That assessment of Hellman’s importance, that notion that a defensive posture is the inevitable position of the Hellman fan and the idea that Hellman’s Hollywood Failure was his greatest success, all hold up quite well as we say farewell to Monte Hellman, aka King of the Road Movie,While still in his 30s, Hellman, Nicholson and future Oscar-winning producer Fred Roos journeyed to the Philippines to make two low-budget actioners that were instrumental to Hellman’s growth as a filmmaker.
We didn’t see a lot of each other until I got the chance to work as a driver and all-around fix-it boy on “Cockfighter” in 1974, which might have been filmed in the real chicken fighting barns and farms of Georgia but was in fact Hollywood’s version of Gulag Exile for an unrepentant auteur. That it was shot by Oscar-winning DP Nestor Almendros makes the tale only stranger and more emblematic of Hellman’s high-minded creative ideals in the service of low-rent helming chores.
On the back of “Iguana’s” failure to secure distribution, Hellman garnered a job making a straight to video horror film, “Silent Night, Deadly Night 3” , as disreputable a directing berth as one can imagine, funded strictly for folks who couldn’t get enough variations of murderous Santa Claus tales.
If you go back to idea that “anything written in America about Monte Hellman must be a defense,” let me add that anything written for Monte Hellman must be a defense. So, two of the main characters in the film within a film within a film and so on, were originally named Monte Hellman and Steven Gaydos.
Monte turned 80 on our first day of shooting in North Carolina. In 2011, Monte had his first-ever major international festival feature film competition premiere at Venice. By the end of the fest, Hellman was proudly cradling a Golden Lion for artistic achievement, his first ever major festival honor.
Beautiful tribute. Didnt fully appreciate the vibe when I first saw the Nicholson westerns on tv in the 60s but later on appreciated them more. The closest we have to Edgar G Ulmer in an era where sadly the always working option no longer existed.