| |
|
DETOUR
Starring Tom Neal, Ann Savage, Claudia Drake, Edmund
MacDonald, Tim Ryan, Esther Howard, Roger Clark, Pat
Gleason. Original novel and screenplay by Martin Goldsmith.
Produced by Leon Fromkess. Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer.
The
road movie really took hold in the traumatised times
following the Second World War. Now America was full
of returning GI's discovering the world has moved on,
fortunes have been made and that they have no place
in the society they left behind. They, and many others,
disillusioned at not being part of 'society, arrived
home and headed West to California or Washington State,
where the new aircraft industry had begun to take shape.
L.A. and Seattle were destinations of choice for the
dispossessed and ambitious alike. The highway, now under
construction, was becoming a symbol of everything that
was new and yet a signal that new dangers lurked in
the post-war society. Films such as 'Edgar G Ulmer's
'DETOUR' in 1945 were about people not so much going
west to follow a dream, but exploring sick fantasies
and preying on the innocent, much like highway men of
old. "DETOUR' about a night-club pianist driving
from New York to L.A. who picks up for more than he
bargained for. It was a landmark film, flagging a seething
discontent where drugs, murder, sexual exploitation
were the new currency. It is film noir, but at the same
time the road movie is born out of discontent with ones'
lot in life. Not just in the movies either.
|
Jack
Kerouac's 'On the road' written in the early fifties is
just the start of a long tradition in fiction where people
sought a solution to the answers of life, or an escape from
responsibilities. In the sixties fiction would again follow
Kerouac's lead with Ken Kasey’s ' Kandy Collared Acid
test '. Let the acid do the journey, seemed to be the message,
who needs a road? In the 1997 David Lynch, whose own films
seem to borrow much from the road movie genre, has finally
made the road movie from hell, which is close to the atmosphere
that Ulmer tried to capture. 'Lost Highway' is the roadhouse/motel
on the highway from hell where nightmares begin and reality
seeps away to pure horror. Although his film has not proved
popular, he has never shied away from showing the uncomfortable
and perverse.
He later made amends with 'The Straight Story' almost an
anti-road movie, but a road movie all the same, about a
man called George Straight who drives a lawnmower clear
across state to see his sick brother. This strange but compelling
film has all the ingredients of the road journey as a metaphor
for resilience, stubbornness and perhaps futility, but you
can't but help be transfixed by the ultimate perversity
of it, yet admiration for the old man's doggedness.
In the late nineties, David Kronenberg has given us 'Crash',
and although at first glance one could possibly claim this
to be a road movie since it involves cars and roads, it
is as far from the ethos of the road movie genre as is possible.
This is a nihilistic film, where no one seeks redemption.
Characters seek perverted sex and are stimulated by the
thought of death and maimed or severed limbs. Kronenberg’s
Crash is less about the road than sexual obsessions. In
a landscape shaped by eight lane highways and concrete ghettos.
It is a film without hope and broadcasts an anti-utopian,
fin de siècle message. (The 2004 Oscar winning 'Crash'
written by Paul Haggis is an altogether better film with
a strong anti-racist message but not really a road movie
in any sense - despite involving cars, crashes and an excellent
performance from all the cast, in particular Matt Dillon).
The road movie concept has not been confined to the USA.
However, it ill suited the British landscape. For one thing,
until the 1960's, there was no highway in England at all.
The very concept of open roads, 'Diners', strangers encountering
anything more lethal than an AA man was alien. 'Soft top,
hard shoulder' is a brave attempt and funny, but driving
through Scotland in a Triumph Herald is as inappropriate
to the genre as scenes of Jim Carey on a bicycle on the
highway in 'Dumb and Dumber', it adds nothing to the genre
and takes much away.
Nevertheless when it’s a comedy done well the road
movie is a great vehicle. Planes Trains and Automobiles
is a classic of strangers on the road desperate to get home
against all odds, bonding despite everything. It tells us
something about the importance of Thanksgiving and generosity
and of course, there is no place like home!
