2.4 Road Movies
A Changing Genre
A genre is a particular kind of film.
Some examples of genres:
 Western
 Martial Arts
 Romance
 Action Comedy
Genres go in and out of fashion. Westerns, for example, are a good deal less popular than
they used to be. List some other genres here:
Each genre will have codes and conventions - certain scenes, symbols, characters, shots and
themes that you can expect to see in a movie of that sort. These are the rules for the genre.
For example, in a Western, you will always get scenes where:
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we meet the good guy
we meet the bad guy
the two main characters meet and conflict
the conflict escalates, gets worse
there is a final, big gun fight where it all gets sorted out
the hero rides off into the sunset. (he hardly ever settles down – he’s not that sort of guy)
It’s hard to make a Western without all of these. If you change it, you’ll probably end up with
a different sort of film.
List here some of the scenes that you might expect to find in a romantic comedy:
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In the same way, certain characters crop up again and again.
Western heroes are always rugged and manly men of few words who don’t take any nonsense.
Romantic heroes are sweet, sensitive lost young men who need to be saved by the heroine. In
road movies, cops are usually stupid and slow.
Westerns will usually have themes of justice, good vs evil, what it means to be a man.
Romances will have different themes. Write some here:
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There are lots of reasons genres exist. Once a particular film has made money, then other
similar films will get made. Also, sometimes the available sets and the gear you’ve got will
affect what you do. Road movies are fairly cheap to make because most of the action
happens outdoors.
There will also be technical codes – certain shots or techniques are seen again and again. In
road movies, it’s the wide landscape shot, the tracking shot, and particular kinds of music and
vehicles.
The social background will also have an influence. Most people now think Westerns are a bit
corny. We don’t expect men to fight first and ask questions later. In this unit, we’ll look at
how society influences film genres.
Genres change over time, and that’s what this unit looks at:
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how do they change?
why do they change?
what makes the road movie genre?
Road Movie Genre: Technological Change
Easy Rider
Mostly filmed out of doors. Cheap, corny special effects. Jump cuts and superimpositions.
A soundtrack of contemporary music. Low budget – few expensive sfx. Most tracking shots
filmed from a truck or other vehicle on the road with the bikes. The only really noticeable
helicopter shot is at the end, as we pull back from the burning bike on the road and the credits
roll while the epilogue is sung.
Pork Pie
One of the reasons Goodbye Pork Pie could be made was that a new sort of camera mount (a
blimp) was available to silence the camera. By putting the camera inside this, Geoff Murphy
was able to film inside the car. Before this camera mount was available, he would not have
been able to film live dialogue inside the car while it was travelling – the camera was too
noisy. But the film was very low budget, with few helicopter shots, and very little damage to
police cars (compare this to the mass pile-ups at the end of Thelma and Louise).
Thelma and Louise
Big budget. Helicopter shots, lots of car crashes. Some use of jump cuts, extensive use of
lighting (the honky-tonk scene that we’ve looked at closely would have been far too
expensive for Easy Rider).
O Brother Where Art Thou
A huge arsenal of special effects – deliberate use of techniques that look back to earlier films
(eg, starting in black and white to give the film a historical appearance). Also modern effects
such as computer animation (for the scene where Babyface Nelson shoots the cows) that
simply wouldn’t have been available to earlier directors.
Road Movie Genre: Social Background
In a way, this is exactly like the representation question that we’ve been looking at all year.
The social background affects what you put in your movie.
Easy Rider
This is a hippy movie. It’s made by hippies, about hippies, for hippies. The characters drift
around USA trying to find themselves. Also, at the beginning of their trip, they finance
themselves by making a big drug deal. Modern audiences find these guys hard to sympathise
with and can become impatient with the film’s aimless, improvised feel.
Pork Pie
A bit like Easy Rider in that some of the characters haven’t aged well. Shirl, in particular,
would not please some feminist audiences. She sleeps with the main male character, and
disappears from the film once she’s done that. It’s almost like that was the only reason she
was there: to add a bit of sex interest, rather than as a fully developed character in her own
right.
Also, this film was made in 1981 when the Labour Government had made it very easy and
financially rewarding to make movies in New Zealand. Suddenly, dozens of films were
made. Many of them were terrible and aren’t watched now: Battletruck, Angel Mine, and
Death Warmed Up, for example.
But with so many films being made, someone was bound to do something good eventually
and this is it.
