Cinema On the Road

by Scott

In the past year or so, I've developed a fascination of sorts with the "Road Movie" genre.  Perhaps it is partially because I fled home about 6 months ago, making the drive from Cleveland to L.A. to try and get involved in the film industry and do the whole "grow up/enter society" thing.  Admittedly, driving across the country wound up being somewhat anti-climactic to me, since it wound up being kinda boring, and went against this "mystique of the road/life-altering journey" mentality I had built up in my head - a mentality most likely developed from watching too many road movies.

Since this all began, I've wanted to start doing an article series of sorts for the site, profiling different road movies, examining the nature of the genre, and just what it is about them that has gotten me so interested in "defining" their place in cinema.

Then I came across this amusing and somewhat insightful article about the very same subject by Chuck Klosterman, which I think is an interesting read.   

I don't necessarily think that this article has clarified anything for me, in fact it might even confuse my idea of the genre a bit more.  But that just makes it more interesting to me.  Especially the parts where he seems to argue that just about any film is a road movie, as long as someone somehow progresses from point A to point B.

And since I don't really have a ton of time as of late, I probably won't get around to starting my article series anytime soon (though I still might do so eventually...if the interest of our readers is high enough...).  So I figured I'd post this, just because I find it interesting and it could possibly spark some discussion amongst us.

And just for fun, if I had to make a quick "Top 10 Road Movies" list off the top of my head, it would probably look something like this:

in no order - 

1. Paris, Texas
2. Y Tu Mama Tambien
3. Down By Law
4. Badlands
5. Sideways
6. Thelma & Louise
7. Bonnie & Clyde
8. Easy Rider
9. Wild at Heart
10. My Own Private Idaho

Some of these might not even technically be road movies, at least according to Klosterman and/or conventional ideas of the genre, but whatever.

And for anyone further interested in road movies, there's a decent IFC documentary about them called "Wanderlust" that can be found on Netflix.