LoC #132 Top 112 Road Movies / Journey Films

[stethacantus]

MILE 1

The Muppet Movie ( 1979 )

Studio:    Associated Film Distribution
Director: James Frawley

72 Points, 4 Lists, #1 Edward J Grug III

TRAILER

After a talent agent hears Kermit the Frog singing in a swamp, he tells him to go to Hollywood to be a star. Kermit takes his advice, going on a cross country road trip where he randomly meets other Muppets who want to go to Hollywood with him, and help him avoid the evil Doc Hopper, who wants to turn Kermit into the mascot of his fried frog leg restaurant chain.

When I first suggested this topic, this is the film I was sure would end up at #1. And no surprise.... it was the film I thought no one would forget to have somewhere on their list, as the Muppets seem to be very popular here. Then again, I didn't think anyone would forget Thelma & Louise ( 1991 ).The Muppet Movie only missed two lists, one of which was a surprise. The Muppet Movie  was released between season 3 and season 4 of The Muppet Show,and served as a an origin story as to how the Muppets all met......except that it contradicts the canon established by The Muppet Show. For example, Scooter is among the friends Kermit meets on the road  who joins him on his journey to Hollywood. Yet on  The Muppet Show Kermit and the others do not meet Scooter until the third episode of the first season where he shows up demanding to be Kermit's assistant, because his uncle owns the theater. The Muppet Movie was one of a handful of times a popular television series was turned into a theatrical movie with the original cast, which included ;i[McHale's Navy[/i] ( 1964 ), Munsters, Go Home! ( 1966 ), Batman ( 1966 ), Te Man Called Flintstone ( 1966 ), Head ( 1968 ), Pufnstuf ( 1970 ), Monty Python and the Holy Grail ( 1975 ) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture  released the same year as The Muppet Movie. Similar to Star Trek, The Muppet Movie began a long running successful film franchise, being followed by The Great Muppet Caper ( 1981 ), The Muppets Take Manhattan ( 1984 ), The Muppet Christmas Carol, Muppet Treasure Island ( 1996 ), Muppets From Space ( 1999 ), The Muppets Wizard of Oz ( 2005 ),  The Muppets ( 2011 ) and Muppets Most Wanted ( 2014 ).


Jim Henson's passion for puppets began as a kid in the 1940s after his parents bought a television set, watching  Bil Baird and Charlemane, and Kukla, Fran and Ollie. His fascination with puppets preceded the arrival of a television in his house as he remembered listening to Edgar Bergan and Charlie McCarthy on the radio. He began making his own puppets at home, eventually becoming an expert at it.  In 1954, at the age of 18 and still in high school, he got a job at WTOP-TV making puppets for their local kids show The Junior Morning Show. Jim had thought that he would grow up to be a commercial artist, and at the University of Maryland studied to become an arts major. One of the classes offered was puppetry, which he took. He began taking crafts and textiles courses to learn how to make better puppets. It was there that he first developed a muppet, a combination of a hand puppet and a marionet where the puppeteer would hold two sticks in his left hand which he would use to control the muppet's  arms. While still in college, he created a 5 minute long kids show for WCR-TV in Washington D.C. called Sam and Friends which ran from 1955 to 1961. The show featured muppets, one of which was a reptilian character of an unidentified species named Kermit. While initially airing live in the afternoons, it became popular enough with adults that the station began recording it and repeating the episodes between the news and the beginning of The Tonight Show. In 1958 Jim formed the company Muppets Inc, where he hired long time business partners Jerry Juhi and Frank Oz, moving the company to New York City soon after Sam and Friends ended. Aside from numerous guest appearances on talk shows with Jim and Kermit, the company did a lot of work making commercials featuring Muppets. Rowlf the Dog was created to pitch Purina Dog Chow, but soon was used in other commercials, and went on to be the sidekick of Jimmy Dean on his network variety show. This was one of the first two puppeteer muppets where one would control the mouth while another would reach into glove like appendages which were both hands,  In 1966 an ad campaign was created for General Foods where a group of monsters, which were two puppeteer muppets,  would grab and eat snacks off a trey behind the back of the human spokesperson promoting them. for each snack, a different monster would show up and grab it's preferred snack. General Mils wound up not airing the commercial, so Jim began using the muppets designed for the commercial elsewhere as generic monsters. One of the monsters was used in an IBM commercial where it ate a copying machine. The monster was redesigned for a Frito-Lay commercial campaign where it would eat a snack called Munchos. With Muppets being popular on variety shows and commercials, networks began hiring Muppets Inc to create children's series for them. However, a lot of these series were cancelled during the planning stage. One, which was to be a weekly series featuring a live actress Cinderella and half of the inhabitants of the kingdom being Muppets, got as far as a pilot when ABC decided expand their Wild World of Sports and needed to eliminate a half hour of children's programming to move American Bandstand down a half hour. The pilot featured Kermit, where for the first time he identified his species, calling himself Kermit the Frog. The pilot would later air as a television special called Hey Cinderella!.

