Lost In America (1985)
Lost in America is a 1985 film directed by and starring Albert Brooks, written by Brooks and Monica Johnson. It’s also my favorite movie of all time. Brooks and Julie Hagerty star as David and Linda Howard, a married couple who make the choice to drop out of society and travel across America, “like in Easy Rider.” Granted, their impetus for this is that David didn’t get a promotion he felt he deserved. And they drop out of society in a brand new RV and $145,000 from selling their house and liquidating their assets. It’s a perfect send up of the narcissism and self mythologizing of the Boomer generation, as well as a showcase for Brooks not just as a comedian but as a filmmaker. And what, to me, elevates this film above your average comedic star vehicle, is the full realization of nearly every supporting character.
We first meet Julie Hagerty’s Linda Howard in the opening scene as she’s woken by David panicking over whether or not they should’ve bought a different house. The new one doesn’t even have a tennis court and maybe he’d like to learn to play tennis someday. She talks him down, and when he quits his job the next day she tries to act as the voice of reason. On its surface it seems that she’ll be essentially playing the put-upon wife. The straight woman whose only joke will be looking at her funny husband and sighing. But even in these early scenes we can sense something darker in her. When he bursts into her office telling her he quit she’s surprised, but not mad. She's also been feeling frustrated in her life and is excited at the idea of them shaking things up. And when they make their first stop in Vegas she doesn’t want to camp out under the stars like David does, instead insisting that they find a honeymoon suite and watch porno movies.
Her full mania is unleashed later that night when she loses all their money, give or take a thousand, during a marathon gambling session. David wakes up alone in the middle of the night, goes down to the casino floor and finds her at the roulette table. She looks insane and is putting money down on 22 over and over again. She keeps repeating “22, 22” even has she’s pulled away from the table. While David tries to figure out how much money she's lost her eyes keep darting around looking for more games to play. It’s hilarious, and it’s big. But, crucially, it doesn’t come out of nowhere. We’ve seen signs of her bottling something up, and we know that she’s unsatisfied. And so this realization of her latent gambling addiction doesn’t feel like a sudden change to her character for a joke, nor a plot contrivance to get the movie going, but a deeper understanding of who she is. And, frankly, a deeper understanding of her relationship with David.
From this point on the bulk of the movie is David and Linda meeting a variety of characters for one scene each while trying to figure out what to do with their lives now that they’re out of money. Though they barely get through more than two states before running out of gas, it’s still a road movie, and these moments with a highway patrol officer, the casino manager, a pharmacist in Arizona, etc. give the film the episodic quality one would expect from a travelog. And, like David and Linda, these supporting characters feel totally realized. There’s subtle touches in the writing and performances that give these characters a life. One could expect the citizens of small town America would either be simple blank slates to react to Albert Brooks’ neuroses, à la Curb Your Enthusiasm, or broad absurdist characters who exist purely as punchlines, not unlike your lesser Happy Madison films.
The naturalistic way Gary Marshall plays the casino manager, the decor of his office, and the way he reacts to David asking for their money back, he feels fleshed out. Later, David walks into an unemployment office in Arizona hoping to find a job with something closer to his old salary of $100,000 a year. We’re on the side of the employment agent, played by Art Frankel, when he asks David why he couldn’t change his life on $100,000. But as the agent keeps laughing at their situation, we start to sympathise with David. This guy is also annoying. He has just as many quirks as our main characters, and just as much awareness.
David and Linda don’t learn anything from meeting these people. They don’t change the lives of small town America, nor are they given any folksy wisdom to better themselves. They set out to find themselves, and instead f people just as frustrated, annoying, and neurotic as they are. Though they probably could’ve kept their jobs and done that on $100,000.