Something Wild in 1986 reasserted the dangers on why straight
businessmen shouldn't give damsels in a distress a ride.
Is Speed a 'road movie' just because there is a road?
I don't think so.
But John Casals’s first starrer 'The Sure Thing' in
1985 was. Any guy worth his salt has gone clean across the
USA for a girl and of course you're going to meet someone
else in such a long journey. Ten years later in To Wong
Food, 'Thanks for everything Julie Newmar' starring the
late Patrick Swazye the road is long, bus and its occupants
are bad tempered cross-dressers but nevertheless, it works.
I guess we can't forget 'Midnight Run' starring De Niro
and the wonderful Charles Grodin. A classic cat and mouse
road movie. Add to this another John Cusak 2003 movie, ‘Identity’
directed by James Mangold and we hark back to the original
roadhouse movie and 'Petrified Forest' and this time we
have ten strangers stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during
a nasty rainstorm. They become acquainted with each other
when they realize that they're being killed off one by one
and all have the same unbelievable connection. This movie
wasn’t so much appreciated at the time it came out
but was a pretty good twist on the roadhouse theme and John
Cusak lends a manic authority to the film, as madness grows
more intense.
In Europe however, where roads were straighter, autobahn
culture grew up around the new roads. With many shifting
populations made rootless by war and the post-war prosperity,
the road movie found favour.
 |
For
post-war European audiences, they would look at a Robert
Mitchum movie such as 'Build My Gallows High', (Dir
Geoffrey Homes) perhaps one of the best film noir movies
of that time and pick up all kinds of inferences. Audiences
see the open road, the Californian desert, the roadhouses
and they would see adventure and romance. Perhaps they
wouldn't recognise the despair, the feckless, rootlessness
and restlessness underlying it all. America was the
victor; in any case, people saw what they wanted to
see. |
'Il
Strada' by Antonioni was a literal reinterpretation of the
American experience. The German's later responded with Wim
Wenders aimless characters riding the German landscape.
Other filmmakers too used the autobahn, it became the escape
route for would be rebels or even innocents who befriended
them in 'The Lost honour of Katerina Blum' and later German
cinema 'Run Lola Run'. The French in particular took up
the highway and despair as a metaphor for all that troubled
France. Goddard with 'Weekend' the famous endless traffic
jam and the horrendous outcome of terrorists eating random
‘motorists.’ Latterly 'Betty Blue' set a kind
of European blueprint for disaffected youth searching for
a new life. Only partly a road movie, yet 'Blue' reflects
all the values of its American ancestry but perhaps too
quickly reaches a destination to play out the impending
tragedy.
The
Europeans experimented with the surreal and satiric.
Bertolucci's film 'about Italy’s Fascist past,
‘The Conformist' uses the road as a theme to link
the past and the future, pre-war Italy and the changed
circumstances during the war. 'The Conformist ' is yet
not quite a 'road' movie either, but an interpretation
of the American road movie, using the journey to an
assination to reveal the past. Bertolucci's imagery
is nothing short of spectacular and using architecture
he informs us in shot after shot the pretensions of
Fascist Italy and his one key shot of the autumn leaves
at his Mother's villa haunt one for years, as does the
expression on Dominique Sanda's face when she realises
his indifference to her peril.
|
|
By coincidence, the same star, Jean-Louis Trintingnant was
involved in another road movie 'Un Home and et Femme', not
so much about the road, but using the same reflective elements
of past and future, love, danger and car racing. More recently
' Betrand Blier's 'Mercie la Vie' brought the road movie
an extraordinary slant, with two girls on the road hitching,
causing mayhem whilst running parallel is a paranoid story
about AIDS and a time warp with the Nazi occupation of France.
Daring and perplexing, 'Mercie La Vie' is also compulsive
viewing. The opening short of a girl in a wedding dress
being flung out of a car grips from the start.
