Talk:Vanishing Point

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I'm not writing english well, so I'm not qualified to contribute with article on article page. But,speaking of this great movie trivia-can somebody just look at 1997 Apollo 440 album "Electro Glide in blue" [1] -it's full of tributes for movie Vanishing Point.I think it deserves attention and it's own note on article page,similar like for other tributes noted (Primal Scream,Guns N'Roses etc.) --best wishes for all,Edge

Contents 1 Rewrite 2 Cleanup 3 More trivia 4 Discrepancies 5 POV 6 The 440 Engine Dialog 7 Alternative version? Hitchhiker? 8 WikiProject class rating 9 Tagline

[edit] Rewrite

I rewrote the article, gathering the car information in a separate section, since readers coming here are as likely to be interested in it as they are the plot. I integrated the UK version info into the summary, since doing so makes it more international without hurting the flow. I've reworked some parts that were chatty or trivial or that introduced speculation or original analysis. And I fixed a couple of simple mistakes. --Tysto (talk) 00:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup

Some points needing attention:

• chatty, unencylopedic style
• far too much stuff about engines and Dodge muscle cars: not comprehensible to non-experts
• trivia section is a mess
• 1997 remake is mentioned both in the trivia section and in its own section

Cheers, Sam Clark 09:41, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More trivia

In Motor Trend recent issue, they tested the prototype Dodge Challenger, and actually invited Barry "Kowalski" Newman himself to take a test drive. Newman himself said that 1) He really hated the hitchhiker being cut from the film. The hitchhiker is symbol for death. By cutting the hitchhiker, the film lost most of the foreeshadowing and the meaning 2) Kowalski thought he *could* make it through the bulldozers. He sees the light beyond and he really thought he could make it. --Kschang77 05:14, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Discrepancies

The vehicles used for filming included four 440 4-speed cars and one 383 automatic. There were no 426 Hemis used in filming, and there is no reference to the engine size in any dialog. The remake differs on this, and makes a point of the Challenger being powered by a 426 Hemi.

In the movie, the police constantly say the engine is supercharged, though it may be just dialog of their guessing.

The director says they destroyed 8 cars, and only had one left, this trivia piece only accounts for four.

He also says that the last car was temporarily stolen by a hooker that the crew hooked up with. Awesome. SchmuckyTheCat 20:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

SchmuckyTheCat 20:38, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV

"Despite Kowalski's new cult hero status among the counterculture, he repeatedly shows he doesn't want that status during the movie; Kowalski is at heart a despondent blue-collar worker."

I'm not sure if this true or immediately evident. Can we get a citation? 24.164.77.105 21:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the Wikipedia dialogue mistakenly asserts that the nude girl on the motorcycle is the same girl who Kowalski saves from being raped by the bad cop - two events that take place only four or so years apart in the film. The girls are not played by the same actors, and meeting the same girl from San Diego out in the Nevada desert shortly after just having had a flashback about her is too implausible, even for Vanishing Point. He certainly would have recognized her and there would have been more to their chance meeting. Further, the director's explanation/interpretation of the motorcycle scene makes no mention of such a connection. I do not have a tidy explanation of why the nude girl remembers Kowalski, but its not the same girl. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.25.39.77 (talk) 18:49, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The 440 Engine Dialog

It was a lonnngggg time ago, but I believe that it is true that the engine isn't definitively mentioned in the movie's dialog itself. I **think** that the confusion factor comes from some of the trailer dialog...I seem to recall that part of it mentioned something like "...in a 440 cubic inch supercharged engine.."

I could be misremembering, but I am pretty sure it came from one of the trailers. LiveOnAPlane 19:58, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

The 440 was a dog compared to the 426 Hemi so why on earth would the makers ever launch a movie project about 440 powered Plymouth Fury's chasing a 440 powered challenger? Being much heavier than the 426 and much much less power (HP and Torque) it would have made for a short chase scene... The 426 Hemi was "THE" engine of the 60's and 70's with 425 HP and over 500 pounds of torque. I didn't know anyone has this wrong until I saw Grindhouse and realized at least someone did. I also thought it was a 71 RT Challenger but either way - if it was a 70 440 Challenger all anyone would have needed would have been a 71 426 Hemi Cuda and they could have caught him in very short order :-)...

You are forgetting, though: That was KOWALSKI driving that car. If the Challenger had a straight six in it, they still wouldn't have been able to catch him. Only Batman, maybe, would have even stood a chance of doing so!!  ;-) 164.49.186.132 18:45, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

The 426 Hemi was not the engine to have...and not many cars were sold with it as it was basically a race engine and did not have a lot of low end power it was absolutely a dog under like 4k rpms, and if i'm not mistaken the 440 6 pack, and max wedge engines were the ones to have for street domination...

[edit] Alternative version? Hitchhiker?

The article is odd.

First, we read the flat assertion that At night Kowalski picks, picks [sic] up a hitchhiker (Charlotte Rampling), a plot element utterly absent from the (non-US-market) DVD that I watched last night, in which the only hitchhikers are the two quaint stick-up queens and in which Rampling doesn't appear (as far as I noticed).

Below, we read: The current U.S. DVD release of Vanishing Point includes both the original version of the movie and the alternate version (my emphasis). Despite the the, there's been no explanation of this. It continues: the hitchhiker was a representation of Death, finally catching up to Kowalski, vaguely implying that she's in one version and not in the other. Ah. -- Hoary 02:35, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

I have edited the article to correctly represent the hitchhiker subplot, and that it is exclusive to the alternate version. It was poorly written and did not read well in the Synopsis section of the article.

[edit] WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 02:00, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Tagline

I removed the following tagline: Name Kowalski, occupation driver, a medal of honor in Vietnam, a former stock and bike racer, a former cop dishonorbly discharge. Because there is no mention of this tagline anywhere, no google hits and no citation. I hate to enter into a revert war but I would hate even more for the article to carry bogus information. Also no edit summary comment was provided by the user who insists on putting it in. Dr.K. (talk) 20:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)