Deadhead Miles

I caught this movie on A&E over ten years ago between classes while in college. I'd seen Catch-22, so I knew Alan Arkin and liked his work.

It's hard to describe this movie beyond a trucker movie. Very seriously, it's like an episode of Seinfeld... a lot of random stuff happens, most of it disconnected, a lot of it odd, but the vast majority is really funny once you sink into it. Honestly, I forget a very large portion of the movie, but the impression of how interesting it was has stuck with me for over a decade... that has to say something.

Arkin is perfect in it as a pill-popping, cantankerous driver trying to stay awake while driving a load cross country. Paul Benedict (Bentley from the Jeffersons) plays a tramp. Looking over the cast, Richard Kiel (Jaws from the Bond films), Loretta Swit (M*A*S*H), John Milius (writer of Apocalypse Now, etc), Hector Elizondo, Charles Durning... this had a great cast of character actors. I would love to see this film again, but I seriously doubt it will ever get a DVD release unless someone famous sponsors it like Tarantino has the martial arts films released under his Rolling Thunder company.

A quirky (and hard to find) comedy who's script seems to be right out of a Dave ("Six Days on the Road") Dudley's truckers' song. Filmed in the unadorned, late-'60s/early-'70s low-budget, realist style (like 'Easy Rider', 'Two Lane Blacktop' or 'Five Easy Pieces'), this little cult movie is a strange pop-art odyssey through roadside America circa-1971. It is the story of an oddball trucker's last ride as told through Cooper (Alan Arkin) and his new but stolen Peterbilt 359 big-rig. The plot (?) is a lean one. The story unfolds to us by our observing the conversations and adventures of Cooper and his unexpected hitchhiker (Paul Benedict). Together they attempt to earn some cash by hustling up some short-haul jobs while dodging the authorities. Arkin performs some eccentric scenes and delivers some quotable lines. Is Cooper fresh out of the nut-house or is he just a sad little character trying to give his dream one last try? Music is by Dave Dudley. Cameos abound with actors from the past (Bruce Bennett, George Raft, Ida Lupino) and the future (Loretta Swit, Charles Durning, Hector Elizondo, Richard Kiel). Written by Terrence Malick. This film will not impress everyone. I would recommend it to anyone who considers himself an "eng-ine man" AND is into small, quirky cult films.

I saw this movies in the early 1980s at the Toronto Festival of Festivals (as the Toronto International Film Festival was known then) at like 10 A.M. while I was waiting for the "important film" to roll. Nearly 30 years on, I can't remember what the important film was but I still have warm feelings for the road weirdness of Deadhead Miles. Partly that's because I've been a fan of Arkin's since Wait Until Dark, one of the greatest thrillers of all time. He plays one of the creepiest villains ever. At on point he explains what happened to his cohorts. He says they had plans to kill him but then: "Topsy-turvy. Me Topsy, them Turvy." It's delicious when he says it. As for Deadhead Miles and other films of legend you can't see legally or easily (A New Leaf, 1971), these are the things internet downloads were invented to deliver. We're getting closer, but we're still a few years away from a time when you'll be able to go online and download any movie or TV show their owners want to rent or sell. There are still economic and ego issues to deal with, but the promised land for film geeks is almost at hand. Next year in Hollywood.

Distinct lack of plot to this movie.

Its the story of a truck driver who is the worst imaginable and his sane passenger and a truck. There is not much else in there. Did I mention the truck? A lovely Peterbilt and reefer trailer combination with lots of that grunty Cummins Diesel sound.

The real star of this movie is Alan Arkin. He gives a hilarious performance in one of my favourite B movies ever.

I have never seen the end of this movie. I taped it off TV several years ago and about 4/5 in to the movie there was a power cut so I never got the end of the movie. Can't buy it anywhere and never know when its going to be shown on TV again.

Cameo appearances by Ida Lupino and George Raft who had appeared in a trucking movie called They Drive by Night also starring a young H Bogart.

Cross Joseph Minion and Hunter S. Thompson and you will have some idea what to expect from this fantastic, rare, criminally under seen, barely released gonzo trucker film written by Terrence Malick before writing and directing "Badlands" a year later. Shelved by the studio and never really released; for rumor has it, being too uncommerical. Alan Arkin (who is fantastic), dressed like a sea captain, aimlessly sails the American highways in his 18 wheeler mumbling manic, southern accented non sequiturs (maybe imitating Malick himself); carnivalizing roadside stops and happenstance towns while out-weirding cops and weigh stations with his new cryptic, overcoated hitchhiker buddy (Paul Benedict).

Malick seems to have that rarified talent for illuminating and surfacing, without pretension, that hard to reach, truthful undercurrent of illogic and neurosis that permeates inside the human something (usually funneled thru American southern idiosyncrasies; and not necessarily simply trivial or humorous but often darkly honest and more viscerally sublimely truthful about the feelings of this existence, at least for me, than any other kind of stab at something pure (Joseph Minion is the organic crown prince of this; team this film up with "Vampire's Kiss" (1989) or "Motorama" (1991) (more externally thematically similar because it's also a "road movie") and you'll see what I mean), which I think is often more evident in his earlier only scripted works (this film, "The Dion Brothers" (aka The Gravy Train) (1974), and "Pocket Money" (1972) and still later in his self-directed works (most noticeable in "Badlands"), is often overshadowed by a reputation for dramatic cinematic poetics (but we true Malick fans know that he isn't that simple). "Deadhead Miles", I gather, is a trucker's term for driving a semi with no load in the trailer; hence Arkin's character and not necessarily his truck. Hilarious and sublime; I loved it. Highly Recommended.