The Americans meanwhile refined the nightmare that the highway
had come to represent. One of the first to reflect the new
style was 'Midnight Cowboy', realism and despair were the
elements and New York as the 'fantasy' place where they
would find salvation. Terence Malick's evocative film 'Badlands'
used the poetic and lavish scenery of the mid-west as a
backdrop to the relentless horror of a passionless killer
who model's himself on James Dean and his under-aged girlfriend
on the run. The film is redeemed by embracing the beauty
of the landscape, truly incorporating it into the text of
the filmic experience. This would again be true of his next
film, ' Days of Heaven' which although about people who
rode the rails in the depression and worked as seasonal
farm labour, it again evokes the essence of the road movie
and the keen desperation to belong, to have something, even
if it isn't yours.
By now though the road movie was turning sour and this theme
would be again explored by such films as Tony Scott's 'True
Romance' 1993 (literally a reworking of Badlands by the
writer Tarantino, who is quite inventive with other peoples
work.) This is funny and quirky with a fine keynote scene
with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walkman. This film appreciates
with age and there is a great affection for all the characters
involved.
With the film 'Kalifornia' and Oliver Stone's 'Natural Born
Killers' (where the again the writer is Tarantino) the ultimate
sickness here is that the highway is peopled with serial
killers who will strike at anyone, care nothing for life
at all. It eliminates all hope for salvation and mocks those
who are foolish enough to seek the 'good life' or lead honourable
lives. This is the road movie as dead end, for if there
is no hope, why risk your life on the road at all? Perhaps
it is a good thing that audiences have not responded to
these later films, recognising them for the aberration they
are.
In a quite different species of road movie, Spielberg's
'Close Encounters of the Third Kind’, exposes the paranoia
that is all too persistent under the surface of American
society. The road is a pathway now to a different kind of
salvation. The aliens have become the cavalry who will at
any moment come over the hill to save us from ourselves.
Even Germany's Wim Wenders came to America to make his peon
to despair 'Paris Texas'. The road movie became less a journey
west to seek utopia, than movies about people trapped on
the highway with no sense of direction, or purpose, who
perhaps didn't even want to arrive. Paris Texas also models
itself on Ford's 'The Searchers' in that a man searches
for his wife, but not amongst the hostile Native Americans,
but the arid and neon jungle of the sex-industry. It is
more than most a film about America's lost innocence.
Some attempt has been made to revivify the genre. Such films
as 'Red Rock West' where the small town on the highway represents
the roadhouse and adventurers exploit each other in the
manner of the Ulmer films of the fifties. Others, such as
George Lucas, look to boyhood memories (American Graffiti)
but in reality his film is a hot-rod movie and is more about
small-town America and a certain lack of courage to actually
get out of town and seek ones fortune. Perhaps that is why
road movies are so resilient, for many, the road is too
great an obstacle, the dangers too intimidating, we let
the character's in these films travel for us and if they
encounter trouble and death, then we have the satisfaction
of knowing 'we told you so' and we lock our doors at night,
keeping 'adventure' at a distance, on the outside.
(Certainly, if you look at a whole raft of movies showing
now, the road movie is not a 'popular' choice. Some might
be about journeys, but that alone is not sufficient. This
doesn't mean the road movie is dead, merely unfashionable.)
We are left with others to give us the road. 'The Wild One'
may have been about bikers, but again, they didn't really
get far out of town and besides, what was their goal? Nothing
grander than self-gratification and gang rivalry. This in
turn led to 'Easy Rider' which started a string of drugs,
good times and stoned Kerouac styled philosophy movies.
Peter Fonda in discussing this film has said that he pushed
these characters as far as they could go and his character's
suicide at the end was a metaphor for the end of the road
movie, the end of freedom, rather than a celebration of
it. One star of 'Easy Rider' (Jack Nicholson) moved onto
another road movie, 'Five Easy Pieces' which unusually trekked
North. As did another more unusual European movie 'Strozek'.
