Misplaced Pages

#253746

139-518: There are two main narratives: the quest and the outlaw chase. In the quest-style film, the story meanders as the characters make discoveries (e.g., Two-Lane Blacktop from 1971). In outlaw road movies, in which the characters are fleeing from law enforcement, there is usually more sex and violence (e.g., Natural Born Killers from 1994). Road films tend to focus more on characters' internal conflicts and transformations, based on their feelings as they experience new realities on their trip, rather than on

278-500: A Western movie . As well, the road movie is similar to a Western in that road films are also about a "frontiersmanship" and about the codes of discovery (often self-discovery). Road movies often use the music from the car stereo, which the characters are listening to , as the soundtrack and in 1960s and 1970s road movies, rock music is often used (e.g., Easy Rider from 1969 used a rock soundtrack of songs from Jimi Hendrix , The Byrds and Steppenwolf ). While early road movies from

417-462: A Cause (1955). Timothy Corrigan states that post-WW II, the genre of road films became more codified, with features solidifying such as the use of characters experiencing "amnesia, hallucinations and theatrical crisis". David Laderman states that road movies have a modernist aesthetic approach, as they focus on "rebellion, social criticism, and liberating thrills", which shows "disillusionment" with mainstream political and aesthetic norms. Awareness of

556-451: A Leg (1997) features several sketches from filmmakers and producers' Aldo, Giovanni & Giacomo 's previous comedy productions overlaid with the rest of the movie's road-trip and romantic comedy atmosphere. Other European road films include Chris Petit 's Radio On (1979), a Wim Wenders-influenced film set on the M4 motorway; Aki Kaurismäki 's Leningrad Cowboys Go America ( 1989), about

695-424: A Ride (1947) and The Hitch-Hiker (1953), all of which "establish fear and suspense around hitchhiking", and the outlaw-themed film noirs They Live by Night (1948) and Gun Crazy . Film noir-influenced road films continued in the neo noir era, with The Hitcher (1986), Delusion (1991), Red Rock West (1992), and Joy Ride (2001). Even though road movies are a significant and popular genre, it

834-405: A bounded journey with a clear start and finish which differs from the open ended wandering of previous films, with characters making chance encounters with other drivers who influence where one travels or ends up. To contrast the intellectual Sal character, Kerouac has the juvenile delinquent Dean, a wild, fast-driving character who represents the idea that the road provides liberation. By depicting

973-465: A cab driver ferrying strange passengers around the city. Timothy Corrigan has called the postmodern road movie a "borderless refuse bin" of " mise en abyme " reflection, reflecting a modern audience that is not able to think of a "naturalized history". Atkinson calls contemporary road movies an "ideogram of human desire and a last-ditch search for self" designed for an audience that was raised watching TV, particularly open-ended serial programs. Note, that

1112-431: A cafe, where Ryder confronts him. He points out Jim's revolver is unloaded. Ryder leaves him several bullets and departs. Jim boards a bus, where he meets Nash and explains his situation. After a police car pulls the bus over, Jim surrenders. The furious officers accuse him of killing their colleagues and are about to kill him . Nash appears with Jim's revolver, disarms the officers, and flees with Jim in their patrol car. As

1251-520: A car from Chicago to San Diego , spots a man hitchhiking in the West Texas desert and gives him a ride. The hitchhiker, who calls himself John Ryder, forces Jim's leg down on the accelerator when they pass a stranded car. Ryder states he murdered and dismembered the driver and intends to do the same to Jim, threatening him with a switchblade . Terrified, Jim asks what Ryder wants. He replies, "I want you to stop me." When Jim realizes that Ryder's seat belt

1390-468: A die-struck miniature car key chain. Anchor Bay released a regular edition without the poster and key chain. At a July 2007 screening of the film, Hellman revealed that the Criterion Collection was releasing a two-disc special edition DVD that featured a new documentary made by Hellman that included an interview with Kristofferson about how "Me and Bobby McGee" has become so closely associated with

1529-547: A diner. Although the Driver develops a crush on the Girl, she sleeps with the Mechanic when the Driver goes out drinking one night. In New Mexico they begin to encounter another car driver, GTO , on the highways. An atmosphere of hostility develops between the two parties. Although GTO is not an overt street racer and seems to know little about cars, a cross-country race to Washington, D.C. ,

SECTION 10

#1732869472254

1668-418: A few films from their catalog each year and it was not a priority. In 1994, Seattle's Scarecrow Video invited Hellman to show the film at their store. They proceeded to collect 2,000 signatures, including Werner Herzog 's, for a petition to get the film released on video. Both People magazine and Film Comment ran articles about the store's effort and the film. For years, Universal had been looking for

1807-406: A few weeks later on October 22. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes , The Hitcher holds a 64% approval rating based on 42 critic reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The consensus reads: "Its journey is never quite as revelatory as it could be, but The Hitcher stands as a white-knuckle vision of horror, bolstered by Rutger Hauer's menacing performance.” On Metacritic ,

1946-696: A fictional Russian rock band which travels to the US; and Theo Angelopoulos ' Landscape in the Mist , about a road trip from Greece to Germany. Road movies made in Latin America are similar in feel to European road films. Latin American road movies are usually about a cast of characters, rather than a couple or single person, and the films explore the differences between urban and rural regions and between north and south. Luis Buñuel 's Subida al Cielo ( Mexican Bus Ride , 1951),

2085-645: A film noir about a musician travelling from New York City to Hollywood who sees a nation absorbed by greed, or Dennis Hopper ’s Easy Rider , which showed how American society was transformed by the social and cultural trends of the late 1960s. The New Hollywood era films made use of the new film technologies in the road movie genre, such as "fast film stock" and lightweight cameras, as well as incorporating filmmaking approaches from European cinema, such as "elliptical narrative structure and self-reflexive devices, elusive development of alienated characters; bold traveling shots and montage sequences. Road movies have been called

2224-408: A letter to several Hollywood producers asking if he could send them a copy of the screenplay for The Hitcher . His letter concluded: "It (the story) grabs you by the guts and does not let up and it does not let go. When you read it, you will not sleep for a week. When the movie is made, the country will not sleep for a week". Script development executive David Bombyk received a copy of Red's letter and

2363-588: A movie character who was marginalized and who could not be incorporated into mainstream American culture, Kerouac opened the way for road movies to depict a more diverse range of characters, rather than just heterosexual couples (e.g., It Happened One Night ), groups on the move (e.g., The Grapes of Wrath ), notably the pair of male buddies. On the Road and another novel published in the same era, Vladimir Nabokov 's novel Lolita (1955), have been called "two monumental road novels that rip back and forth across American with

