Monte Hellman opens his film in the opening credits: He shows a man and a woman watching a sequence from a movie on a laptop. And he opens up an additional narrative level with the woman in the film, who is painting her fingernails. The man is a director and wants to shoot a thriller based on a real criminal case. When an actress who was involved in the real events is cast for the role of the femme fatale, the different levels begin to intertwine.
The way it is interlaced may be reminiscent of David Lynch, but it goes far beyond pure film narration. Monte Hellman directly involves the audience in his playful reflection on the love of cinema, the love of filmmaking and love as such. Monte Hellman was born in New York in 1932. He began working for Roger Corman at the end of the 1950s. He directed his first film the monstermovie Beast from Haunted Cave (1959). Hellman's most important works include the two westerns Ride in the Whirlwind (1966), The Shooting (1966), Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) and Cockfighter (1974). He also worked as an editor for various directors, produced Quentin Tarantino's first film and shot Road to Nowhere in 2010 after a creative break.