Directed by Werner-Herzog, it told the tale of a German
immigrant to the Northwest who finds American life a complete
dead-end, not at all what he expected.
Road movies were no longer confined to going west, but could
travel in almost every direction. Even Australia where the
'Mad Max' series posted an apocalyptic postscript to the
road movie. The future has a road, but it goes nowhere.
In 1969, another European, Antonioni made 'Zabriskie Point'.
Something of a seminal work and breathtaking to watch even
now, it is nevertheless very much of its time. It captures
the empty shallowness of the 70's so well you can taste
it.
The sixties and seventies sought to redefine the road movie
and were successful in many ways. 'Vanishing Point' exploited
speed and nihilism. Goddard's 'A bout de Souffle' (Breathless)
the illusion of freedom and easy living without responsibility.
'Paper Moon' nostalgia for a lost world, as is 'Bonnie and
Clyde', one of the most successful road movies, although
arguably is just a movie where the road is less about destination,
than destiny with eventual death. The eighties gave us 'Baghdad
Cafe' and David Lynch's 'Wild at Heart'. Both popular and
strange.
There are even Japanese road movies. 'Sonatine' in the 1990's
mirrors 'Bonnie and Clyde'. Not in that is about random
crimes, but it asks when bad guys hit the road, what is
the element that binds them together. The destination, or
their shared ideals? The road reveals an absence of moral
virtues, it exposes people to their bare essentials, and
philosophy is often the outcome when men leave the comfort
of what they know for the unexplored. It answers another
question as well. What do Gangsters do on vacation? They
shoot at each other with fireworks. Sonatine picks up on
another theme of the 'Road Movie', that quite often these
people are bored. With life, with themselves. The road,
to keep moving to avoid confrontation with the self is a
key to their motivation. Despair is the end result.
Other road movies have explored social issues, 'Rain Man'
the first autistic road movie. 'From Dusk till Dawn', horror,
but most simply, 'El Mariachi' by Robert Rodriguez encapsulates
all the elements of the road movie. The young hopeful man
walks into town from nowhere and is immediately beset by
a multitude of problems. 'My Private Idaho' and 'Whatever
Happened to Gilbert Grape' uses the road merely as a prop;
these are not really road movies as such, lacking the road
as a central character. The road in 'Gilbert Grape' is the
way in and the way out of town, most of the characters in
the film would like to leave, but fear of change holds them
in place. There is a world of difference to America of the
1930's where the road was seen as a conduit to escape from
all the ills of society, to the present where the road brings
nothing but trouble, serial killers, disease and despair.
If anything, many towns would now welcome a by-pass, so
no one will notice that they have a good life that they
would be reluctant to share.
Jim Jarmusch approached the ultimate road movie with 'Night
on Earth' possibly the longest taxi-ride in any movie. But
again, it doesn't really satisfy as a road movie as it is
more about the taxi than the social or environment surrounding
it.
But who has anything fresh to say about the road movie?
Is there a writer/director in America who can explore the
context of the road movie and bring a new look to it? 'Even
Cowgirls get the blues' is a road movie with a difference.
Written in the 1970's it was then a brave and shocking tale
of a girl with a big thumb and sexual appetite, but as a
road movie at the box office, it failed. Possibly it is
necessary to be able to identify with the main protagonists.
That was the secret of 'Thelma and Louise'. The audience
for the film perhaps should have been predominantly female,
yet it was film much favoured by men and women, mostly because,
one suspects that the women seemed so real, and the story
so believable. It's a film that has found a following, not
so much because of feminism, but simply because the road
movie, done well appeals to the adventure and longing in
us all.
 |
See
also the wonderful 'O Brother Where art Thou' by the
Coen Brothers a classic throwback to 1930's road trips
and prison escape movies. Everything about this movie
worked and even the soundtrack reached the top of the
CD charts. George Clooney harks back to Clark Gable
and the road is an integral part of these convicts search
for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The road is more than a means to find the pot of gold,
it is the pathway of an oddessey. It faithfully gives
us an insight into the corrupt politics fo the time
and the significance of radio in that period.
|
A student
once asked me if 'Road to Perdition' is a 'road movie'.