2502-401: A narrative, but gradually grows into something much more abstract — it's unsettling, but also beautiful". The film has since become a cult film . On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating of 93% based on reviews from 40 critics. The site's critical consensus reads, "Beautifully directed and utterly unique, Two-Lane Blacktop captures the spirit of its era as smoothly as it evokes

2641-433: A partner to give Two-Lane Blacktop a proper release befitting its cult film status. However, efforts to release it had always been hampered by issues with music rights, in particular the use of "Moonlight Drive" by The Doors. Director William Lustig , also a "technical advisor" for Anchor Bay, got Hellman to approach the surviving band members to get their approval. In 1999, Michigan-based Anchor Bay Entertainment licensed

2780-426: A post-WW II genre, as they track key post-war cultural trends, such as the breakup of the traditional family structure, in which male roles were destabilized; there is focus on menacing events which impact the characters who are on the move; there is an association between the character and the mode of transportation being used (e.g., a car or motorcycle), with the car symbolizing the self in the modern culture; and there

2919-598: A release of their own, discovered the original film elements to be held by Warner Bros. Pictures , owners of the HBO Films library, and were ultimately able to complete a 4K restoration of the film supervised by director Harmon. This restored version was released in both 4K and standard Blu-ray formats by Second Sight in the UK on September 30, 2024, and by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (via Studio Distribution Services) in North America

SECTION 20

#1732869472254

3058-443: A ride, but Jim, believing the police cannot hold Ryder, takes Esteridge's revolver and vehicle to chase down Ryder's prison bus. Ryder kills the deputies and leaps through Jim's windshield as the bus crashes. Jim slams on his brakes, sending Ryder through the windshield and onto the road. Ryder challenges Jim to run him over, which he does. When Jim leaves his car to look at Ryder's body, Ryder jumps up, but Jim shoots him repeatedly with

3197-467: A road movie tradition than stretches from Bertrand Blier 's Les Valseuses (1973) and Agnès Varda 's Sans toit ni loi (about a homeless woman) to 1990s films such as Merci la vie (1991) and Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi 's Baise-moi (a controversial film about two women revenging a rape), to 2000s films such as Laurent Cantet 's L'emploi du temps (2001) and Cédric Kahn 's Feux rouges (2004). While French road movies share

3336-442: A rupture point in the narrative which erases and forgets the history of this violence. Canada also has huge expanses of territory, which make the road movie also common in that country, where the genre is used to examine "themes of alienation and isolation in relation to an expansive, almost foreboding landscape of seemingly endless space", and explore how Canadian identity differs from the "less humble and self-conscious neighbours to

3475-426: A shotgun, killing him. Jim leans against Esteridge's car in a daze and smokes a cigarette as the sun sets. When writer Eric Red was 20 years old, he made a short film entitled Gunman's Blues in the hopes of getting the opportunity to direct a feature-length film. When no offers came, he moved from New York City to Austin, Texas, taking a drive-away car cross-country. While driving from one city to another, he got

3614-570: A small town where the inhabitants cause road accidents to salvage the vehicles; the biker film Stone (1974) by Sandy Harbutt , about a biker gang who witness a political cover-up murder; The (1981) thriller Roadgames by Richard Franklin , about a truck driver who tracks down a serial killer in the Australian outback; Dead-end Drive-in (1986) by Brian Trenchard-Smith , about a dystopian future where drive-in theatres are turned into detention centres; Metal Skin (1994) by Geoffrey Wright about

3753-566: A story about a journey down the Mississippi River that is full of social commentary; Heart of Darkness (1902), about a journey down a river in the Belgian Congo to search for a rogue colonial trader; and Women in Love (1920), which describes "travel and mobility" while also providing social commentary about the woes of industrialization. Laderman states that Women in Love particularly lays

3892-583: A street racer; and Kiss or Kill (1997) by Bill Bennett , a film noir-style road movie. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) has been called a "watershed gay road movie that addresses diversity in Australia". Walkabout (1971), Backroads (1977), and Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) use a depiction of travelling through the Australian outback to address the issue of relations between white and Indigenous people. In 2005, Fiona Probyn described

4031-547: A strong American influence, with the films incorporating the road movie-comedy genre hybrid made popular in US films such as Peter Farrelly 's Dumb and Dumber (1994). Spanish films including Los años bárbaros , Carretera y manta , Trileros , Al final del Camino , and Airbag , which has been called the "most successful Spanish road movie of all time". Airbag , along with Slam (2003), El mundo alrededor (2006) and Los managers , are examples of Spanish road films that, like US movies such as Road Trip , uses

4170-409: A subgenre of road movies about Indigenous Australians that she called "No Road" movies, in that they typically do not show a vehicle travelling on an asphalt road; instead, these films depict travel on a trail, often with Indigenous trackers being shown using their tracking abilities to discern hard-to-detect clues on the trail. With the increasing depiction of racial minorities in Australian road movies,

4309-508: A subversive erotic charge." In the 1950s, there were "wholesome" road comedies such as Bob Hope and Bing Crosby 's Road to Bali (1952), Vincente Minnelli 's The Long, Long Trailer (1954) and the Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis film Hollywood or Bust (1956). There were not many 1950s road films, but "postwar youth culture" was depicted in The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without

Road movie - Misplaced Pages Continue

4448-665: A surge of motion-pictures such as Road, Movie , nominated for the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix Award , the Tribeca Film Festival , and the Generation 14plus at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival in 2010. Liars Dice explores the story of a young mother from a remote village who, going in search of her missing husband, goes missing, the film examines the human cost of migration to cities and

4587-547: A taxi driver trying to find about the Hollywood detective character Charlie Chan , and Abraham Lim 's Roads and Bridges (2001), about an Asian-American prisoner who is sentenced to clean up garbage along a Midwestern highway. Australia's vast open spaces and concentrated population have made the road movie a key genre in that country, with films such as George Miller 's Mad Max films, which were rooted in an Australian tradition for films with " dystopian and noir themes with

4726-412: A wealthy woman who goes on the road is liberated from her elite background and marriage to an immoral husband when she meets and experiences hospitality from regular, good-hearted Americans who she never would have met in her previous life, with middle America depicted as a utopia of "real community". The scenes in road movies tend to elicit longing for a mythic past. American road movies have tended to be

4865-613: A white genre, with Spike Lee 's Get on the Bus (1996) being a notable exception, as its main characters are African-American men on a bus travelling to the Million Man March (the film depicts the historic role of buses in the US civil rights movement). Asian-American filmmakers have used the road movie to examine the role and treatment of Asian-Americans in the United States; examples include Wayne Wang 's Chan Is Missing (1982), about

5004-402: Is a far from perfect film (those metaphors keep blocking the road), but it has been directed, acted, photographed and scored (underscored, happily) with the restraint and control of an aware, mature filmmaker". Time magazine's Jay Cocks wrote, "The film is immaculately crafted, funny and quite beautiful, resonant with a lingering mood of loss and loneliness ... Not a single frame in the film

