Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road (2002)

 

Director: Bob Gale

Screenplay: Bob Gale

Cast: James Marsden as Neal Oliver; Gary Oldman as O.W. Grant; Amy Smart as Lynn Linden; Christopher Lloyd as Ray; Chris Cooper as Bob Cody; Kurt Russell as Captain Ives; Michael J. Fox as Mr. Baker; Ann-Margret as Mrs. James; Amy Jo Johnson as Laura

An Abstract Film Candidate

Are you saying Phil will be cleaning toilets...and have no sex drive...?

Digging into the corners and crevices of cinema, you find yourself discovering the likes of this. A film from the co-writer of Back to the Future (1985) in his directorial debut, Bob Gale, a whimsical magical realist road movie which on the surface is a family friendly romp, in which a young man named Neal (James Marsden) after his twenty second birthday wishes to find answers, only for Gary Oldman as a magical wish fulfiller, the son of a leprechaun emigrating to the Americas from Ireland and a Cheyenne Indian, to push him onwards to a road journey across an interstate not on the map. It is, on paper, as much an Alice in Wonderland scenario as well as a surreal journey, between a museum of art forgeries to the town of lawyers, which is full of litigation as you can imagine, among the sights witnessed. It proves, despite its sheen and whimsy, to be odder than that.

It is also written for adults only, which is one detail among many which cause Interstate 60 to become a cultural oddity in cinema, in between cursing in the script to the fact that Oldman's immortal prankster O.W. Grant laments at one point having had his penis was cut off in a weird accident at nine. Oddly un-commercial Hollywood films are rare, especially rarer from the 2000s onward, so there is something compelling about this one even if it is an acquired taste you groan at as much as find merit in. Marsden's Neal is at the centre, the son of a lawyer of a well off family, wishing to become an artist, at a crossroads in his life and being railroaded by his father into law school and his life, even buying him for his birthday the red car he himself would want. To the viewer, a character like Neal, a stereotypical white middle class young guy, is going to be off-putting because such figures are gauche as protagonists, especially as his journey, when kicked off by Christopher Lloyd assigning him to deliver a package across Interstate 60, is a cliché. One with the added cliché of the chance of meeting the woman of his dreams, played by Amy Smart, a figure mostly seen on billboards only Neal can see, guiding him in their messages.

The result is, blatantly, a metaphor for Neal's personal grown, with his father's preferred red convertible (not his own choice) transporting him on this odyssey, Gale uses it to have characters Neal meets spin conservative, homespun advice on life, not attempting remotely to hide his design to spin meanings in his whimsical journey. The journey, as someone obsessed with surreal Wonderland/journey narratives in art, was always going to be compelling for me as, even here, they are idiosyncratic. It is for the most quite creative and even funny - particularly as the lawyer town, where everyone who is not a local gets slapped with a lawsuit for running over the mayor's dog which does not exist, and that lawyers sulk the streets on mass asking for clients - and whilst heavy handed, many of the eccentrics Neal encounters and the places he find are interesting.

Right from a stop sign, on his way to "Danver", Neal is already encountering a man who wished to be able to eat all the time, eventually stuck in a monkey's paw scenario of having a gut like a black hole, to a town called Banton (with Kurt Russell as the police chief) where drugs are legalised, creating one named Euphoria legal only in its region for anyone over thirteen, warned of in its addictive properties constantly but left for anyone who wishes to get high to take, the addicts cheap labour to pay for their now permanently addiction. Even if the film is heavy handed, even heavy handed surreal and metaphorical worlds are interesting for me, particularly as this film decides to go for a scenario of directions Neal could take in his life and see how ill advised they are for him. The only one of the encounters which is not well thought out, or just one of the times the more adult humour is in poor taste can be, is the personification of lust, a female hitchhiker played by Power Rangers alumni Amy Jo Johnson, looking surprisingly like Natalie Portman, playing a young woman searching for the Perfect 10 in bed, a scene which could be read as sexist depending on your mood and does not work as well as it could have.