Well it has Road in the title and Tom Hanks gets to drive
a lot. But essentially it is a gangster movie and that comes
with a whole different set of luggage. Many gangster moves
use 'the road'. After all they began shifting liquor by
road from Canada during Prohibition, so the road is key.
But the ethos is different. No one in a gangster movie is
searching for the meaning of life and that essentially is
what a road movie is about. *Although I might correct myself
and say that Tom Hanks's character, a hit man, discovers
the importance of life in this film.
The director Hal Hartley comes close to a genuine road movie
with his 1991 film 'Simple Men'. It is certainly one of
the most interesting attempts of the last twenty years.
The characters seek not salvation, but in the tradition
of Ford's 'The Searchers' these are people who are in search
of someone and must hit the road to find a solution. Two
brothers, one an unsuccessful crook, who has just been betrayed
by his girlfriend and lost out on a successful computer
heist, hears from his younger brother that their father,
a political radical and terrorist has been captured by the
police 20 years after he allegedly bombed the Pentagon.
When the younger brother arrives at the police station he
is surprised to find that his father has already escaped.
The two brothers unite and set off to find their father.
Broke, they have just $15 bucks between them to get them
to Long Island. It doesn't get them far. From the first
stop on the island, they will have to walk the rest. They
know their father is somewhere on Long Island and at the
first town they come to; serendipity comes to their aide.
A broken down motorcycle, a schoolgirl willing to help and
a wrestling Nun all make this interlude entirely memorable.
When they finally get on the road, naturally there will
be something or someone to impede their progress.
Lying in wait are two women, one who has just had an epileptic
fit and just so happens to be their father's radical girlfriend
and the other, who, naturally owns a roadhouse. The roadhouse
is the honey trap of all road movies. It is where everything
gets turned around. At the roadhouse, the men wait, always
on tenterhooks as the woman who owns it is waiting for her
ex-lover to return at any minute since he's been released
from jail (for a violent crime) and there is the jealous
but spurned lover also hanging in the wind ... The brothers
find themselves caught in the vortex of these women's lives,
but can't leave, as they know one day soon, their father
will reclaim his young lover.
'Simple Men' is a true but quirky road movie, filled with
waiting and longing, philosophic musing and the threat of
violence, like a heavy purple sky on a balmy summer afternoon.
These are people no longer in control of their lives, caught
in the headlights of impending doom. All the while, the
law, in the background, is slowly making their way to the
conclusion that the brothers are wanted men....
Hal Hartley's 'Simple Men' is a classic example of the 'Road
movie' yet somehow reinvents it, brings to it a look and
feel quite utterly contemporary without seeming to be either
a copy of others, or overly influenced by film noir style.
Unlike 'Kalifornia' - the serial killers on the road film
that tries to recreate the atmosphere of the old road movies
whilst adding a wholly grotesque atmosphere to the proceedings,
'Simple Men' succeeds in reminding us that normal people
ride the roads and they are not just ciphers waiting for
a bullet to blow their heads off, but thinking people, unable
to accept the mundane kind of life usually on offer. They
live for what all characters live for in a road movie, the
horizon, the next sunset, the new dawn, but remember, the
next roadhouse will be waiting, to ensnare you; stop there,
if you dare...
'Y tu mama tambien' Alfonso Cuaron's 2001 Mexican Road Movie
is much loved- the Mexican Road movie became a big success
and the Director went on to direct Harry Potter and the
amazing Children of Men. (Which certainly has elements of
the road movie in it and is a fine end of the world movie).