5143-707: Is about a poor rural person's trip into a big city to help his mother, who is dying. The road trip on this film is shown as a "carnivalesque pilgrimage" or "travelling circus", an approach also used in Bye Bye Brazil (1979, Brazil), Guantanamera (1995, Cuba), and Central do Brasil ( Central Station , 1998, Brazil). Some Latin American road movies are also set in the era of conquest, such as Cabeza de Vaca (1991, Mexico). Movies about outlaws escaping from justice include Profundo Carmesí ( Deep Crimson , 1996, Mexico) and El Camino ( The Road , 2000, Argentina). Y tu mamá también ( And Your Mother Too , 2001, Mexico)

5282-533: Is about two Indigenous men. While rare, there are some road movies about large groups on the road ( Get on the Bus from 1996) and lone drivers ( Vanishing Point from 1971). The road movie has been called an elusive and ambiguous film genre. Timothy Corrigan states that road movies are a "knowingly impure" genre as they have "overdetermined and built-in genre-blending tendencies". Devin Orgeron states that road movies, despite their literal focus on car trips, are "about

5421-470: Is about two young male buddies who have sexual adventures on the road. Movies involving road movie genre while being rejected by mainstream media, gained huge popularity in Russian art cinema and surrounding post-Soviet cultures, slowly building their way into international film festivals. Well-known examples are My Joy (2010), Bimmer (2003), Major (2013), and How Vitka Chesnok Took Lyokha Shtyr to

5560-469: Is an "overlooked strain of film history". Major genre studies often do not examine road movies, and there has been little analysis of what qualifies as a road movie. The road movie is mostly associated with the United States, as it focuses on "peculiarly American dreams, tensions and anxieties". US road movies examine the tension between the two foundational myths of American culture, which are individualism and populism, which leads to some road films depicting

5699-427: Is laconic in a dull way, much Cain but hardly able. And Harmon and his cinematographer, John Seale , have shot the movie in such brown murk, you can hardly make anything out. By the end, you're willing to forgive Ryder his worst if someone would just change the light bulb". In his review for The Globe and Mail , Jay Scott interpreted the film as a "slasher movie about gay panic, a nasty piece of homophobic angst for

Road movie - Misplaced Pages Continue

5838-508: Is notable as a time capsule film of U.S. Route 66 during the pre-interstate highway era, and for its stark footage and minimal dialogue. It has been compared to similar road movies with an existentialist message from the era, such as Vanishing Point , Easy Rider , and Electra Glide in Blue . Brock Yates , organizer of the Cannonball Run , cites Two-Lane Blacktop as an inspiration for

5977-564: Is stuck between the father-daughter duo, as they embark on a journey from Delhi to Kolkata . In Nagesh Kukunoor 's children's film Dhanak a blind kid and his sister set off alone on a 300 km journey traversing testing Indian terrain from Jaislamer to Jodhpur , the film won the Crystal Bear Grand Prix for Best Children's Film, and Special Mention for the Best Feature Film by The Children's Jury for Generation Kplus at

6116-402: Is suggested. The Driver proposes that the prize should be " pinks " (pink slips), or legal ownership of the loser's car. Along the way, GTO picks up various hitchhikers, including an importuning homosexual hitchhiker. When GTO's inexperience becomes apparent, he, the Driver and the Mechanic form an uneasy alliance; the Driver even drives with him for a while when GTO gets fatigued. Needing money,

6255-412: Is unbuckled and the passenger door is ajar, he shoves Ryder out of the moving car. Relieved, Jim continues his journey. When he sees Ryder in the back of a family car, Jim tries to warn the occupants, but has a minor accident . He comes across the family's blood-soaked car and vomits. Ryder corners Jim but simply tosses him the keys from Jim's car. Ryder leaves with a trucker and nearly runs Jim down with

6394-544: Is usually a focus on men, with women typically being excluded, creating a "male escapist fantasy linking masculinity to technology". Despite these examples of the post-WW II aspects of road movies, Cohan and Hark argue that road movies go back to the 1930s. In the 2000s, a new crop of road movies was produced, including Vincent Gallo 's Brown Bunny (2003), Alexander Payne 's Sideways (2004), Jim Jarmusch 's Broken Flowers (2005) and Kelly Reichardt 's Old Joy (2006) and scholars are taking more interest in examining

6533-554: Is wasted. Even the small touches — the languid tension while refueling at a back-country gas station or the piercing sound of an ignition buzzer — have their own intricate worth". In his review for the Village Voice , J. Hoberman wrote, " Two-Lane Blacktop is a movie of achingly eloquent landscapes and absurdly inert characters". In his review for the Chicago Reader , Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote, "The movie starts off as

6672-569: The Odyssey and the Aeneid . The road film is a standard plot employed by screenwriters . It is a type of bildungsroman , a story in which the hero changes, grows or improves over the course of the story. It focuses more on the journey rather than the goal. David Laderman lists other literary influences on the road movie, such as Don Quixote (1615), which uses a description of a journey to create social satire; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884),

6811-955: The 65th Berlin International Film Festival Finding Fanny is based on a road trip set in Goa and follows the journey of five dysfunctional friends who set out on a road trip in search of Fanny. The Good Road is told in a hyperlink format , where several stories are intertwined, with the center of the action being a highway in the rural lands of Gujarat near a town in Kutch . Several road movies have been produced in Africa , including Cocorico! Monsieur Poulet (1977, Niger ); The Train of Salt and Sugar (2016, Mozambique ); Hayat (2016, Morocco ); Touki Bouki (1973, Senegal) and Borders (2017, Burkina Faso ). The genre has its roots in spoken and written tales of epic journeys, such as

6950-633: The Esquire article would be good publicity for the film, but in hindsight was not, because "I think it raised people's expectations. They couldn't accept the movie for what it was". There was a lot of advance buzz about the film, but Lew Wasserman , head of the studio saw the film and hated it. He refused to promote it and when it opened in New York City on the Fourth of July weekend, there were no newspaper ads promoting it. Unlike other existential road movies of

7089-754: The Russo-Ukrainian War . Indian screens saw a series of road movies with experimental filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma 's works such as Kshana Kshanam . Rachel Dwyer , a reader in world cinema at the University of London -Department of South Asia, marked Varma's contribution into the new-age film noir . The film received critical reception at the Ann Arbor Film Festival , which led to a series of genre-benders like Mani Ratnam 's Thiruda Thiruda , and Varma's Daud , Anaganaga Oka Roju and Road . Subsequently 21st century bollywood movies witnessed

