Non-actors / first-timers

and, you know, it's real people doing what they know how to do. You know, one of the things that drove a lot of people crazy was the fact that we didn't cover the races the way movies were used to doing it, just, you know, staying in the car, you know, cutting, you know, to a moving shot with the car and so forth. We just...

0:45 · jump to transcript →

So now we're coming upon one of my favorite day players in the movie. Tell me where you found this guy. Well, he actually wasn't one of the real people who worked in the same role that he's playing in the movie. But he was from the area, and I don't know exactly how we discovered him or auditioned him, but he actually gets mentioned as one of the stars of the movie because he comes so early in the credits. So when you see the...

6:25 · jump to transcript →

This is so, so amazing. I remember when I talked to Chris Hillman of the Byrds, he said, yeah, I think I went and auditioned for that. I'm sure he did. Yeah, I think that all the musicians at the time were really, really into trying to get into Two-Lane Blacktop. So tell me how this came about that you decided to go with non-actors. Well, I didn't. I never made the decision to go with non-actors. Every role was cast independently.

18:57 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

you know, kind of hung out with some real people and tried to learn from them and pick up their inflections and the way they expressed themselves and really, you know, brought that to his performance in a very authentic way.

1:12:09 · jump to transcript →

Francis Ford Coppola

These were really non-actors. Bill Bowers was a right, but they were interesting men. And they understood the whole trial process in the Senate. So they had, I guess, seen hearings on television and knew how to fake them.

2:22:18 · jump to transcript →

Science fiction, of course, already sets up a kind of sensibility of its own. It frees the poetic sensibility to a certain extent because you can play with ideas, some of them completely loony and some of them very reasonable. You know, the metaphorical structure is already built in and the audience will allow things to happen that they'd never allow to happen if they're watching what they consider to be real people doing real things in real time.

13:13 · jump to transcript →