Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road | Mini Review
What happens when you take a guy with a wildly active imagination and have him literally chase his dreams on a fictional highway into the metaphorical abyss? You get the 2002 film Interstate 60: Episodes of the Road. Honestly, I have to say that this is one of the most unique films I’ve seen in awhile. The concept is very high and the subtlety of the underlying messages are very well written and filmed. But, before I get too ahead of myself, here’s an overview of the plot.
Art student Neil Oliver, played by James Marsden, whose father does not support his ambitions of becoming an artist, uses his 22nd birthday wish at a family lunch for an Answer. When his younger sister asks him what he wished for, he simply replies that he can’t tell otherwise it won’t come true. Just then, a red haired waiter, played by Gary Oldman, walks up to him and says that’s not exactly true; telling a wish and getting it out there makes it even more likely to come true. With this, Neil says he wished for an Answer. His mother asks “to what” and Neil simply replies “To Something”. This is when Neil’s father presents him with his graduation gift, which is a cherry red BMW. Neil seems overwhelmed and, at this moment, Gary Oldman’s character, O W Grant, puffs on his monkey jaw pipe, green smoke rises from it and it gets in the face of a man in a window right above Neil and his family. The man sneezes, knocks a bucket over and it lands right on Neil’s head.
When he wakes up, Neil is in the hospital and a doctor named Ray, played by Christopher Lloyd, gives him a neurological test where he shows him a bunch of playing cards and asks him to identify them. Neil completes the test but the doctor lets him know that he failed. Apparently, he had cards where the Spades and Clubs were red and Diamonds and Hearts were black. The doctor has this little commentary about the need to see a world where red spades and black hearts are possible. After this, we see Neil at a Chinese restaurant with his friends and they’re all opening and reading their fortunes. Neil’s fortune says “October 15th, are you sure?” Now, at his birthday lunch his father said he should give up his ambitions as an artist and go to the Bradford law school entry meeting he had set up for him on October 15th. Neil’s friends look at his fortune and see it blank. The next day, when Neil is at his night job, he talks to one of the men he works with and he inspires Neil to chase his dream. From here, he takes a job from Ray, Lloyd, to deliver a package to a Robin Fields in Danver and that he can find that town traveling down Interstate 60. Once Neil agrees to take the job, he is informed that there is a killer traveling on that same Interstate. With this information, he travels down I 60 and meets some very animated characters in some pretty unique towns; all the while chasing a girl he’s been seeing in his dreams and that he begins to see on billboards around town and the non-existent highway.
Although this movie is not very well known, it is amazing! The first positive thing I have to say about this film is where it takes place. This film was mainly shot in and around St. Louis, Missouri. I have a soft spot for films made in St. Louis since I live just 20 minutes from the city. St. Louis is a great city with a large amount of production value but, due to recent incidents, it is slowly becoming less enticing for major productions to take place. Regardless, I was very excited to see St. Louis staples like the Arch, the courthouse, the Casino Queen and many other downtown sites.
I also really like how the story of this young man, who is unsure of his future and what he wants to do with his life, is told. He wishes for an answer and that’s exactly what he gets when he takes to the fictional Interstate 60 in order to deliver a package to Robin Fields, which he was given explicit orders not to open for any reason. Now, although most people would find this odd, Neil quickly brushes it off so that he could continue on his journey. What happens throughout the film from this point on is essentially Neil experiencing his current actions in life and what his future could be depending on which roads he decides to go down, which are uniquely portrayed by some interesting characters and towns along the highway.
Neil’s first encounter on I 60 is picking up a hitchhiker he recognizes as the waiter from the restaurant where he had his birthday lunch. The man introduces himself as O W Grant and tells Neil he’s just a traveler like him. A few miles into I 60, they pick up a young woman who says she’s on the highway looking for, and I kid you not, the perfect fuck. When she starts hitting on Neil, he takes the advice O W gave him earlier about messing with people and essentially throws so much sarcasm at her that she eventually gets out of the car and leaves in anger. This whole scene really serves to show that Neil needs to lighten up and not take things so seriously.
