Albert Brooks' Lost in America and the Death of the Counter-Cultural Road Film
The revolution as-witnessed through a Winnebago
Other than the western, the only other genre that feels distinctly “American” in structure would have to be the road film. This makes sense in many ways, considering the similarities that the two share with the admiration for “the taming” of the open terrain of the United States. From the earliest days of the cinema, the genre was lauded by critics and audiences alike, with Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night (Capra, 1934) winning the “Big Five” Academy Awards of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay at the 7th Academy Awards Ceremony (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences). However, something that the road film does not share with the Western is the genre’s ability to remain relevant and popular. The setting of traveling through a desolate tract of land with the prospect for adventure in addition to spiritual and physical renewal is something that has attracted filmmakers from the more mainstream film such as Sideways (Payne, 2004) to even the realm of art cinema like Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984). As a chronicle of history, the road movie is also an excellent way to articulate theoretical concepts or social movements. The preeminent example is, Albert Brooks’ 1985 film Lost in America (Brooks, 1985). This road film deconstructs the mass appeal of countercultural art in the era of Reagan, specifically the specter of the idea of Easy Rider (Hopper, 1969) on the Baby Boomer generation. To fully understand how Lost in America functions as a critique of the shortcomings of the countercultural movements of the sixties as depicted through a road film, three facts must be deciphered: what constitutes a film as part of the road movie genre, the importance of Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider as a countercultural document, and how Albert Brooks manages to critique and update Dennis Hopper’s depiction of the United States in Lost in America.
Defining the American Road Film
What constitutes a film as part of the road film genre? The presence of a car or another mode of transportation is a requirement no doubt, but just because a film includes chase sequences does not necessarily mean that it deserves the “road film” moniker. As stated by Neil Archer in his book The Road Movie: In Search of Meaning, the physical concept of movement and progression in this genre must be complemented by something more abstract and spiritual (Archer, 6). In the literary tradition, the idea of a character embarking on a journey only to find a set of eccentric characters and personal soul-searching along the way has been done by many classic works of literature. Homer’s Odyssey, Cervantes’ Don Quixote (Cervantes, 1615), and Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Twain, 1884) are mentioned by Archer as a few examples of this narrative tradition that spans not just history but also the globe. According to Christopher Morris, “most interpreters of the road film begin with history and ideology rather than reflexivity, though their interpretations of ideological shifts vary considerably” (Morris, 25). The road symbolizes a simulacrum (akin to Baudrillard) of liberation, in Sullivan’s Travels (Sturges, 1941), film director John Sullivan (Joel McCrea) embarks on a journey to learn about the importance of laughter as an ailment to the hardships of life among the impoverished (Morris, 26-27). In The Living End (Araki, 1992) the road is a vector for the two characters to cathartically vent their frustrations, committing crimes to avoid the demoralizing fact that both of them are HIV positive and will inevitably perish from AIDS complications (Morris, 28).
The road film is not something that is exclusive to America, yet the car-obsessed infrastructure of the country makes the genre feel part of the Nation’s social fabric in a way that cannot be said about other countries. Neil Archer makes the argument for the reason why this is the case has to mainly do with America being the country that perfected the car for the mass market through Henry Ford’s production of the Model-T (Archer, 13). The automobile is also a symbolic item of American individualism, such as the belief in someone being able to travel “on their terms”, the American dream fully realized through the free movement of people. Using a more concise terminology, the American road film is a genre that is classified by thematic and literal exploration.