Y Tu Madre Tambien was a gem because it gave us a new culture
to explore, had characters that you could like and it was
an adventure about sex, the road, love, and finally death.
A road movie about growing up. What more could you want.
Two young boys, almost like brothers (Tenoch played by Diego
Luna and Julio played by Gael Garcia Bernal (Motorcycle
Diaries) and a confident beautiful 'older' woman Luisa Cortes
(Maribel Verdu) take a trip of sexual discovery and enlightenment.
Tenoch is from a rich family, Julio from a lower middle
class one. Their surnames Iturbide and Zapata are a nice
reminder of the political turmoil that is Mexican history
and their journey is not just one of sexual development
with the lonely Luisa.
It is social commentary on the lives of the young men, their
feelings and political awakenings, but also we see the real
Mexico, its complexities and sharp contrasts. This is what
a road movie should be. It is about escape, albeit temporary,
from the constraints of their own lives and discovering
freedom as they head towards a mythical beach, Boca del
Cielo (Heaven's Mouth). We the viewer learns something about
them and modern Mexico and that is no bad thing.
In 2004 we also got another South American road movie -
'The Motorcycle Diaries' based on Ché Guevara's book
and adapted by Alberto Granado directed by Walter Salles.
It stars Gael Garcia Bernal as Ché (Ernesto Guevara
de la Serna) at the very beginning of his political awakenings
and Rodrigo De La Serna as Alberto Granado. Two young men
on a motorcycle who want to see South America before they
commit to careers.
It's exactly what the road is for. To escape obligations
and duty. To explore freedom before debt and hunger force
you to conform. That it is Ché Guevara and Alberto
Granado, famed for their revolutionary exploits in South
America and Cuba makes it all the more interesting. What
are the roots of a revolutionary?
You see that exactly. Whether discovering how hard it is
to work in the Chuquicamata Copper mine and how badly the
natives are treated, or going among the lepers at the colony
and remembering to treat them with dignity and respect,
Ché and Alberto are teaching us a lesson. We understand
how South America, still to this day embraces all the harshness
of capitalism and few of the social responsibilities. It
is easier now to understand why Central and South America
are always in such turmoil and the performances are all
times accessible and human, often quite funny. This is not
a film about a 'moment' that made Ché a revolutionary.
It is about a man, destined to be a Doctor, already a liberal,
who finds that this journey awakens more than a conscience
about the life about him. It's an internal psychological
change and his seriousness is nicely contrasted by his companion
Alberto who just wants to get laid all the time. Motorcycle
Diaries has found its audience (and possible awards) because
it never preaches, it is educational but embracing and audiences
develop a warm fuzzy feeling about this film. Which leads
us the Oscar winning road movie...
'Sideways' written and directed by Alexander Payne (About
Schmidt) based on the novel by Rex Pickett. Starring Paul
Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh,
Marylouise Burke it is a road movie and a damn good one.
It has a simple plot, two middle-aged guys who haven’t
reached anywhere near their potential in life take a road
trip in Napa Valley, one week before one of them, Jack,
played with gusto by Thomas Haden Church (Spiderman 3),
is due to get married to the lovely Victoria. It’s
an escape from reality into unreality, but oddly enough,
given their ages, it is also a coming of age picture. The
road, as often stated, educates us, makes us face up to
who we are and what we are escaping. Miles played brilliantly
by Paul Giamatti may be a middle-English teacher at a school
in San Diego with several rejected novels under his belt,
but away from the hum and drum of his life, he is an expert
oenophile (wine lover). In Napa they don’t care what
you do or what you are, if you know your wine, you are welcome.
In Napa, Miles is Superman, in San Diego Clarke Kent. Or
something like. He is well liked, respected and clearly
has an established relationship with a small group of waiters,
barman and vineyards. This is where he goes to be who he’d
like to be.