Later, we see Neil and O W pull up to a diner to get something to eat. While there, O W reveals that he can grant people wishes but he only grants one; the O W in his name actually stands for One Wish, like One Wish Grant. He goes on to say that Neil’s wish at the restaurant was one of the most interesting he’s ever granted. Neil obviously does not believe him at first until an older man, whom O W claims was someone whose wish he granted, walks in and orders a very large meal. A few men at the diner bet him that he can’t eat everything he’s ordered and several patrons, including Neil, put money on the bet. Sure enough, the man eats the entire meal and both he and Neil win the money. Unfortunately for Neil, the local sheriff was in the diner watching this whole thing go down and thought that Neil and the old man were running a con together. Because of this, the sheriff not only takes all of the money Neil just won but everything else he had in his wallet and tells him and O W to leave town. Before they leave, Neil asks the old man what his wish was exactly. The man says he wished he could eat whatever he wanted and never get full because he loved to eat. Due to this, he has to eat three times his body weight several times a day so he has to run cons like the one he just pulled so he can get the money he needs to pay for all that food. Neil then asks him if he still loves eating and the man looks over at O W and simply replies “No. It’s a real drag now.”
After they leave the diner, we see Neil being flagged down by a blonde woman who frantically explains that her teenage son has stolen her car and ran away to a nearby town and she will pay him to drive her there to get him. Needing the money, he agrees to take her and O W hops out of the car saying that Neil has got a better feel for the highway now and that they must part ways. Neil takes the woman to a town named Banton, which provides its citizens with a totally legal, highly addictive drug. In Banton, you’re classified as an adult at age 15 and large rave’s are thrown every night. However, the more sinister part of how this town operates is that the drug is so debilitating that it kills the sex drive, which essentially makes you sterile, and basically turns the user into a mindless slave. So much so in fact that, during the day, the teenagers of the town are basically used for slave labor and are paid with pixie sticks full of the drug and earn nights off to party and use more of said drug. All of this is explained to Neil and the woman by the town’s sheriff, oddly enough played by Kurt Russell. The sheriff basically tells the woman that since her son’s an adult there she can’t make him leave but she does have some options. The sheriff says she can either move to the town and have her son work for her or partake in the drug herself to be closer to her son. The woman desperately asks Neil what to do and he tells her that she must make her own decision. With this, she takes the drug. The sheriff then offers Neil the drug and, when he refuses, he offers Neil a finder’s fee for increasing the town’s labor pool. Neil denies the money and leaves. This encounter is very interesting because it kicks off a major turning point in Neil’s thoughts about his future. This is done with a single line from Kurt Russell as he’s offering Neil the finder’s fee.
“What’s the matter son? When someone offers you an advantage, you take it,”
This immediately prompts Neil to leave and realize that just because certain opportunities are offered to him, doesn’t mean he has to take it.
Neil’s other adventures on the Interstate include picking up a former advertising executive who is dying of lung cancer and has a bomb strapped to his chest, helping an older woman sell fake art that she passes off as original works and ends up incarcerated in a town full of lawyers, which is where he ends up finding his dream girl. This whole road trip of craziness all culminates into Neil finding out that the mysterious killer he was told about was actually himself. Well, an alternate version of himself. Near the end of the film, Neil is told by a cop that the killer was a kid in law school who snapped, went on a killing spree and eventually committed suicide by crashing into a police barricade on the highway. Afterwards, Neil finds Robin Fields, who ends up being O W Grant, delivers the package and suddenly wakes back up in the hospital he was in near the start of the film. It turns out his whole trip was an elaborate dream but it does give him the courage he needed to tell his father that he does not want to go to law school and that he wants to be an artist.
The film ends with one of Neil’s paintings, which he completed at a motel with his dream girl on I 60, submitted in a big art competition. As he stands in front of his painting, wondering how it got there because he thought he left it at the motel that was potentially not real, a woman approaches him and explains that she works at an art gallery and offers him a job painting a series of motels and diners. Neil immediately recognizes her as the woman of his dreams and he gleefully accepts the job offer.
This film is seriously entertaining and full of heart. It will definitely speak to anyone who has ever needed to get away and find themselves. The road trip aspect is executed very well and the acting is incredible. I still don’t know just how much of Interstate 60 was real or not, as Neil did interact with several people there and his painting ended up being real as well as his dream girl, but that’s not really the most important part. This film was all about a young man literally finding himself while making decisions that would impact his life. And, with that, the Interstate really acted as more of a conduit for how he came to make those life changing decisions. From start to finish this film will intrigue and excite you to the point where, after the credits roll, you’ll want to immediately watch it again. It’s fun, marvelously camp and has really stood the test of time.
Rating -
Must Watch