SECTION 50

#1732869472254

7228-449: The "No Road" subgenre has also been associated with Asian-Australian films that depict travel using routes other than roads (e.g., the 2010 film Mother Fish , which depicts travel over water as it tells the story of the boat people refugees). The iconography of car crashes in many Australian road movies (particularly the Mad Max series) has been called a symbol of white-Indigenous violence,

7367-515: The "disintegration of the family and the community" and the "journey of transformation", as it depicts two fugitives on the run, whose distrust fades as the two women learn to trust each other from their adventures on the road. The images in the film are blend of homage to US road movie conventions (gas stations, billboards) and "recognizable Spanish types", such as the "embittered drunkard". Other European road films include Ingmar Bergman 's Wild Strawberries (1957), about an old professor travelling

7506-440: The "first mumblecore road movie"; Broken Flowers (2005); Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris ' Little Miss Sunshine (2006), about a family's trip in a VW camper van; Old Joy (2006); Alexander Payne 's Nebraska (2013), which depicts a father and son on a road trip; Steven Knight 's Locke (2013), about a construction executive taking stressful calls on a road trip; and Jafar Panahi 's Taxi Tehran (2015), about

7645-417: The "road movie genre as a narrative framework for...gross-out sex comedy". The director of Airbag , Juanma Bajo Ulloa , states that he aimed to make fun of the road movie genre as established in North America, while still using the metamorphosis through road trip narrative that is popular in the genre (in this case, the main male character rejects his upper class girlfriend in favour of a prostitute he meets on

7784-459: The "road picture" as a separate genre came only in the 1960s with Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider . Road movies were an important genre in the late 1960s and 1970s era of the New Hollywood , with films such as Terrence Malick 's Badlands and Richard Sarafian 's Vanishing Point (1971) showing an influence from Bonnie and Clyde . There may have been influences from French cinema in

7923-440: The 1930s focused on couples, in post-World War II films, usually the travellers are male buddies, although in some cases, women are depicted on the road, either as temporary companions, or more rarely, as the protagonist couple (e.g., Thelma & Louise from 1991). The genre can also be parodied, or have protagonists that depart from the typical heterosexual couple or buddy paradigm, as with The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of

8062-515: The 1940s internment of Japanese Canadians by the Canadian government (e.g., Lise Yasui 's Family Gathering (1988), Rea Tajiri 's History and Memory (1991) and Janet Tanaka 's Memories from the Department of Amnesia (1991). European filmmakers of road movies appropriate the conventions established by American directors, while at the same time reformulating these approaches, by de-emphasizing

8201-587: The 1990s, when the "masculinist heroics of the Gulf War gave way to closer scrutiny" ( My Own Private Idaho , Thelma & Louise and Natural Born Killers ). In the 1970s, there were low-budget outlaw films depicting chases, such as Eddie Macon's Run . In the 1980s, there were rural Southern road movies such as Smokey and the Bandit and the Cannonball Run chase films of 1981 and 1984. The outlaw couple movie

8340-587: The Country column is the country of origin and/or financing, and does not necessarily represent the country or countries depicted in each film. Universal Pictures (International) Two-Lane Blacktop Two-Lane Blacktop is a 1971 American road movie directed and edited by Monte Hellman , written by Rudy Wurlitzer and starring singer-songwriter James Taylor , the Beach Boys drummer Dennis Wilson , Warren Oates , and Laurie Bird . Two street racers ,

8479-403: The Desert (1994), which depicts a group of drag queens who tour the Australian desert. Other examples of the increasing diversity of the drivers shown in 1990s and subsequent decades' road films are The Living End (1992), about two gay, HIV-positive men on a road trip; To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), which is about drag queens, and Smoke Signals (1998), which

SECTION 60

#1732869472254

8618-483: The Driver and the Mechanic, live on the road in their highly modified, primer-gray 1955 Chevrolet 150 two-door sedan drag car, and drift from town to town making their income by challenging local residents to impromptu drag races. ("Blacktop" means an asphalt road.) As they drive east on Route 66 from Needles, California , they pick up the Girl, a female hitchhiker , in Flagstaff, Arizona , when she gets into their car at

8757-472: The Driver, the Mechanic and GTO compete at a race track in Memphis . While the Driver finishes his race, the Girl gets into GTO's car and they leave. The Driver pursues them to a diner where the Girl has just rejected GTO's idea to visit Chicago . The Driver proposes going to Columbus, Ohio , to get parts, but the Girl rejects him too. Instead, she leaves with a stranger on a motorcycle, abandoning her belongings in

8896-521: The Driver, the Mechanic and the Girl. Wurlitzer invented the GTO character and the rest of the supporting cast. To prepare for writing the script, he stayed in a Los Angeles motel and read car magazines, as well as hanging out with several obsessive mechanics and "stoner car freaks" in the San Fernando Valley . Wurlitzer said that he did not know much about cars, but did "know something about being lost on

9035-466: The Home for Invalids (2017). Some other movies incorporate a large portion of road movie style, for example Morphine (2008), Leviathan (2014), Cargo 200 (2007), Donbass (2018). With themes ranging from crime, corruption and power to history, addiction and existence, road movies became an independent part of cinematic landscape. From the strong flow of existentialism, to the black comedy style,

9174-646: The Road (1976). All three films were shot by cinematographer Robby Müller and mostly take place in West Germany . Kings of the Road includes stillness, which is unusual for road movies, and quietness (except for the rock soundtrack). Other road movies by Wenders include Paris, Texas and Until the End of the World . Wender's road movies "filter nomadic excursions through a pensive Germanic lens" and depict "somber drifters coming to terms with their internal scars". France has

9313-583: The Side (1995), in that they show a "less traditional" and more "visible, innovative, introspective, and realistic" type of woman onscreen. Spanish road movies about women include Hola, ¿estás sola? , Lisboa , Fugitivas , Retorno a Hansala , and Sin Dejar Huella address social issues about women, such as the "injustice and mistreatment" that women experience under "authoritarian patriarchal order." Fugitivas depicts an American road movie genre convention:

9452-1081: The US road movie's focus on the theme of individual freedom, French movies also balance this value with equality and fraternity, according to the French Republican model of liberty-equality-fraternity. Neil Archer states that French and other Francophone (e.g., Belgium, Switzerland) road films focus on "displacement and identity", notably in regards to maghrebin immigrants and young people (e.g., Yamina Benguigui 's Inch'Allah Dimanche (2001), Ismaël Ferroukhi 's La Fille de Keltoum (2001) and Tony Gatlif 's Exils (2004). More broadly, European films are tending to use imagery of border-crossing and focusing on "marginal identities and economic migration", which can be seen in Lukas Moodysson 's Lilja 4-ever (2002), Michael Winterbottom's In This World (2002) and Ulrich Seidl 's Import/Export (2007). European road movies also examine post-colonialism , "disclocation, memory and identity". Road movies from Spain have

