The ultimate road trip

MIKE RENAUT’S ARTICLE about the movie Two Lane Blacktop in Octane 224 was an excellent critique. Courtesy of my late stepsister, who was married to Warren Oates at the time the film was made, I was able to spend some weeks on the road with the production as his guest.

I was a 21-year-old kid from South London and still shaping up as a petrolhead (the Sunbeam Tiger was to become my lifelong passion) when I heard from my stepsister Vickery Turner – herself an actress and author of some note – about an upcoming ‘road movie’. It took some effort to find the means to make the trip to the US, but I fetched up in Tucumcari on Route 66 a couple of weeks into filming.

Being short of dollars, Warren (who plays ‘GTO’ in the movie) kindly put me up me in his Winnebago, which was something of a social retreat for some of the main players: James Taylor, Laurie Bird, Harry Dean Stanton – and Joni Mitchell, Taylor’s then girlfriend,