The Fast Lane: Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll Stars

Abstract

In this chapter, the film company arrives in Tucumcari, New Mexico to shoot the gas station scene where the race is set up – a tour de force of cinematography. Jaclyn Hellman blows up at her husband, Monte, over his affair with the leading lady, 17-year-old Laurie Bird. Some of the cast and filmmakers indulge in drugs, but they don’t hinder the filmmaking much except for Dennis Wilson, who is stoned nearly all the time and can’t remember his lines. But he and the amateur, off-balance Laurie Bird cause Hellman to call for 10, 15 and even 25 takes when they blow their lines. Joni Mitchell visits her boyfriend, James Taylor, and the actor Harry Dean Stanton arrives for his scene, in which he plays a gay cowboy hitchhiker.