9591-400: The United States on February 21, 1986, the film was originally met with tepid critical and commercial response, grossing $ 5.8 million on a $ 7.9 million budget. In later years, it has been reappraised as a cult classic . The film was followed by a 2003 sequel, The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting , which featured Howell reprising his role, and a 2007 remake . Jim Halsey, a young man delivering

9730-531: The Year Awards . Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, "What I liked about Two-Lane Blacktop was the sense of life that occasionally sneaked through, particularly in the character of G.T.O. (Warren Oates). He is the only character who is fully occupied with being himself (rather than the instrument of a metaphor), and so we get the sense we've met somebody". In his review for The New York Times , Vincent Canby wrote, " Two-Lane Blacktop

9869-734: The [history of] the cinema, about the culture of the image", with road movies created with a mixture of Classical Hollywood film genres. The road movie genre developed from a "constellation of “solid” modernity, combining locomotion and media-motion" to get "away from the sedentarising forces of modernity and produc[e] contingency". Road movies are blended with other genres to create a number of subgenres, including: road horror (e.g., Near Dark from 1987); road comedies (e.g., Flirting with Disaster from 1996); road racing films (e.g., Death Race 2000 from 1975) and rock concert tour films (e.g., Almost Famous from 2000). Film noir road movies include Detour (1945), Desperate , The Devil Thumbs

10008-424: The age of AIDS ". A rare positive review came from Newsweek magazine's Jack Kroll who called it, "an odyssey of horror and suspense that's as tightly wound as a garrote and as beautifully designed as a guillotine". Leonard Maltin awarded the film a score of 2 1/2 out of 4 stars (his most frequently used rating), criticizing the film's violence as being "genuinely grisly and unappealing" while also noting that

10147-427: The bad guy and you'll be the baddest bad guy there ever was!" Red mentioned to Hauer that he had Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards in mind when he wrote the part of Ryder. Furthermore, Red felt that the character should have an electronic voice box. For the role of Jim Halsey, the producers mentioned Matthew Modine , Tom Cruise , and Emilio Estevez . They agreed on C. Thomas Howell and liked his look. At

10286-459: The car crash experience", a subject matter which led to Ted Turner lobbying against the film being shown in US theatres. Asian-Canadian filmmakers have made road films about the experience of Canadians of Asian origin, such as Ann Marie Fleming 's The Magical Life of Long Tak Sam , which is about her search for her "Chinese grandfather, an itinerant magician and acrobat". Other Asian-Canadian road movies look at their relatives experiences during

10425-507: The cell door unlocked and the officers murdered. He panics and flees with a revolver. At a gas station, he sees two officers, takes them hostage, and forces one of them to drive. Jim speaks on the radio to Captain Esteridge, the officer in charge of the manhunt. As Esteridge convinces Jim to surrender, Ryder pulls alongside and kills the two officers. The patrol car crashes, and Ryder disappears again. After briefly considering suicide, Jim reaches

10564-418: The country's history, current situation, and to anxieties about the future. The Mad Max films, including Mad Max , The Road Warrior and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome , "have become canonical for their dystopic reinvention of the outback as a post-human wasteland where survival depends upon manic driving skills". Other Australian road movies include Peter Weir 's The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), about

10703-478: The creation of Bonnie and Clyde ; David Newman and Robert Benton have stated that they were influenced by Jean-Luc Godard 's A bout de souffle (1960) and François Truffaut 's Tirez sur la pianiste (1960). More generally, Devin Orgeron states that American road movies were based on post-WW II European cinema's own take on the American road film approach, showing a mutual influence between US and European filmmakers in this genre. The addition of violence to

10842-409: The destructive power of cars and the country’s harsh, sparsely populated land mass ". Australian road movies have been described as having a dystopian or gothic tone, as the road the characters travel on is often a "dead end", with the journey being more about "inward-looking" exploration than reaching the intended location. In Australia, road movies have been called a "complex metaphor" which refers to

10981-399: The dramatic movement-based sequences that predominate in action films . Road movies do not typically use the standard three-act structure used in mainstream films; instead, an "open-ended, rambling plot structure" is used. The road movie keeps its characters "on the move", and as such the "car, the tracking shot , [and] wide and wild open space" are important iconography elements, similar to

11120-437: The entire screenplay in its April 1971 issue, and referred to it on the cover as "Our nomination for movie of the year", though it failed to include any explanation for this decision or any critical commentary, and also failed to review the film when it was released that fall. The film opened and disappeared so quickly that at the end of 1971, Esquire included its own cover prediction as part of its annual Dubious Achievements of

11259-509: The exploitation of migrant workers. It was India's Official Entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the 87th Academy Awards . It won special prize at Sofia International Film Festival . In Karwaan , the protagonist is forced to set out on a road trip from Bengaluru to Kochi after he loses his father in an accident, but the body delivered to him is of the mother of a woman in another state. Ryan Gilbey of The Guardian

11398-510: The feeling of the open road." On Metacritic it has a score of 89 out of 100, based on reviews from 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". The Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2012 as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." Two-Lane Blacktop was unavailable on video for years because Universal Studios only released

11537-467: The film and gave him control of the final cut. Hellman saw a picture of James Taylor on a billboard on the Sunset Strip and asked the musician to come and do a screen test. Four days before beginning principal photography the role of the Mechanic was still not cast. Hellman was desperate and tested people he met in garages. A friend of casting director Fred Roos suggested musician Dennis Wilson. Wilson

11676-471: The film did not receive a high-definition release until 2019, when a Blu-ray and DVD mediabook set was released by Alive Fernsehjuwelen GmbH. This release presented the film uncut for the first time in Germany, though picture quality was not ideal, as the remaster was sourced from a 35mm German release print, the best film element known to exist at the time. However, British label Second Sight Films, while preparing

11815-421: The film from Universal and released it on VHS and DVD , with an audio commentary by Hellman and associate producer Gary Kurtz and a documentary on Hellman directed by George Hickenlooper . The limited edition DVD was packed in a metal tin and extras included a 48-page booklet featuring behind-the-scenes photographs and liner notes about director Monte Hellman, a 5" X 7" theatrical poster replica, and

11954-522: The film has a weighted average score of 32 out of 100, based on 13 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Roger Ebert awarded it zero stars, arguing that the identification of the film's hero with the killer is hollow because the killer has no backstory or even a motive. Gene Siskel also gave the film zero stars, calling it "a nauseating thriller" and "a thinly veiled but more gruesome ripoff of Steven Spielberg 's Duel ". In her review for The New York Times , Janet Maslin criticized

