2.Main Content
Road Movies With a Map
Richard Farnsworth as Alvin Straight in The Straight Story
Tue, 15 Mar 2005
The Script Factory's Lucy Scher looks at what drives the Road Movie.
Buy your ticket, take your seats, and come on a
journey…
Most films encapsulate a journey of some kind; literal, emotional, through time or space – but perhaps none more so than the classic American road movie, the one where you get in the car and take to the road. The length and breadth of American cars and roads serve this genre well. The vehicles are vast, enabling plenty of living room, and the enormity of the landscape presents a wide backdrop for story telling.
Road movies are often combined with elements of rite of passage – the physical journey mirroring or enabling an emotional journey; and equally often combined with elements of the buddy movie where two protagonists take to the road. The evolution, often including breakdown and restoration of that central relationship is key to our expectations in this genre.
Britain’s cars and roads are cramped and crowded. Despite this, or perhaps because of this, road movies are a common choice for new British screenwriters and scripts in this genre are often submitted to The Script Factory. At the time of writing I can only think of two British road movies – Butterfly Kiss and Galivant [and since publication, Heartlands]. If there are more, they are not springing to mind, but forgive – I am not the last word on all British films.
Amanda Plummer in Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss It is incredibly exhilarating if you ever hit an open road in the UK. A little thrill goes through me when I get to that place where there is nothing in front and nothing behind. That is the place where fantasy kicks in, and everything and anything seems possible.
That is, I think, the emotional key to understanding road movies; getting the characters to a physical place where they believe their dreams can come true. Sometimes they do come true, sometimes it’s a whole different goal achieved, like accepting that dreams don’t come true; but the characters in road movies are changed by the experience of the journey.
There is a very diverse range of outcomes in road movies – death at the end of the road (Thelma and Louise), success against the odds (The Straight Story), the rite of passage - gaining experience, changing relationships (as in the soon to be released and very brilliant Y Tu Mama Tambien) the crime and chase version (Bonnie and Clyde) etc. There is also a diverse range of motives for undertaking road journeys – a definite reason to go, a need to get away, a search for something.
So, unlike other the genres covered in this series of articles so far, there is more work to do in defining how can we approach the road movie, as screenwriters and development people, given an understanding of what an audience may expect and how to deliver on these expectations.
Who takes to the road? Actually, anyone. This may seem to be a good thing – liberating and unrestrictive - but in the context of genre theory, this amorphous protagonist is potentially problematic. Having expectations around age, sex, social situation, job, family, relationship status and so on, of the key protagonist/s should be helpful in both writing and developing scripts. Protagonists in road movies defy categorisation in this way. This is very useful information.
This is the value of this theory in reading and developing scripts – knowing that anyone can be the protagonist suggests that we approach the creation and the development of this character with a different set of questions. In road movies, we ask whether or not we want to take a journey with them.
Why may we want to? Well, if the character wants something badly enough, and it is hard to achieve, this creates conflict, which is emotional. If that resonates with us, then we will want it for them too. If the character needs urgently or desperately to get away from someone or from a situation, and there is a reason why they can’t just up and go, then I will also want that for them. In short, the characters’ goal has to be highly motivated. They must want it very much, and it must be hard to get.
Y Tu Mama Tambien proves the genre still has mileage
Stories with opportunistic or other more random reasons for undertaking journeys, I suggest cross genres, so that there are elements of rite of passage or buddy movies in the characterisation of the protagonist/s. The boys in Y Tu Mama Tambien undertake a journey to the beach because it presents an opportunity to hang out with an older beautiful and very sexy woman. This scenario doesn’t have the stakes that having to get somewhere, or having to get away does, but we, the audience, understand that there are two teenage boys about to discover a lot about themselves and their friendship on this journey and this is how we engage.
Writing a straight road movie requires a protagonist who has very clear reasons about why they take to the road, quite simply because, in order for the audience to invest in the outcome of the journey, we need to know why it is necessary. Writing a combined road movie, buddy and/or rite of passage, can have less defined goals as inherent in these genres is our understanding that the relationship will be tested and changed, or that the individual will be tested and changed. And that is exciting for an audience.
Antagonists in road movies are as amorphous as the protagonists and their eventual shape is largely dependent on the choices made about who is taking this journey and why. Road movies are often very isolated films with few characters and the antagonist may not be a person; it may be the actual journey, or the environment, or hazards encountered en route. In these stories the ultimate goal must be clear, otherwise it is hard to build and maintain dramatic tension if it doesn’t matter if we get there or not.
