Freedom of the soul

Is Vanishing Point a perfect movie? Not the best, but the purest form of itself? It inspired my first screenplay Desert Road which crashed when the film company went down leaving me with years of paperwork and financial jeopardy. Life could have been very different had things gone the other way. But the open road is a set of train tracks, really: there is only one direction to travel and one conclusion. We make fewer choices than we think. Which is why Richard C Sarafian's one-note picaresque "action" movie – action being a single movement: forward – has such philosophical and emotional resonance. Vanishing Point is pure cinema. Barry Newman was the disconnected everyman – the uneasy rider. And sure, there are a thousand things wrong with it. But a thing earns the label of art for what it gets right.