12093-470: The film made. It would not be easy to convince him because it was not the kind of material that he liked and he did not want to make it. However, Dubrow had to go back to New York on other business and met with Fuchs. She mentioned the script for The Hitcher and pitched the Hitchcockian thriller angle. When she returned to L.A., Singer told her that Fuchs agreed to make the film but with the stipulation that

12232-409: The film only if another screenwriter was hired to rewrite the script and Laughlin agreed. A friend of Hellman's recommended underground writer Rudolph Wurlitzer . Hellman read his novel Nog and was impressed enough to hire Wurlitzer, who began reading Corry's story, but gave up after five pages. Hellman and Wurlitzer agreed to keep the basic idea of the cross-country race as well as the characters of

12371-426: The film was three-and-a-half hours long, in which Hellman was the editor. "I can't look over someone's shoulder. I need my hand on the brake". He had control of the final cut, but was contractually obliged to deliver a film no longer than two hours. The final version ran 105 minutes. In their April 1971 cover story, Esquire magazine proclaimed Two-Lane Blacktop , "film of the year". Hellman initially thought that

12510-405: The film wasn't without interest. While most reviewers criticized the sadistic nature of the film's violence in general and Nash's death in particular, one of the film's producers said that the film's commercial failure was because of a lack of violence and that Nash's death should have been shown: "There's other gore in the movie, other killings, but this is the main one. It's the motivation for

12649-418: The film's lack of intensity and originality, and wrote, "Mr. Harmon, making his feature debut, displays a much surer hand for action than for character, though even some of the action footage here looks meaninglessly overblown". Variety called it "a highly unimaginative slasher ... with a script that has many holes." In his review for The Washington Post , Paul Attanasio wrote, "The script (by Eric Red)

12788-565: The film. This DVD set was released on December 11, 2007. Two-Lane Blacktop is available on Blu-ray disc from UK distributor Masters of Cinema , having been released on 23 January 2012; this release was marked as a Region B disc, which would only play in Blu-ray disc players in Europe, Africa and Australia. The Criterion Collection released a U.S. Region A Blu-ray edition in January 2013. Two-Lane Blacktop

12927-407: The film. This would allow them to get financing and then, once filming was completed, the studio would reimburse them for the budget. The film's producers then went looking for an inexpensive director. Still photographer-turned-cameraman Robert Harmon was given a copy of the script by his agent and called his agent early next morning, telling him that he wanted to do it. In February 1984, Harmon met

13066-587: The genre. The British Film Institute highlights ten post-2000 road films that show that "[t]here’s still plenty of gas left in the road movie genre". The BFI's top 10 include Andrea Arnold ’s American Honey (2016), which used "mostly non-professional actors"; Alfonso Cuarón 's Y tu mamá también (2001), about Mexican teens on the road; The Brown Bunny (2003), which garnered publicity for its "infamous fellatio scene"; Walter Salles ' The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), about Che Guevera's epic motorcycle trip; Mark Duplass and Jay Duplass ' The Puffy Chair (2005),

13205-409: The girl to die and Dubrow argued that this would change the story significantly. There were arguments about how the girl should die and Dubrow remembers, "they were trying to make her death not horrible, when – by the nature of the script – it had to be". The studio even suggested softening her death by having a funeral. The filmmakers refused to back down and Silver Screen executives finally relented at

13344-432: The girl would not be torn apart and the violence would be reduced. The film's budget was set at $ 5.8 million. Over the next few months, the filmmakers negotiated two key scenes in the script: the girl getting ripped apart and the eyeball in the hamburger. For the latter scene, Harmon just changed the body part to a finger. As for the former, everyone at HBO/Silver Screen, except Dubrow, wanted it changed. Fuchs did not want

13483-466: The groundwork for the future road films, as it showed a couple who rebelled against social norms by leaving their familiar location and going on an aimless, meandering journey. Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) depicts a family that struggles to survive on the road during the Great Depression, a book that has been called "America's best-known proletarian road saga". The movie version of

13622-473: The hero. You can't show all the killings we showed and then not show the main one. It's cheating the audience". Hauer would go on to say that critics misunderstood the film, calling it an allegory in which Ryder represents evil. The film has since been acknowledged as a cult classic and one of Hauer's most iconic roles. The film spawned a sequel , The Hitcher II: I've Been Waiting , in 2003, with Howell reprising his role as Jim Halsey. The remake using

13761-475: The heterosexual couple are united by their involvement in murder; as well, with jail hanging over their heads, there can be no return to domestic life at the end of the film. There have been three historical eras of the "outlaw-rebel" road movie: the post-WW II film noir era (e.g., Detour ), the late 1960s era which was rocked by the Vietnam War ( Easy Rider and Bonnie and Clyde ), and the post-Reagan era of

13900-505: The idea for a film from The Doors song " Riders on the Storm ". He found that the "elements of the song – a killer on the road in a storm plus the cinematic feel of the music – would make a terrific opening for a film". Red had a lot of time to think about the song and it inspired ideas for the story. During his seven-month stay in Austin, he drove a taxi cab and wrote The Hitcher . In 1983, he sent

14039-486: The last minute. Contractually, TriStar Pictures was obligated to distribute any film by HBO/Silver Screen. After TriStar representatives saw an early screening, studio president David Matalon remarked, "it's the best film that we have for 1986". The Hitcher opened in 800 theaters on February 21, 1986, and made $ 2.1 million during its opening weekend, going on to gross $ 5.8 million in North America. The Hitcher has been released on VHS , laserdisc and DVD , though

14178-449: The movie. There were some people at the studio who thought it was pretty gross". Feldman and Meeker optioned the film themselves, paying Red $ 25,000. Major studios like Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. passed on it, as did smaller ones like Orion Pictures and New World Pictures . Many executives liked the script but balked at the girl being ripped apart scene. At least two studios were willing to consider making it but only if Harmon

14317-551: The naked psychopathic killer Warren Stacy in 10 to Midnight ), Armin Shimerman (who would later be the voice of General Skarr in The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy ), and Emmy -winner Henry Darrow , have supporting roles as police officers who pursue Jim Halsey. Fox ultimately rejected the project over the budget and saw it as a "straight-out horror movie". Madden also admitted that he would have "argued to soften

14456-442: The novel, made a year later, depicts the hungry, weary family's travel on Route 66 using "montage sequences, reflected images of the road on windshields and mirrors", and shots taken from the driver's point of view to create a sense of movement and place. Even though Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1947) is not a fictional work, it captures the mood of frustration, restlessness and aimlessness that became prevalent in

14595-575: The open road as a "utopian fantasy" with a homogenous culture while others show it as a "dystopian nightmare" of extreme cultural differences. US road movies depict the wide open, vast spaces of the highways as symbolizing the "scale and notionally utopian" opportunities to move up upwards and outwards in life. In US road movies, the road is an "alternative space" where the characters, now set apart from conventional society, can experience transformation. For example, in It Happened One Night (1934),

