The Road Movie Book
is the first comprehensive study of an enduring but ever-changing Hollywood genre, its place in American culture, and its legacy to world cinema. The road and the cinema both flourished in the twentieth century, as technological advances brought motion pictures to a mass audience and the mass produced automobile opened up the road to the ordinary American. When Jean Baudrillard equated modern American culture with 'space, speed, cinema, technology' he could just as easily have added that the road movie is its supreme emblem.
The contributors explore how the road movie has confronted and represented issues of nationhood, sexuality, gender, class and race. They map the generic terrain of the road movie, trace its evolution on American television as well as on the big screen from the 1930s through the 1980s, and, finally, consider road movies that go off the road, departing from the US landscape or travelling on the margins of contemporary American culture.
Movies discussed include:
* Road classics such as
It Happened One Night
,
The Grapes of Wrath
The Wizard of Oz
and the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road to films
* 1960's reworkings of the road movie in
Easy Rider
and
Bonnie and Clyde
* Russ Meyer's road movies: from
Motorpsycho!
to
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
* Contemporary hits such as
Paris Texas, Rain Man, Natural Born Killers
Thelma and Louise
* The road movie, Australian style, from
Mad Max
to the
Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.