Private First Class Franklin Fairchild Bean (Charlie Sheen) is ready to get out of the army. When he learns that his father dies, he’s had enough – though it’s never really explained just why he’s had enough. Perhaps he did it for his father, and now he’s ready to get out. We do see that he was forced to go into the military, or at least to military school, and perhaps now he’s ready to get out. In any case, he wants out and he wants out now.

It would seem that the prevailing knowledge at the time (this is in the sixties) is if you have “tattoos that show”, you will get kicked out. So Bean finds a tattoo artist that will do the work and gets a couple of 8 balls (the kind you play pool with) on the back of his hands – one on each. Then he gets drunk and gets thrown out of a bar window. Needless to say, his superiors aren’t happy. But it seems that he isn’t going to get out as easily as he had hoped, either.

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David (Lochlyn Munro), an apparently struggling comedian, and his girlfriend Sylvia (Kristin Davis) have stopped in Blacktop for a gig. Blacktop seems to be little more than a truck stop, and it’s never really explained why they need a comedy club there.

But excluding that little gaffe, David hurls his insults in the general direction of the audience, which seems to love the jokes – except for Jack (Meat Loaf), who himself is a trucker, and seems to take particular insult to David’s comments, perhaps because of David’s little ditty when Jack starts to talk to Sylvia.

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