Even with a clear and highly motivated goal it is crucial to have jeopardy – without some threat and challenge to overcome, the journey will be boring. It is always easier to create drama by introducing a person who is pitted against the protagonist and their goal – it can be someone who hopes they don’t get what they want, but the stakes rise if it is someone who is desperately invested in the protagonist not achieving their goal. In road movies this dynamic may not present itself comfortably within the premise because it may be that the antagonist is not a separate person, so it is imperative to create and maintain tension through one or more of the options that are available – the journey itself, environmental factors, encounters on the journey, or the internal conflict in the protagonist.
In stories where the goal or destination is less important, and the impetus for the journey is to get away from someone or something, the antagonist is often the pursuer. Most likely the pursuer will be the law, the parent or the spouse (Bonnie and Clyde, Wild at Heart, Badlands, Thelma and Louise). In these road movies the nature and the complexity of the antagonist will affect the tone of the script in terms of realism. Broadly speaking the more realistic and threatening the pursuer, the more tense and important it will be to get away.
The catalyst in all road movies is the moment before the decision to take to the road. The first act of the road movie lends itself to increasing constriction, which makes for great drama – choices diminish, options close down and the character/s find themselves forced into the next act. The question about the best place for a story to start in a script is one that consistently intrigues me and one that I ask of every script that I read. Except of road movies. They start just before the character gathers the final motivation to decide that they need to go. In the road movie and buddy or rite of passage combination, when the motive for going is less pronounced, the catalyst may be opportunistic – it presents possibilities, rather than showing a constriction of possibilities.
Road movies are structures around the beginning and the end of the journey. I hazard an unbreakable rule that it is imperative to start and finish the journey in the most traditional definition of those words. However, beyond that, the shape of the road movie is usually episodic. In most screen stories a solid spine is required – a conflict that defines the story and is played out from beginning to end. Characters introduced in the middle or at the end are likely to feel expedient to the story rather than organic. Not so for the road movie. In contrast, these journeys are littered with sundry characters throughout the story which have degrees of impact on the main character/s. The appeal of these stories is in part achieved by the richness of the encounters along the way. These stories travel for us, they can take us to the places we can’t go. Without these episodes road movie scripts are likely to feel thin.
The resolution of the road movie is generally the success or failure of the actual journey. The audience expectations about how it should resolve will depend on your initial choice of the type of road movie. Broadly speaking in a straight road movie, much like The Straight Story, the highly motivated goal and difficulty experienced by the protagonist in achieving it, helps to ensure that the audience are emotionally invested in a successful outcome. Frankly, if Mr Straight had travelled those miles on a lawn mower, against all odds and arrived to find his estranged brother already dead, well, it would have just about killed me.
The road movie combined with buddy or rite of passage has a much less secure outcome and you can keep the audience guessing until the end. It can be triumphant or defeatist, or triumphant in its defeat. Very often the central relationship is blown apart, the journey doesn’t fulfil its expectation, and/or the resolution is that you can’t always reach your dreams. This satisfies on a different emotional level. If we have experienced the growth of the characters we know that they can go forward from here.
The final moments of Thelma and Louise When the road movie involves the pursuit of the protagonist/s the resolution will see the protagonist caught but maybe not constrained. The end of Thelma and Louise is still remarkable for being so victorious, for engendering feelings of triumph and success in the audience as the women go over the cliff to certain death.
There is an instant iconography around road movies – we know they are going to give us sweeping landscapes, counter-pointed by the claustrophobic enclosure of the car. Actually this is not true to any great extent, but because it exists as a myth, there is probably an audience expectation around the narrative style that needs addressing. Are there ways of compensating, first the reader and then the intended audience, for the lack of sweeping landscape? What kind of landscape can be given? The point is that in this genre the canvas against which the story is set is very important.
Straight forward road movies should take place over a short period. The reader/audience should want to know if the journey is successful throughout the script and then the film, and taking a long time to get there runs the risk of diluting the importance of the goal. On the other hand, the buddy or rite of passage version can sprawl over a longer time frame, partly because they require huge emotional shifts in the main character/s which take time to be convincing – certainly a lot of real time must be spent with these characters to understand the minute of their pain or pleasure. When a chase is on in a road movie, much like any genre which involves a chase, the net should close in towards the end. The constriction which pushed the protagonist/s on the journey is back; choices have just about run out.
Road movies can offer fantastic possibilities for writers – this is a hugely popular genre, with enormous potential in the range of story yet the expectations of the audience are quite straight forward. If the scene or character or event or incident, which sparks the initial idea for a film in your head may be conceived as a road movie, well, herein is a map.
Lucy Scher,
Co- Director, The Script Factory
This article was first published in ScriptWriter Magazine, and is copyrighted by The Script Factory 2001