)

Begins w/ MH (Hickenlooper’s Ghost Brigade editor)’s Two Lane Blacktop character revving up before celluloid catches + burns (subject’s career doing same, shooting 6 movies in 11 yrs then only 4 in 20 since).

Talking heads (several aspects of unseen dir GH’s own surrogate personality) Kevin Thomas (critic, who slots MH in w/ Coppola, Scorcese + Bogdanovich – all Roger Corman protégés whose 70s careers budded in 60s + 2 of 3 subjects of other GH profiles), Corman (former GH employer as well, here regretting MH’s lack of salability; himself maverick who conversely to Hellman cashed out own directorial career/integrity) + Harry Dean Stanton (actor, praising H’s "going own way" – as opposed to others’ studio tenures, Hel afro’d avatar of Hickenlooper's Golden Age 70s film culture, absence of critical tone of other GH profiles Hearts of Darkness, Picture This or Mayor o/t Sunset Strip indicating Hel as unambiguous hero whose purity maintained partly by relative inactivity, à la chivalric lover).

Reputation-making 60s westerns (concerning death, contra "pioneering" fwd-moving genre convention) shelved for 3 yrs (personal history reinforcing fatalistic themes) till star Jack Nicholson’s Easy Rider success (also featured in 2 other early MH actioners, he Hel’s spirit of death made good), paving way for 2-Lane (road drama about going nowhere, part of Universal Studios’ new-talent program which also funded Silent Running Douglas Trumbull’s non-start), which common tater Dennis Bartok terms "America thru alien eyes" (ie own objective POV, free of colonial delusions); shot chronologically (w/o assumptions about future) + w/ central (non-)actors only seeing same day’s script (existential process rigged: possible clue to how dir’s personal "script" self-generated), film dropped for yrs upon flopping (attempt to bottle/reproduce lightning affirming films’ theses, studios’ retreat to formulas + calculation w/ lapdog dirs post-Golden Age raising philosophical question of whether fate can be manipulated – or at least hedged ["There’s a way to lose more slowly" - Daniel Mainwaring]) + sending Hel back to Corman/indies (Cockfighter "emblematic of Hel’s Hollywood travails," main character’s voluntary muteness dir's spare output since).

Last line MH recounting Frenchman’s recollection of him (alien eyes regarding "alien eyes"): "MH, MH – ah! the westerns!" (Euro img of America – of which MH "auteur" – in terms of progress…nowhere).