Sesame Street had been in development since 1966. The idea of Joan Ganz Cooney who wanted to produce an educational show for preschoolers living in Urban areas. Cooney and the others developing the show realized that children tended to sit through commercials  and quickly learned the various jingles and catch phrases from those commercials. Sesame Street was to use the same techniques use to pitch soap and other products, with short segments that were cartoons, puppets or silent slapstick, which taught brief lessons on letters of the alphabet or numbers. The show was to open and close on an urban street with human hosts who would teach their neighborhood kids various lessons, with more of the street segments randomly placed within the episodes. In 1968 Cooney was awarded a $1 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation to establish the Childrens Television Workshop. They were ready to produce their firs pilot when Sesame Street's writer Jon Stone decided the show was to have puppets interact with the hosts and children in order to keep their attention during the urban street segments. He wanted Jim Henson to provide his Muppets, and if they could not get him to join the show, then Stone said they should not bother finding any other puppeteer and shoot the show without any puppets. Henson was enthusiastic about the project, and brought to the show Kermit, Rolf and the Munchos monster as his contract with Frito-Lay had just expired. With no official name, the monster in the pilot ate letters, and even attempted to eat Kermit. For the show Henson created Ernie and Bert, an orange monster who lived in trash cans called Oscar the Grouch, and Big Bird, which was a full sized costume with a puppet like head above, and was the second time Muppets Inc made such a muppet. Hinson also added to the puppets a monster he had previously used in a sketch on the Ed Sullivan Show. It had no name or personality, acted like the other random monster muppets, and went by the nickname "Fuzzyface".  In the initial season only Big Bird and Oscar were in the urban segments while the other Muppets were used in the short segments. However, as the show was gradually retooled, the other Muppets began making appearances in the urban segments, and cast members began interacting with them in the Muppet segments. Oscar was changed from Orange to Green. The Munchos Monster suddenly became obsessed with eating cookies and became The Cookie Monster, and a voice and personality was given to Fuzzyface, along with an official name, Grover. Sesame Street was not only just a hit with children, but had a lot of adult viewers as well, most who claimed they only watched it because their kids watched it. As much as Henson loved working on Sesame Street. he began to fear that Muppets Inc would be typecasted as just producers of kids entertainment, and as a result lose paying gigs. His agent, Bernie Brillstein, was also the agent of Lorne Michaels, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner, and knew they were about to do launch a late night comedy show with adult humor called Saturday Night. It would be the exact opposite of a kids show, and establish that Henson was willing to work blue as well. Henson created The Land of Gorch featuring gargoyle like creatures who lived on an unpleasant volcanic alien planet. NBC was eager to have Muppet sketches on the new show, so contracted Michaels to have one Land of Gorch skit per week. Which was no problem with him because he was a huge fan of Henson and his Muppets. However, it was a problem with the show's writing staff. The Writers Guild of America forbade Henson from writing the Land of Gorch sketches, which by union rules would need to be written by the writing staff of Saturday Night. And they despised having to write for puppets. Each week writers would draw straws, and the loser was tasked with writing the Land of Gorch sketch for that week. Often Henson would reject a script, stating that the writer didn't get the concept, and the skit would be cancelled for that week. Henson and the writing staff despised each other so much that there was eventually a mutual agreement that the Muppets would not return for any further seasons of Saturday Night. Which was for the better, because Muppets Inc had just been asked to do a show for British television.