14734-474: The parking lot. Later, GTO picks up two soldiers and tells them that he won his car by beating two men driving a custom-built 1955 Chevrolet 150 in a cross-country race. At an airstrip in East Tennessee, the Driver races against a Chevrolet El Camino . The film ends abruptly. Two-Lane Blacktop originated with producer Michael Laughlin who had a two-picture deal with CBS Cinema Center Films . He convinced

14873-432: The police chase after them, Ryder joins the chase and murders the officers by causing a massive car accident and shooting down a police helicopter. Jim and Nash abandon the patrol car and hike to a motel. While Jim is in the shower, Ryder abducts Nash. Jim searches for her. Captain Esteridge discovers Jim and enlists him to negotiate with Ryder, who is at the wheel of a large Mack truck. Ryder has gagged and tied Nash between

15012-414: The pre-WW II era was changed by the publication of Jack Kerouac 's On the Road in 1957, as it sketched out the future for the road movie and provided its "master narrative" of exploration, questing, and journeying. The book includes many descriptions of driving in cars. It also depicted the character Sal Paradise, a middle class college student who goes on the road to seek material for his writing career,

15151-417: The producers to talk about the script. He recalled that "even the exact actions that remained in the script were described in much bloodier and gorier detail". The producers were impressed with him and the fact that he also envisioned the film as a Hitchcockian thriller. However, Harmon objected to the eyeball in the hamburger scene and never planned to show the girl getting ripped in half. In early drafts of

15290-523: The production company to pay Will Corry $ 100,000 for his original story, about two men, one black and one white, who drive across the country followed by a young girl, which was inspired by his own cross-country journey in 1968. Returning from Italy after a film project had fallen through, Hellman was introduced to Laughlin who presented Hellman with two projects, one of which was Two-Lane Blacktop . He asked Hellman to direct, who found Corry's story "interesting, but not fully realized". Hellman agreed to make

15429-494: The race and commented on it in his Car and Driver column announcing the first Cannonball. The Hitcher (1986 film) The Hitcher is a 1986 American horror thriller film directed by Robert Harmon and written by Eric Red . It stars Rutger Hauer as the title character, a murderous hitchhiker who stalks a young motorist ( C. Thomas Howell ) across the highways of West Texas . Jeffrey DeMunn and Jennifer Jason Leigh appear in supporting roles. Released in

15568-457: The road movie experienced a new revival. Most precious are pieces from Sergei Loznitsa , in his early work My Joy (2010) he used black noir style to tell the story of people falling together with destruction of governments after the fall of the Soviet Union. In his later work Donbass (2018), he takes an opposing style, turning to black comedy and satire to underline actual war tragedies in

15707-432: The road movie. In the book, which describe's Miller's cross-country journey across the United States, he criticizes the nation's descent into materialism. Western films such as John Ford 's Stagecoach (1939) have been called "proto-road movies." In the film, an unusual group of travellers, including a banker, prostitute, escaped prisoner and a military officer's wife, move through the dangerous desert trails. Even though

15846-401: The road". He wrote a new script in four weeks. In February 1970, Hellman began location scouting and was a few weeks from principal photography when Cinema Center suddenly canceled the project. He shopped the script around to several Hollywood studios that liked it, but wanted a say in the casting. However, Ned Tanen , a young executive at Universal Pictures gave Hellman $ 850,000 to make

15985-639: The road). Airbag also uses Spanish equivalents to the stock road movie setting and iconography, depicting "deserts, casinos and road clubs" and use the road movie action sequences (chases, car explosions, and crashes) that remind the viewer of similar work by Tony Scott and Oliver Stone . A second subtype of Spanish road movies is more influenced by the female road movies from the US, such as Martin Scorsese 's Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Jonathan Demme 's Crazy Mama (1975), Ridley Scott 's Thelma & Louise (1991), and Herbert Ross ' Boys on

16124-458: The roads of Sweden and picking up hitchhikers and Jean-Luc Godard 's Pierrot le fou (1965) about law-breaking lovers escaping on the road. Both of these films, as well as Roberto Rossellini 's Voyage in Italy (1953) and Godard's Weekend (1967) have more "existential sensibility" or pauses for "philosophical digressions of a European bent", as compared with American road films. Three Men and

16263-490: The script to be "extremely brutal and extremely gory", but he and personal manager Kip Ohman (who later became co-producers of the film) also saw in it "a level of challenge, intensity and poetry". Bombyk and Ohman were worried about getting it into good enough shape to show their boss, producer Ed Feldman, and his partner, Charles Meeker, and prove to them that it was more than an exploitation film. Bombyk worked with Red via several long-distance phone calls to Texas and eventually

16402-435: The script, John Ryder had been described as skeletal in nature and so actors like David Bowie , Sting , Sam Shepard , Harry Dean Stanton , and Terence Stamp were mentioned. Harmon was set on casting Stamp and even carried around his picture to pitch meetings. Stamp received a copy of the script but turned down the role. Sam Elliott was offered the role but an agreement could not be reached on his salary. Michael Ironside

16541-411: The script. Instead, he gave them pages of dialogue on the day of shooting. The actors felt uncomfortable with this approach. In particular, James Taylor, used to having control when it came to his music, was upset at being unable to read the script in advance. Hellman eventually gave him permission to do so, but Taylor never did read it. Hellman shot almost the entire script as written. The first cut of

16680-573: The sexual tension of road movies in the late 1960s and in subsequent decades can be seen as a way to create more excitement and "frisson". From the 1930s to 1960s, merely showing a man and woman on a road trip was exciting for audience, as all the motel stays and closeness had implied, yet deferred, consummation of the sexual attraction between the characters (sex could not be depicted due to the Motion Picture Production Code ). With Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and Natural Born Killers (1994),

16819-455: The south", in United States. Canadian road films include Donald Shebib 's Goin' Down the Road (1970), three Bruce McDonald films ( Roadkill (1989), Highway 61 (1991), and Hard Core Logo (1996), a mockumentary about a punk rock band's road tour), Malcolm Ingram 's Tail Lights Fade (1999) and Gary Burns ' The Suburbanators (1995). David Cronenberg 's Crash (1996) depicted drivers who get "perverse sexual arousal through

16958-492: The speed of the driver on the road, increasing the amount of introspection (often on themes such as national identity), and depicting the road trip as a search on the part of the characters. The German filmmaker Wim Wenders explored the American themes of road movies through his European reference point in his Road Movie trilogy in the mid-1970s. They include Alice in the Cities (1974), The Wrong Move (1975), and Kings of

