Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point (20th Century Fox, 1971) is the ultimate analog car chase movie with that hard-to-pin-down something extra. Written by renowned Cuban novelist Guillermo Cabrera Infante under a pseudonym (Guillermo Cain), it’s nominally the saga of a speedaddled Vietnam vet existentially on the lam in a Dodge Challenger. It’s also a modern Western, a dystopian allegory of our surveillance society, and a love letter to the muscle car, all rolled into one.
No surprise it’s become a cult classic, adored and paid homage to by Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Bruce Springsteen, Richard Prince, Alberto Moravia, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Primal Scream, Audioslave, and countless others. In the fifty-plus years since the film’s release, the lore and legends around it have grown like Topsy. Now, Robert M. Rubin’s Vanishing Point Forever brings together everything there is to know in one lavishly illustrated volume.
A monumental treat for anyone who loves film culture, Vanishing Point Forever explores the movie’s profound impact across popular media, the arts, and the car world in obsessive detail. Nearly 600 pages include a complete reproduction of the film’s final shooting script, pages from Cabrera Infante’s early drafts, his own location scouting photos (never seen before), and a gold mine of production and publicity stills, ephemera, excerpts, reflections and essays. Rubin details how the movie came to life — from stars Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, and Charlotte Rampling (so enigmatic she was cut from the main release); to the groundbreaking stunts coordinated by Hollywood legend Carey Loftin; to its unique, remarkable half-life. In the words of Sarafian, the film just “wouldn’t die.”
