Dodge Challengers and Möbius Strips: Director Richard C. Sarafian on "Vanishing Point"

Next Tuesday Fox Home Entertainment releases a revamped DVD of the 1971 cult clas­sic Vanishing Point in both stand­ard defin­i­tion and Blu-ray edi­tions. Both look very fine indeed, but if you’ve got the equip­ment, the Blu-ray is the one to get. The film itself is an oddball piece that’s very much of its time. Point is the story of an enig­mat­ic driver, one “Kowalski” (played by Barry Newman, seen below with Lee Weaver), who, for reas­ons that remain known only to him­self even after we get his back story via a series of flash­backs, is com­pelled to attempt a Denver-to-San Francisco jaunt…in 15 hours. Naturally his efforts attract the atten­tion of law enforce­ment offi­cials in a num­ber of states, not to men­tion a blind radio DJ named “Super Soul” who becomes Kowalski’s cheer­lead­er and con­fess­or. A com­bin­a­tion crazy chase movie, Easy Rider-esque exam­in­a­tion of “America,” and a one-part-existentialism/one-part-mystic philo­soph­ic­al state­ment, Vanishing Point remains both compelling…and breath­tak­ingly beau­ti­ful. Director Richard C. Sarafian fol­lowed the film with anoth­er pic­ture chock­ab­lock with mem­or­able imagery, Man In The Wilderness, and went on to dir­ect and act in many oth­er pic­tures, but Point remains a unique high for him. We recently spoke about it with the dir­ect­or, who turns 79 this year. Some spoil­ers are revealed in the inter­view, just so you know.

SCR: Vanishing Point is a movie that has fant­ast­ic imagery; you worked here with the  first rate cine­ma­to­graph­er, John Alonzo.  The screen­play was
writ­ten, under a pseud­onym, “Guillermo Cain,” by the great Cuban writer Gabriel Cabrera Infante.  I won­der
if you’d just give me a little bit of the back­ground as how this very unusual
film came into being, and then maybe let’s talk about the pro­cess by which you
cre­ated the visu­als. 

SCR: That ties in with the char­ac­ters who seem to serve some symbolic
func­tions, spe­cific­ally the hitch­hiker played by Charlotte Rampling, who was
cut out of the U.S. ver­sion, but appears in the film late in the U.K ver­sion of
the pic­ture, which is also included in this DVD release. 

SARAFIAN:  Yeah.  Symbolizing death, and warn­ing him that
where we are now in our exist­ence here is an absurd bind.  I mean, we’re all mov­ing through this
dimen­sion at our own speed, some of us, like Kowalski, faster than the others,
you know, on to anoth­er level. That’s how I thought in terms of his ultimate
so-called demise, and that in terms of him mov­ing on and to anoth­er plane. That
there’s more to it than this. 

SCR:  What
was the actu­al phys­ic­al shoot like?

SARAFIAN:  It was a joy. I
was with a short crew, 18 man crew, we were able to travel from hun­dreds of
miles a day to get the right light, to get the right loc­a­tion and to do the
pho­to­graphy. We did­n’t have any money but we had an excep­tion­al crew and John
Alonzo, of course, col­lab­or­at­ing with him was like …well, without him it would
have been a half pair of scis­sors. 
And it was almost instinct­ive. 
We did a lot of impro­visa­tion, par­tic­u­larly the scene in the desert with
the pro­spect­or. Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, when that group came out to the desert for their scene, they
did­n’t want to do the scene because it was against their beliefs–so I rewrote
it on the spot.

Delaney (far right), Bonnie (hold­ing babies), and, in pig­tails, Rita Coolidge—all part of Vanishing Point’s trav­el­ing sal­va­tion show.

I mean, I got to a point where Zanuck called me and he says, you know,
you’re going over budget, you got to help me, cause Mom and Dad, they’re
threat­en­ing to fire me.  And I
said, well Mr. Zanuck, I’ll do what I can.  I went back and did a lot of trim­ming of the script.  And I took 20 pages out of it. He had
tears in his eyes at the moment. He ulti­mately did get fired.

Max Balchowsky, who was my mech­an­ic, is unher­al­ded; he kept the cars
alive.  He exchanged parts at
night.  But he was fam­ous during
the early 60’s from build­ing the car called Old Yeller 2. Carey Loftin, the
stunt coördin­at­or, of course, fam­ous for Bullitt before that I had met him when I did a documentary
for the National Safety Council in the early 50’s.  But there’s no ques­tion, I mean so many dir­ect­ors, they all
have the great crew.  But how many
can say with an 18 man crew?  And
no money; $600,000, $700,000 below the line doing a stu­dio movie.  It was amaz­ing.  But it was a joy.

SCR: Now about the car, the white Dodge Challenger that Kowalski
drives. Quentin Tarantino, in the pic­ture he made last year, Death Proof, paid homage to Vanishing Point and par­tic­u­larly with
regard to the car. You’re thanked in the cred­its of that film.  Did you con­sult with Tarantino at all on this re-release of Vanishing Point?

SARAFIAN:  No, I’m dis­ap­poin­ted.  He had an oppor­tun­ity to par­ti­cip­ate in
the Blu-Ray but walked away from it. 
But the car…well, the car came about par­tially because of the act­or. At
first I balked at Barry Newman being the star, ‘cause I had oth­er possibilities
and I felt…all I wanted was the adult male that looked like he belonged behind
the wheel.  And I had sev­er­al major
act­ors in mind that might have made a dif­fer­ence.  It did­n’t turn out that way. It came back to me that either
I use Barry Newman or Zanuck was­n’t going to make the pic­ture.  I said, “Well, Mr. Zanuck, I’m going to
make the car the star.”  And he
said, “I knew you’d see it my way.” 
And he took me out to the park­ing lot and he showed me a whole bunch of
cars that were out there.  At that
moment I did­n’t know what the hell I was look­ing at. The final decision came
from stunt coördin­at­or Carey Loftin, and Chrysler, and his choice was the Dodge
Challenger, which was a 440 V‑8 without the hemi.  So there again, here was a chal­lenge of mak­ing that car
per­form what it had to do at that time. 
And Max Balchowsky of course being the geni­us mech­an­ic who was able to
make whatever modi­fic­a­tions neces­sary in terms of sus­pen­sion and more, because
no cars were actu­ally built to do what we were mak­ing them do! I think we used
up four.  Four or five cars.  I’d like to own one today.  I heard one went at auc­tion for a
mil­lion.