But "Two-Lane Blacktop" really is a big-screen Beat movie, shot in bracing natural light in wide-open Techniscope: an "On the Road" for drag racers, starring James Taylor and the Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson as a laconic team known only as, respectively, "the Driver" and "the Mechanic." Laurie Bird is a rambling gal known only as "The Girl" and Oates is the enigmatic "G.T.O." G.T.O., of course, drives a GTO. He's on a quest to gain some existential traction after a cryptic crackup in his life. When G.T.O. crosses paths once too often with Taylor and Wilson's customized 1955 Chevy, his paranoia and competitiveness lead him to race the scruffy, longhaired Taylor-Wilson team from New Mexico to the District of Columbia, with the winner getting the losing car.

For connoisseurs of American cult cinema, "Two-Lane Blacktop" is a treasure-trove of influence and reference. Rudolph Wurlitzer, who rewrote Will Corry's original script, went on to pen Sam Peckinpah's "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid"; the antiheroes' '55 Chevy was later driven by Harrison Ford in "American Graffiti." And when Walter Hill made a film called "The Driver" about a character called "the Driver," could this film have been far from the back of his mind?

Hellman himself executive-produced Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs," while, around the same time, Richard Linklater alluded to this film in "Slacker." What's touching is that all these ripples emanate from a movie that's basically a mood piece. It's about men in the grip of a narrow obsession that allows them to pass unscathed through a small-town, pre-mall America, which Hellman catches with an eye and ear for sloth, distrust and parochial allegiances. Wilson has an engaging, unselfconscious smile and Taylor a compellingly tense focus. But the film would be nothing more than a lyric ramble if not for Oates' performance as G.T.O.

Allen Ginsberg might have studied Oates as a small-town cop in "In the Heat of the Night" and a scruffy outlaw in "The Wild Bunch" and written a poem about him titled "Scowl." Oates could glower, furrow his brow and pull in his lip as skillfully as Fred Astaire could dance or Cary Grant could grin. A good ol' boy from the coal-mining town of Depoy, Ky., Oates reached Hollywood by way of the Marines, the University of Louisville and odd jobs in New York. Even in an age of easy riders and easy pieces, Oates' confusion had special resonance. His scowl, which could suggest anything from bereavement to amusement, most often signaled a mixture of anger, befuddlement and defeat in the midst of a modern world that was passing beyond any individual's powers of understanding. Oates said he didn't feel at home in cities and had a strong sense of cultural dislocation, which he used to fuel his work. Rawboned and sturdy, yet fuzzy around the edges, with a malleable face that seemed to have a built-in squint, Oates rarely tried to shake his rustic look. He appeared to slouch even when he was walking tall.

That Beat and beat-up aura was perfect for the character of G.T.O. At one point G.T.O. says he was a television producer, but he never seems comfortable in his amazing array of country-club-casual duds and he spins a new persona for every man, woman or child who hitches a ride with him. In "Two-Lane Blacktop" Oates perfects an unsentimental yet sad and hilarious example of an American prototype: a man living alone or with other men along desperate frontiers, soaking up whatever confidence or direction he can glean from his environment. In "Two-Lane Blacktop" he exists in an emotional and sexual limbo: He yearns for the Girl to go away with him and panics when a homosexual hitcher (Harry Dean Stanton, billed as "H.D. Stanton") makes a pass at him. G.T.O. is living on his nerve ends and hoping for relief. At one point he falls asleep while crouching behind a Chevy pickup.

No one could do a stumble-on or a pass-out better than Oates. Watching him in "Two-Lane Blacktop" you understand why he could speak about acting the way Robert E. Lee Prewitt in "From Here to Eternity" spoke about bugling -- it was more than just a job, more than something he loved and had a knack for. It gave him an identity. Kurosawa found his in a God's-eye view. Oates found his in a grunt's.

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