Preparing for the film was as rigorous as the actual shooting. Besides the writing and technical aspects, Antonioni had to find two young leads. He found the girl first. He noticed her dancing briefly in an experimental film one night, asked to see her and within a week signed 19-year-old Dana Halprin, a Berkeley student, for Zabriskie Point

Finding the boy was much more difficult. After countless interviews with hopeful young men who responded to casting calls, an Antonioni scout found Mark Frechette, a 20-year-old sometime carpenter, at a bus stop in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shouting at a man who had thrown a flower pot at a quarreling couple. After several interviews and a brief screen test, Mark had the part.

The third lead, that of an attorney, was set when Antonioni saw well known actor Rod Taylor lunching in a smart Los Angeles restaurant After watching him throughout the meal, Antonioni was convinced Taylor embodied the charm and sophistication he was seeking.

Zabriskie Point tells of three dissimilar people whose lives converge quite by accident, touching briefly in a way that changes each forever. The protagonists are oMark, a former student and part-time radical who steals a plane to flee Los Angeles; Dana, a beautiful and restless girl; and her employer, an attorney handling a real estate development project. While driving through the desert to a meeting with her employer at his desert home outside Phoenix, Dana meets Mark. Their affinity is immediate. The time they spend together in the desert, their parting and Dana's apocalyptic vision of America at the end are major elements of the film.

The locations for Zabriskie Point are as varied as the worlds of its leading characters. Beginning at a radical student meeting, the film jumps to several sections of Los Angeles, including the top of the impressive Mobil Oil Company building in the heart of the city, then moves on to the haunting beauty of Death Valley, looking at the desert from many angles, one of them the magnificent vista from the lookout which gives the film its title.