Easy Rider as the Paradigm of the American Road Film
A close-up image of a motorcycle fades into focus, a hazy guitar riff compliments this image alongside the lyrics to the song “The Pusher” by Steppenwolf. The symbol clearly seen on the base of the motorcycle is the American Flag, alongside a helmet and leather jacket also bearing the corresponding stars and stripes. The music ceases, instead, all that is heard is the engines of the two motorcycles of Wyatt (also referred to by characters as “Captain America”) (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) as they ride off into the distance. This shot is then followed by a cut to a side profile of Captain America continuing to ride his motorcycle as “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf begins to play. These images in the opening of Easy Rider singlehandedly birthed what the American road film was for an entire generation. The lyrics of “Born to Be Wild” exemplify the nature of the road film with the opening stanza’s proclamation of “looking for adventure in whatever comes [their] way” (Steppenwolf, 1968) making the themes of this genre exceedingly apparent. In this opening title sequence, the main characters have the look of carefree content on their face as they pass by signs demarcating their location in the western United States. Despite the mythos surrounding the film, the plot of Easy Rider is incredibly straightforward. Neil Archer puts it well when he says: “a pair of bikers…drive across the country to sell some drugs, meet and then leave a few people, get persecuted by rednecks, and are eventually killed by them” (Archer, 21). Now, this may not sound too spectacular and if it were not divorced from the sixties counterculture then that would be understandable. However, that is just not the case.
The tagline of the theatrical release poster for Easy Rider is: “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere”, this thesis is in line with what the American road film came to represent as Easy Rider soared in popularity. Hopper’s film also relies on two works specifically, Jack Kerouac’s 1955 Beat novel On the Road (Kerouac, 1955) and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Kerouac’s novel also follows two men, traveling across America to find themselves. “The road itself is another overinvested motif in the novel, romanticized as a sort of wilderness between urban and suburban enclaves.” (Laderman, 42). In a 1969 interview with Kit Carson, director, star, and co-writer Dennis Hopper said that Captain America in Easy Rider doesn’t just represent America but also that both protagonists are allusions to Sancho Panza and Don Quixote (Hopper and Dawson, 17). In the context of Easy Rider, “charging at the windmill” is Captain America’s inability to find America. Southern civil rights attorney George Hanson (Jack Nicholson) spells out these grievances quite clearly when he outright exclaims by the campfire near the end of the film that America “used to be a helluva good country.” and they “can’t understand what’s gone wrong with it.” This remark is made after the trio of characters are belittled and insulted by a cohort of locals at a restaurant in New Orleans.
Despite the optimism that Easy Rider contains, depicted through the harmony of communal living, and the introspection of nomadic life, the film still manages to end in an abrupt, yet dark way. The murder of George, Captain America, and Billy by close-minded Southerners who don’t approve of what the three bohemians stand for. In Lee Hill’s book on the film, he observes the instinctiveness on the part of the filmmakers of “the notion of the 60s as a decade of idealism, progress, and hope for the future was as fragile and delicate as a strip of celluloid” (Hill, 33). The disarray and violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the election of Richard Nixon as president in that same year make compelling arguments for why the ending is so dour. The social and economic progress of the 1960s is “blown away” by the silent majority, much like the two characters who murder the film’s protagonists.
The Cynicism of Lost in America
An entire generation of filmgoers came into adulthood with the radical nature of the sixties at the forefront of their socialization. However, as time progressed and the austerity-focused policies of the Reagan administration took hold, these ideals were internalized and replaced with consumerism instead. Albert Brooks was aware of this disconnect, hence why Lost in America (Brooks, 1985) is a strong example of the cultural shift that was at play, only sixteen years after the release of Easy Rider.
Lost in America follows David and Linda Howard (Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty), two yuppies who quit their jobs to instead travel across America in a mobile home. The decision to leave suburban life behind comes from a spur-of-the-moment decision from David after he fails to get the promotion of senior vice president at the advertising agency where he works at. Instead, David quits his job and convinces his wife Linda to do the same at her human resources job. The two characters realize that by liquidating their assets including their home, they can have a sizeable “nest egg” of over $100,000 for the rest of their lives, where they can live off the land by traveling in the Winnebago that they purchase. Instead, what ends up happening is that Lost in America becomes a testament to the notion of the road movie as “the Moebius strip of American Capitalism [that] takes you right back to where you started” (Morris, 26). For, as much as David Howard attempts to spin the quitting of their jobs as a feat of the utmost transgressive in nature, in reality, “the Howards do not really want to reject the substantial comforts of their life for a countercultural set of experiences” (Long, 158). The concept of having a large swath of funds set aside to still indulge in the comforts of upper-middle-class life is completely antithetical to the lifestyle that David repeatedly expresses admiration for in his favorite film, Easy Rider. Following an overnight stop in Las Vegas, Linda loses the majority of the couple’s “nest egg” through an overnight gambling binge. This leaves the duo with a meager amount of money, where instead they are no longer insulated from the difficulties of the real world. After both David and Linda are unable to find a high-paying job in Flagstaff, Arizona, they decide to turn their back on the soul searching that the open road was supposed to give them, with David having to “eat shit” by begging for his position in New York back, after taking a sizeable pay cut. This allows the film’s protagonists to return to their unfulfilling and alienating lives in suburbia (on a different coast no less!) with the promise of the new Mercedes that David wanted to purchase at the beginning of the film as the “metaphorical carrot on the stick” that allows him to continue to tolerate his life.