Gale as a director is not as idiosyncratic as his script, at least in the sense that his visual and directorial ambitions are solid but they are propped up by the imagination onscreen. The film is given the advantage that it is a well made film with large production value, adding to the weirdness of this film's entire existence. Plotted as a road movie, but also an absurd journey, it is helped every scenario is heightened. It is a world of Americana - diners, giant bill boards - and runs with them to good effect, such as the idea, based on bizarre roadside attractions, of the museum of Art Forgeries, which is revealed to actually have real works of art with copies sent to real art galleries. The film is peculiar, as all of this film is felt with a whimsy apt for the co-writer of Back to the Future, but all these odd and subject to being tonally off too at moments, such as the tangent (never brought back again) of the main wish giving character having no penis, or the ouroboros weirdness surrounding a killer on the loose which leads to doppelgangers, almost something David Lynch if the tone has fully committed to a darker work. The film belies being a vehicle for James Marsden, who would stand out in this period playing Cyclops in the X-Men (2000), the first major superhero film of the Millennium, as the happy-go-lucky lead with a magic 8-ball guiding him going on this journey for self discovery.

It is also odd seeing Gary Oldman, a serious actor, having a lark with dyed red hair, but around this time was also Tiptoes (2003), a film in the career of screenwriter/director Matthew Bright where Oldman played Matthew McConaughey's brother born with dwarfism, which in a film which cast actors with dwarfism you had Oldman on his knees off-camera with co-stars, something to remind myself that Oldman also has a penchant for weirdness. Christopher Lloyd is not necessarily stretching himself, among this strangeness, but he has always been a charismatic actor, and in a film from the screenwriter of Back to the Future, it is not a surprise he is here, as is a brief cameo by Michael J. Fox as a businessman only to be run over by a trunk in a monkey's paw scenario. Also worthy of mention is Chris Cooper, playing a former advertising creator with terminal lung cancer who, alongside demanding truth in everything, has also strapped a belt of explosives around his waist set to a timer. Whether that joke can still be funny nowadays, it is nonetheless Cooper as an interesting character actor shining in his scenes, a straight man in this peculiar production. The only person in the cast who feels left out of place is tragically Amy Smart, as the sole woman of great plot important in what is frankly a white male Americana tale, not an insult to Interstate 60 but blatantly obvious in its DNA. Even if they make a comment of her not being the romanticised ideal of a woman, through a curiously used fart gag, Smart is still stuck with a bland figure, mostly seen as billboards that can change and guide Neal around, but never standing out.

Interstate 60 is definitely a curiosity, and in truth these forgotten obscurities for myself are far more compelling to experience over masterpieces at times, especially as this feels like a more honest snapshot just to peek in Bob Gale's brain. Parts of Interstate 60 are cringe worthy. Some of the jokes have not aged well, such as Smart suddenly talking in a way that would make, as Neal states, Mike Tyson seem eloquent just for a joke (and even referencing that in this sentence feels uncomfortable to have done readers). Some of it is clichéd yearnings of what life should mean, all of which feel like Bob Gale is lecturing his viewers. Yet it is all aptly personal, also aptly part of the Americana the film is touching at, the absurdities and men with cartoon dynamite strapped around their waists as part of their culture as the diners and the red convertibles are, even the magic 8-ball and a man eating beyond his weight in food in a bet and the strange museums part of this mass of culture.

It is a film that was never going to be a success because it is unmistakably weird. I have to admire its idiosyncratic take on the type of American comedy however, even in mind to what does not work, where this goes on a road journey to find humility even if absurd. It even still finds some apt and surprisingly salient aspects along the way, in spite of being antiquated, such as Cooper's character evoking historian Frederick Turner, expressing the idea that the frontier was a place for the malcontent to escape to and that, far from a gateway, the internet would not help replace it when there was no more physical frontier. Definitely in terms of unconventional American films of any budget, I would find virtue in the likes of this, even in mind to its failures, always more fascinating than many of the more successful productions due to their idiosyncrasies to genres and tropes. Even if the film, for all its early 2000s sheen and soundtrack, feels like a film from an older man out of touch to the world, it fascinates as much as causes one to roll your eyes at.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None