Screen Studies: Road Movie

Though often seen as one of America's native cinematic genres, the road movie has lent itself to diverse international contexts and inspired a host of filmmakers. As analyzed in this study, from its most familiar origins in Hollywood the road movie has become a global film practice, whether as a vehicle for exploring the relationship between various national contexts and American cinema, as a means of narrating different national and continental histories, or as a form of individual filmmaking expression.

The Road Movie Book is the first comprehensive study of an enduring but ever-changing Hollywood genre, its place in American culture, and its legacy to world cinema.

From the visionary rebellion of Easy Rider to the reinvention of home in The Straight Story, the road movie has emerged as a significant film genre since the late 1960s, able to cut across a wide variety of film styles and contexts. Yet, within the variety, a certain generic core remains constant: the journey as cultural critique, as exploration beyond society and within oneself. This book traces the generic evolution of the road movie with respect to its diverse presentations, emphasising it as an independent genre that attempts to incorporate marginality and subversion on many levels.

Road Movies engages with two foundational twentieth century technologies: cinematic and automotive. It is a book about road movies, a genre burdened by its own seductiveness. It is also, however, a book about images of human mobility more generally and the social function those images have served.

Through a series of detailed, illustrated essays on key flms within the genre, Lost Highways explores the history of the road movie. Bringing in other, until now neglected, genres such as the western, film noir, horror, and even science fiction, this is the definitive guide to a diverse body of film that incorporates some fo the most dominant themes and most popular films of this century.

A documentary on road movies and their effect on American culture.

A spoiled heiress running away from her family is helped by a man who is actually a reporter in need of a story.

Through the open country and desert lands, two bikers head from L.A to New Orleans, and along the way, meet a man who bridges a counter-culture gap they are unaware of.

Two best friends set out on an adventure, but it soon turns around to a terrifying escape from being hunted by the police, as these two girls escape for the crimes they committed.

In Mexico, two teenage boys and an attractive older woman embark on a road trip and learn a thing or two about life, friendship, sex, and each other.

A teenage girl with nothing to lose joins a traveling magazine sales crew, and gets caught up in a whirlwind of hard partying, law bending and young love as she criss-crosses the Midwest with a band of misfits.