As a critique of what the counter-cultural road film has become in the era of neo-liberalism, there is not much better of a rebuttal. The iconography of Easy Rider among a generation of Baby Boomers had rapidly capitalized on, supplanting, and diluting the actual radical themes of the film with aesthetic fetishization. Lost In America asks the audience what does it exactly mean when an employee of an advertising agency that makes a six-figure salary exclaims that he has “based his whole life on” Easy Rider? (Long, 164). The cultural cache that Easy Rider holds in the minds of many filmgoers is toyed with by the facetious use of “Born to Be Wild” as the film’s Yuppie protagonists embark on their road trip across America. Arguably the best part of the film from an ideological standpoint occurs near the end of the film when David and Linda are pulled over by a police officer riding a motorcycle for speeding. At the threat of a ticket, Linda attempts to appeal the decision by mentioning Easy Rider. The police officer exclaims that Easy Rider is actually his favorite film and that he “started riding a motorcycle because of that movie”. Despite his gravitation to the film, the ideological disconnect from both David and the highway patrolman suffers from misinterpreting the film, with the irony of an agent of the violent arm of the state admiring a film that takes a visible stance against authority while being quite comical also displays how the mainstream acceptance of works of art can come with the cost of audiences misinterpreting the message.
Conclusion
If Lost in America had a rebuttal to Easy Rider’s tagline of “A man went looking for America. And couldn’t find it anywhere.” then it would be “A man went looking for America. And decided he didn’t want to find it”. When both Easy Rider and Lost in America are watched in tandem with each other there is a fascinating amount of reflexivity to the latter of the former. Both films use the American road film genre tropes to explain the hopelessness of America, just in inverted ways. Hopper chooses to show America as a vast land of good-natured people such as the ones on the commune, there are also the close-minded people which restrain the Country’s potential. Whereas Brooks chooses to show America as a place that has become absorbed with consumerism and narcissism; with a system that is structured in a way that success in the world is gauged by if one has a high-level professional managerial position in a metropolitan area. Both films also serve as a solid example of how genre conventions can function as a mode of critique in a post-modern landscape. ◒
“Did you ever see Easy Rider?”
"No. But I saw Easy Money. Rodney Dangerfield, I like him.”
Works Cited
“The 7th Academy Awards: 1935.” Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, https://www.oscars.org/oscars/ceremonies/1935.
Archer, Neil. The Road Movie: In Search of Meaning. Wallflower, Colombia University Press, 2016.
Brooks, Albert, director. Lost in America. Warner Bros., 1985.
Hill, Lee. Easy Rider. British Film Institute, 2019.
Hopper, Dennis, and Nick Dawson. Dennis Hopper: Interviews. U.P. Mississippi, 2012.
Hopper, Dennis, director. Easy Rider. Columbia Pictures, 1969.
Laderman, David. “What a Trip: the Road Film and American Culture.” Journal of Film and Video, vol. 48, no. 1/2, 1996, pp. 41–57. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20688093. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.
Long, Christian B., and Derek Nystrom. “Easy Riders, Raging Yuppies: Lost in America and the Work of the Professional Managerial Class.” The Films of Albert Brooks, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2021.
Morris, Christopher. “The Reflexivity of the Road Film.” Film Criticism, vol. 28, no. 1, 2003, pp. 24–52. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44019198. Accessed 30 Nov. 2022.
Steppenwolf. Born to Be Wild, Gabriel Mekler, Los Angeles, California, 1968.