Jack, a failed soap opera actor, now doing voice-overs,
has struck lucky, he is due to marry Victoria, the daughter
of a rich Armenian construction family. But, he is full
of doubts, about himself, his ability to commit, settle
down, and of course, validate himself in Victoria’s
eyes. She is rich, he is poor, and won’t she resent
that?
The road trip is designed to leave both of themselves behind
and rekindle college days, carefree moments when the future
seems possible.
Of course there is baggage. Miles is getting therapy for
depression and drugs to deal with it, he is anxious about
his latest novel; awaiting a decision from a publisher about
it. Jack is just like a dog on heat, anything that moves
he wants to hump, as if marriage and monogamy is a jail
sentence rather than an escape in luxury.
Two men, utterly incompatible, - ex-college roomies, on
the road to rediscover themselves. Of course Miles has one
plan (to see the vineyards and educate jack to wine) Jack
has a plan to get laid as often as possible and even, generously,
set up Miles for a good time on the way. (He does this by
boosting Miles and telling everyone he is about to have
his book published, much to Miles' embarrassment.)
So it’s a road adventure, but in a concentric circle,
as they based at the Windmill Motel whilst they go to sample
wines in the vineyards. At the motel Jack notices that Mia,
the lovely waitress (Virginia Madsen) really likes and respects
Miles, but Miles is too down on himself to acknowledge it.
He schemes to get them together (which might take some browbeating).
Later Jack discovers Stephanie (Sandra Oh) at a vineyard
and realises she is up for it. So will Miles get Mia, will
Jack get Stephanie and will Jack mention that he is about
to get married on Saturday?
Alexander Payne concentrates on the humanity of the characters,
plot is minimal, and to some extent this film borrows something
from a French Road movie 'Le Bonheur est dans le pré'
by Etienne Chatiliez (OK there is no striking workforce
in Sideways, but once the boss leaves and hits the road,
there are similarities). Virginia Madsen is wonderful and
when she finally gets Miles to open up and talk about wine
(whilst Jack is humping Stephanie in the bedroom) you can
see that she really likes him – despite the fact that
what Miles is actually talking about his himself as a vine
that can only grow in a particular place and needs lots
of attention to get to its full potential. She even offers
to read his unpublished novel (every writers dream as of
course, no one ever really offers to read your book unless
they are in love with you).
Jack is beginning to think he has made a terrible mistake
in getting married and really likes Stephanie, but the truth
is he likes any woman and it’s Miles who has to extract
him from trouble when he dips his wick in the wrong place.
Worse, once Stephanie discovers Jack is a lying twister
just out to get laid…she is devastated and Jack gets
his come-uppance in the car park.
The ending is beautifully played, resulting in Miles getting
his car wrecked and although there probably is a rule that
road movies can’t end happily, this one does and leaves
us with hope. Hope is a good feeling. Once can see why it
has resonated so well with cinemagoers and the Oscars.
There’s another road movie due any day now, all you
need to do is stick out your thumb and hitch a ride.
© Sam North 2000-2007
Sam
North is the author of the historical novel Diamonds
– The Rush of ‘72 and
Another
Place to Die
– The Next Great Flu Pandemic
Back
to Part One of the Road Movie
|
'It
will keep readers in suspense, laced with gritty-gallows
humor' Charlie Dickinson
-
Oregon Review
'Beautiful,
plausible, and sickeningly addictive, Another Place
to Die will terrify you, thrill you, and make you
petrified of anyone who comes near you with so much
as a sniffle'. Roxy Williams
- Amazon.co.uk
'A powerful portrayal of an underestimated
threat'. Ian
Middleton
Available from Amazon.com
and direct from the publisher Lulu
Press
And Waterstones
in the UK
|
Diamonds
- The Rush of '72
By Sam North
Buy
now from Amazon.com
'a
terrific piece of storytelling'
Historical Novel Society Review
Or
buy direct from the publisher cheaper
 |
© Sam North 2009 - all rights reserved. No part of
this essay to be used without permission
|
|
