Vanishing Point Forever: Revisiting a Cult Classic

With Robert M. Rubin, author of the book Vanishing Point Forever, in person 

Dir. Richard C. Sarafian. United States. 1971, 98 mins. 4K DCP. With Barry Newman, Cleavon Little, Dean Jagger. Friday, midnight, somewhere in Denver, Colorado, car service driver Kowalski (Newman) bets his drug dealer he can deliver his white 1970 Dodge Challenger to San Francisco by 3 p.m. He burns rubber with a growing police phalanx hot on his tail. Showcasing the greatest sequence of car chase stunts in the history of cinema, Vanishing Point pulls double duty as a post-’68 allegory for the closing of the American frontier. 

The great American car chase movie, directed by maverick Armenian-American filmmaker Richard C. Sarafian, is nominally the saga of a Vietnam vet on the lam in his Dodge Challenger, but it’s simultaneously a modern-day Western, a dystopian allegory, and a love letter to the muscle car. A cult classic, adored by artists and filmmakers from Quentin Tarantino and Steven Spielberg to Bruce Springsteen, Guns ‘n’ Roses and Alberto Moravia, Vanishing Point had a storied production, the lore and legends of which are now lovingly collected in Robert M. Rubin’s mythic illustrated account Vanishing Point Forever. 

Robert M. Rubin has written about Pierre Chareau, Jean Prouvé, Alexander Calder, Buckminster Fuller, Reyner Banham, Richard Avedon, Allen Ginsberg, Glenn O’Brien, Jack Kerouac, Jeff Koons, and Richard Prince. He has contributed to Bookforum, Art in America, Cahiers d’Art, Le Monde, and Libération, as well as museum and gallery publications. He is the author of Richard Prince Cowboy (2020). He also curated the exhibitions Richard Prince: American Prayer (2011), and Avedon’s France: Old World, New Look (2017), both at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, as well as Walkers: Hollywood Afterlives in Art and Artifact (2015) at Museum of the Moving Image. 

Tickets: $15 / $11 senior and students / $9 youth (ages 3–17) / discounted for MoMI members ($7–$11). There is a $1.50 transaction fee per ticket for all online purchases. The cost of admission may be applied toward a same-day purchase of a membership. 

Order tickets. Please pick up tickets at the Museum’s admissions desk upon arrival. All seating is general admission.