Director of cult classics Two-Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter also directed Jack Nicholson and helped Quentin Tarantino with his feature debut
Monte Hellman, the director behind 1970s cult classics Two Lane Blacktop and Cockfighter, as well as being instrumental in getting Quentin Tarantino’s directorial debut Reservoir Dogs off the ground, has died aged 91. His daughter Melissa, who produced his 2010 film Road to Nowhere, confirmed the news to the
Hollywood Reporter, saying Hellman had died in hospital after a fall at his home.
Hellman was born Monte Himmelman in 1929, and after studying theatre at Stanford University set up a theatre company in
Los Angeles. Like many directors of his generation, Hellman gained early experience working for Roger Corman’s low-budget exploitation-movie factory. Corman hired him to make Beast from Haunted Cave, shot simultaneously with the same cast and crew as another Corman film, Ski Troop Attack. (“It wasn’t fun to make at all,” he said.) Along with contemporaries such as Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson, Hellman became a regular Corman collaborator, at first helping to rework and reshoot material. According to Hellman: “Corman was great because he really gave you a lot of freedom. All he cared about was that you came in on budget and that he had a product he could sell.”