Synopses & Reviews
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 and Thelma and Louise
* The road movie, Australian style, from Mad Max to the Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Synopsis
from the American landscape or that travel on its cultural margins to explore why the road movie is so pertinent to those who are alienated or marginalized by society. The essays discuss a broad range of films, including Easy Rider, Thelma and Louise, The Grapes of Wrath, It Happened One Night, Faster Pussycay Kill Kill , The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and My Own Private Idaho. With 44 stills from the movies discussed, this fascinating collection is the most comprehensive volume devoted solely to the genre of the road movie.