‘Wanderlust: On the Road with American Road Movies’

Tonight at 9 p.m ET/PT the Independent Film Channel debuts Wanderlust: On the Road with American Road Movies, a 90-minute documentary that, according to the promo materials, explores the questions: “Does the road still promise us an open sense of freedom and liberation as it did in so many great films? Or, has the adventure of the American road ultimately been reduced to the stuff of Hollywood lore?” As someone who earlier this month spent eight days driving America’s interstates and backroads relocating from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., I know the adventure of a road trip is very much alive.

I spent five days of those days traveling with my dad. We planned a night in Las Vegas and a side trip to Monument Valley, but otherwise loosely followed Route 66, a road he’d driven several times before the government built the interstate system. The United States we saw is as vast and as interesting as ever, filled with roadside diners and fast-food chains, black-socked European tourists and big-haired waitresses, gaudy billboards and breathtaking red rock landscapes. Hollywood can spin out road movie after road movie—another one, Pixar’s Cars, comes out June 9—but these cinematic journeys, as much as I love watching them, will never trump the experience of rubber hitting road, the feeling of unfolding a map and sensing the possibilities that lie along every thin black line. If you think Hollywood sapped all the adventure out of road trips, you need to get in a car and drive. 

A final note: “Wanderlust,” which is directed by Oscar nominees Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, has stirred up a bit of controversy by using clips from classic road movies without payment to or permission from at least one of the copyright-owning studios. The New York Times reports that the filmmakers are relying on “the tricky legal doctrine known as fair use.”

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