17097-478: The time (such as Easy Rider and Vanishing Point ), Two-Lane Blacktop does not rely heavily on music, nor was a soundtrack album released. The music featured in the film covers many genres, including rock, folk, blues, country, bluegrass, and R&B. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson did not contribute any music. However, there are some notable tracks featured in the film, including " Moonlight Drive " by The Doors , " Maybellene " performed by John Hammond ,

17236-419: The time, Howell was being more selective with the roles he took and heard that the script was a generic thriller. Harmon personally gave Howell a copy of the script. He could not put it down and "couldn't believe the things that happened to my character in the first 12 pages. I knew I wanted to do it". He also wanted to work with Hauer. Unbeknownst to Hauer, Howell found him "frightening, intimidating, and that he

17375-768: The traditional folk tune " Stealin' " performed by Arlo Guthrie , and " Me and Bobby McGee " performed by the song's author Kris Kristofferson . A song titled "Truckload Of Art" written and performed by Terry Allen can be briefly heard coming out of the GTO. In 2003 Plain Records issued a tribute album made in honor of this cult classic called " You Can Never Go Fast Enough " featuring exclusive tracks by Wilco , Sonic Youth , Will Oldham/Alan Licht, Calexico & Giant Sand , Suntanama, Steffen Basho-Junghans , Charalambides , Mark Eitzel/Marc Capelle, Roy Montgomery and Alvarius B with rare tracks by Cat Power , Roscoe Holcomb , Lead Belly and Sandy Bull . Esquire magazine published

17514-463: The travellers are so unlike each other, the mutual danger they must face in travelling through Geronimo 's Apache territory requires them to work together to create a "utopia of...community". The difference between older stories about wandering characters and the road movie is technological: with road movies, the hero travels by car, motorcycle, bus or train, making road movies a representation of modernity's advantages and social ills. The on-the-road plot

17653-412: The truck and its trailer hitch , and is threatening to tear her apart . Esteridge tells Jim that his men cannot shoot Ryder because his foot would slip off the clutch, causing the truck to roll. Jim enters the cab with Ryder, who gives him a revolver and tells him to shoot, but Jim is unable to do so. Ryder, disappointed, releases the clutch, killing Nash. Ryder is taken into custody. Esteridge gives Jim

17792-453: The truck, which crashes into the pumps of a gas station. As Jim flees, Ryder causes the station to explode. At a roadside diner, Jim meets Nash, a waitress who cooks him lunch while he calls the police. He finds a severed finger among his French fries , indicating Ryder's proximity. The police arrive and arrest Jim, whom Ryder is framing for his murders. Though the police doubt his guilt, they lock him up overnight as protocol. Jim wakes to find

17931-421: The writer moved to Los Angeles. Red agreed to work with Ohman on the script until it was ready to be shown to Feldman and Meeker. They liked the script but wondered, "how could we manage to translate it to the screen without making a slasher movie?" Meeker said. Feldman and Meeker decided to come on board as executive producers. Ohman and Red spent six months reworking the script, removing most of what Ohman felt

18070-417: Was also considered for the role. Singer mentioned Dutch actor Rutger Hauer. While in L.A. for a short visit, Hauer read the script. Even though he was looking for non-villainous roles, the script "really got a hold of me ... I thought, 'If I do one more villain, I should do this.' I couldn't refuse it." The one reservation Hauer had was with the scene where the girl is torn apart and Feldman told him, "you are

18209-546: Was broadly positive about Zoya Akhtar 's Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara ; he wrote, "It's still playing to full houses, and you can see why. Slick it may be. But tourist board employees representing the various Spanish cities flattered in the movie are not the only ones who will come out grinning", and that he found the movie "stubbornly un-macho" for a buddy film. Piku tells the story of the short-tempered Piku Banerjee ( Deepika Padukone ), her grumpy, aging father Bhashkor ( Amitabh Bachchan ) and Rana Chaudhary ( Irrfan Khan ), who

18348-435: Was hired and credited as director of photography. Hellman insisted on going across country, like the characters in the film, because he felt it was the only way to convince the audience that the characters raced across the United States. He said, "I knew it would affect the actors — and it did, obviously. It affected everybody". Hellman took an unconventional approach of not letting his three lead, inexperienced actors read

18487-616: Was in a constant state of fear, almost as if he really was John Ryder and I really was Jim Halsey". Jennifer Jason Leigh agreed to do the film because she wanted to work with Hauer again (they co-starred in Flesh + Blood ), and loved the character of Nash because "there was a real person there". In addition, veteran character actors Billy Green Bush (known for playing ill-fated police officers in Electra Glide in Blue and Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday ), Gene Davis (known for playing

18626-452: Was intrigued by the description of the film. Red sent him a script that was approximately 190 pages in length (one page traditionally equals one minute of screen time). In the original script, an entire family is slaughtered in their station wagon, an eyeball is discovered inside of a hamburger, a woman is tied to a truck and a pole and then torn in half, two teenagers engage in sex, shootings and car crashes. In its original form, Bombyk found

18765-433: Was reinvented in the 1990s with a postmodernist take in films such as Wild at Heart , Kalifornia and True Romance . While the first road movies described the discovery of new territories or pushing the boundaries of a nation, which was a core message of early Western films in the United States, road movies were later used to show how national identities were changing, such as which Edgar G. Ulmer ’s Detour (1945),

18904-416: Was repetitive violence. Once they got it in good enough shape, Ohman gave it back to Bombyk and also to David Madden, a production executive for 20th Century Fox . Within a few days, Madden called back and told them the script was "terrific". The studio was not comfortable with the subject matter but felt that the writing was unique and interesting enough to give the filmmakers a letter-of-intent to distribute

19043-606: Was replaced. However, the film's producers had faith in their director and stuck by Harmon. Independent producer Donna Dubrow heard about The Hitcher while working on another film and to her it sounded like " Duel with a person". When she went to work for Silver Screen Partners / Home Box Office , she contacted Feldman, a former employer, and asked for a copy of the script. She submitted it to her boss, HBO senior vice-president Maurice Singer. He liked it and sent it back to New York to be read by Michael Fuchs, HBO chairman and chief operating officer. They needed Fuchs' approval to get

19182-491: Was the last actor cast and Hellman chose him because he felt that the musician "had lived that role, that he really grew up with cars". Principal photography began on August 13, 1970, in Los Angeles and lasted for eight weeks with a crew of 30, three matching Chevrolets and two matching G.T.O.s traveling through the southwest towards Memphis, Tennessee . Gregory Sandor shot the entire film, but due to union issues Jack Deerson

19321-401: Was used at the birth of American cinema but blossomed in the years after World War II , reflecting a boom in automobile production and the growth of youth culture. Early road movies have been criticized by some progressives for their "casual misogyny", "fear of otherness", and for not examining issues such as power, privilege, and gender and for mostly showing white people. The road movie of

#253746