Alex stops by Songs & Cigarettes with a road trip video and writes about road movies.
Road movies are sometimes awkward to classify. Everybody seems to recognize that The Grapes of Wrath is a road movie, and I don’t think it’s contentious to say the same about Little Miss Sunshine, given that most of the film takes place in a yellow van. But you also don’t have to look very hard to find somebody calling Star Wars: A New Hope a road movie either, despite the fact that literally every person you ask would classify it as a science fiction movie first. So I guess the question becomes: what makes something a road movie? And is the road itself actually necessary, or does the unpaved path from Tatooine to Yavin work well enough?
I recently went on a road trip of sorts, a whirlwind three-day not-quite-adventure from Toronto to Montreal and Ottawa with a guy named Dawson, one of my oldest friends. (And while I hate to romanticize a weekend and tell a series of ‘You had to be there!’ stories, I’m going to do it anyway.) We played Frisbee, helped an absurd friend move seemingly countless boxes of obsolete technology – including at least 3 old video game consoles, multiple boxes of VHS tapes, and a non-functioning teal iMac from around 1999 – to his new apartment, played some dice, destroyed an old bike with an axe, visited a bar called MacLaren’s (Scherbatsky was sadly absent), met The Girl with the Chili Peppers Tattoo, ate at a rib joint with a signed and framed poster of Serial Joe on the wall, met a hitchhiker who was a big Lady Gaga fan, and ate about 14 McDonald’s hashbrowns. Well, at least that’s what the people I was with did. Since I had a camera with me, I figured I might as well film everything instead of actually partaking. (And while I hate to romanticize a weekend and say, ‘Hey, watch this video I made! I promise it’s not totally worthless!’ I’m doing it anyway.)
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