Plus, New Zealand audiences were ready to see themselves on screen. They really liked the
way that the film showed lots of different parts of New Zealand, and the film was the first NZ
film to take a million dollars at the box office in New Zealand.
Thelma and Louise
This film was a huge smash, partly because of feminism. This was the early 90s, when the
movement was becoming powerful. So, it suddenly became possible to make a road movie
with female lead characters.
Arguably, though, this isn’t really a feminist film. Although the two women at the heart of
the film both have their strengths, at least one of them is a traditional ditzy blonde. They
don’t have very happy or successful lives – one is recovering from a rape, and the other is
trapped in an unsuccessful marriage.
Also, the men in the film ruthlessly exploit them, and band together to track the women down.
and destroy them. They themselves reject one of the two men who try to help them, while the
other one (Harvey Keitel) seems powerless to help them once the cops get really excited. If
this is feminism, it’s pretty bleak.
Even so, these issues helped the film succeed commercially.
O Brother Where Art Thou
This is a post-modern film. Post-modernism is a movement that enjoys playful intellectual
games.
It has fun playing with and referring to films and art works that went before. It’s a very 2000
thing. People were sick of the politically correct 80s and 90s, and wanted something with a
bit more humour.
The risk is that you end up with a light, fluffy film that is a whole lot of fun but doesn’t
actually mean anything, but we’ll argue about that as we go.
Some scenes in the film that refer to, or make fun or earlier movies:
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Reinstate “road movie recipe” task. Get them to invent one.
Context reel for road movies – show the kids bits of these films to compare with the three
films that they will see in totality.
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Easy Rider – drug deal, trip ending, flash forward to death.
The Searchers
Angel Mine/Death Warmed Up – Indian dairy scene
2.4 Road Movies
by Sam North Adapted and simplified by Ja
'The irony of the road movie is that the weak leave, but only the strong survive'.
All road movies have something in common. They all reflect the times they were made in,
and they all have a central symbol: the road itself.
In a road movie an individual or a small group seeks to escape the world they are living in and
sets out towards paradise on the road. Who is most likely to do this? The strong or the weak?
The irony of the road movie is that the weak leave, but only the strong survive. The road
either makes or breaks a person. You can tell when it’s best to leave somewhere, but leaving
for the future without a map can be a daunting task. The road movie suggests that tomorrow is
another day, and that the road will free you and give you what you want.
Road movies such as Hopper's Easy Rider [1969], Sarafian's Vanishing Point, and Scott's
Thelma and Louise [1991] feature characters trapped in lives that seem pointless, rootless,
intellectually stifling. The road seems to offer an easy escape, set in a beautiful western
landscape that hides all manner of dangers.
But the characters in road movies aren’t really helpless. These people who seek escape often
have courage and determination they never knew they had. It is just that the road is there. It is
the road that helps them to find that courage, but there is always a warning. There are usually
cops or other people who will act as obstacles to their freedom.
In Thelma and Louise, two women escape their petty, nowhere lives, hit the road and find
“liberation.” Neither woman is weak, or stupid, or dim, but somehow life has conspired to
make one a waitress and one a housewife married to an overpowering moron who has
seemingly crushed her identity. But they are not pitiful figures. They always knew the road
was there, only now, as circumstances have arisen, has the opportunity come that could give
them the breath of fresh air they need.
The audience must be able to identify with the main characters. That was the secret of Thelma
and Louise. The audience for the film perhaps should have been mostly female, but in fact
both men and women liked it, mostly because 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 a good road movie appeals to the adventure and longing in us all.
However, the road movie usually gives its characters a little freedom and then lets it bite them
hard. In Thelma and Louise, the two women are free just for a moment, until they meet Earl.
Killing him will create all sorts of problems for them. In the road movie, the characters may
not be looking for danger, but it will find them. The road, it seems, is always a dead end.
It could be argued that the road movie must, to be true to the genre, involve a road. Yet, many
of the essential ingredients of the road movie were encompassed by the “Western.” The
Searchers [1956] may be about a man searching for his niece, but nevertheless it is also about
a man on a horse, on a trail, meeting with hostile elements and the outcome isn't necessarily
what he wanted. Men, on horses, on the trail, always meet more than they bargained for and
the trail might not always lead West. But they are always hoping for some goal. Westerns
aren’t exactly road movies, but all the elements are in place: a dusty road, a small town,
hostile receptions and the strength to surmount all obstacles.
The road movie really took hold in the hard times following the Second World War. Now
America was full of returning soldiers discovering the world had moved on, fortunes had been
made and that they had 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. LA 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.