In 1973 , two years before The Land of Gorch, Henson had an offer to work for ITV. The network had picked up Sesame Street for broadcast in the United Kingdom, and wanted to produce a prime time special with Julie Andrews. Julie on Sesame Street was produced by ATV who rebuilt  the Sesame Street set at their Elstree television studio. There, in front of a live audience, Julia and guest Perry Cuomo sang songs along with the Muppets from Sesame Street. None of the human actors from the show had been invited to be part of the special. ABC bought the American broadcast rights and aired it on November 23rd as one of their holiday specials. Feeling that the show could bee a weekly variety series, but unable to get either Julie Andrews nor the Childrens Television Workshop to agree to do a variety series,  ABC contacted Muppets Inc, which had just changed it's name to The Jim Henson Company, and asked him for a half hour pilot for a prime time variety series. The Muppet's Valentine Show featured mostly new Muppets, including the first appearances of George the Janitor, Mildred Huxteter and Crazy Harry, who in this show is called Crazy Donald. It also featured Kermit the Frog and Ernie from Sesame Street and a bunch of new Muppets who didn't last past the special. That would include the host of the special, Wally. Taking place in Huxteter's mansion, Wally is writing a script for a Valentines Day special and asking the other Muppets what love is, resulting in each performing a song. The pilot aired as a special on January 30th, 1974. ABC was not happy with the pilot, but asked the Jim Henon Company to produce another pilot, his time closer to the variety series they wanted. The next pilot was called The Muppet Show although is more commonly known as The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence due to an opening gag where Crazy Harry blows up a sign that says Sex and Violence as a voice over promises their will be neither sex nor violence in this special. This time the special takes place back stage at a theater where the show's host, Nigel, introduces the audience to the various Muppets who will be part of the series, which was intercut with a performance on the stage. The new Muppets created for the pilot included Fozzie Bear,  Statler and Waldorf who were not yet hecklers, The Sweetish Chef, the entire band  Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem and Sam the Eagle. An earlier version of Miss Piggy, who had previously appeared on a Muppet skit on the special Herb Alpert and the TJB was in a skit with other pig Muppets, and Gonzo, who had made his debut in the 1970 Christmas special The Great Santa Claus Switch were also in the pilot. Kermit, Rolf, Ernie and Bert were also in the pilot, but all just on screen for a brief cameo. Henson fully intended the series to be entirely new Muppets and not the Muppets  from Sesame Street. The pilot aired as another special on March 19th, 1975. Without the familiar Sesame Street Muppets, ABC decided not to pick it up as a series. Convinced ABC didn't greenlight the show because they only saw Muppets as Children's entertainment, Henson began doing the Land of Gorch sketches for Saturday Night. Midway through the season, ITV contacted Henson about picking up the pilot for British television. The Muppet Show would be produced by ATV for ITV. A deal was struck with ITC Entertainment, the company that had brought The Prisoner and Space 1999 to the United States, to convert The Muppet Show from PAL to NTSC and syndicate it in America. CBS already wanted it for the stations they owned and operated, electing to air it at 7:30 on week nights. Back at Saturday Night, Henson began secretly asking the hosts and musical guests if they wanted to do a guest spot on an episode of The Muppet Show. Despite it being taped in England, a lot of them were eager to do it. After concluding the season of Saturday Night, Henson began work on The Muppet Show, slightly revamping it. The host Nigel became the band leader, and replaced with Kermit as the permanent host. The sets were slightly redesigned, and more of a theater set was built so that Statler and Waldorf could heckle from their lodge seats. And there would be an opening theme song, with an instrumental reprise for the closing credits. aside from Kermit and Rolf, no other Muppets from Sesame Street would be on the show. The Muppet Show made it's debut in the fall of 1976, and was a hit both in the United Kingdom and in America.

Of course, with the success of the show, there were eventually offers to make a movie with the Muppets. ITC offered to finance a Muppet film, and AFD wanted to distribute it. Henson got several celebrities to agree to be in it, as each would only need to d a half days work for their roles. The one exception being Charles Durning who played the film's villain Doc Hopper. Among the cameos Edgar Bergan who Henson had listened to as a child and had remained a fan of. Bergan died within days of shooting his scene. He had just announced that he was retiring from show business, and had just begun a two week engagement in Las Vegas called A Farewell to Show Business. He died three days into the two week engagement. In his will he left all of his money to his dummy Charlie McCarthy, and none to his daughter Candis. Or at least that is what she claimed in her memoir. But Edgar Bergan was still a hero to Henson who dedicated the film to his memory.  Henson hired Paul Williams and Kenneth Ascher to write the music and songs for the movie. Williams had written several hit songs, scored the movies Phantom of the Paradise ( 1974 ) and Smokey and the Bandit ( 1977 ), had written the lyrics for the theme song for The Love Boat, and even had an acting career that included Swan in Phantom of the Paradise, Little Enos in Smokey and the Bandit, and the orangutang  Virgil in Battle for the Planet of the Apes ( 1973 ). He and Ascher wrote a number of catchy songs for the film, including The Rainbow Connection which apparently was not a rip-off of Somewhere Over The Rainbow as many have suggested. The song reached #25 on the Billboard top 100 chart, and earned an Oscar nomination.

The movie was directed by James Frawley, a bit actor who turned to directing while doing small roles on The Monkees and ended up directing half of the episodes in that series. The feature film he directed before this was The Big Bus ( 1976 ), a movie that parodied the disaster movie genre.  Frawley was very unhappy that the only theatrical film he had been hired to direct since was a puppet movie, and everyone working on the film claimed Frawley was constantly in a bad mood about it. It would be the last time Jim Henson allowed an outside director on any of his Muppet films, either directing them himself, or having Frank Oz  direct them. In the movie, Kermit performs the song while sitting on a log in the middle of a pond. In order to film this, Henson needed to put on a scuba suit and submerge himself in the pond inside of a metal Box with a hole  for his arm that would capture the bubbles coming from his air tank. Once inside the box, Henson was pretty much stuck inside for a few hours. A  team of divers stood just outside of camera range just in case something went wrong with Henson's air supply and he needed to be rescued. The scene took five days to film. The ending number of the movie included every single Muppet Henson had created up until that time, including the Muppets from  Sam and Friends, Sesame Street and The Land of Gorch, although the ending credits where the Muppets are in the theater just after the movie ends just had the Muppets from The Muppet Show including a few that were not used in the movie. To promote the film, CBS aired a one hour special The Muppets Go To Hollywood, filmed at the Coconut Grove, which had the Muppets doing original skits along with several all star guests at a party to promote the film. The film was a huge success, earning $65 million at the box office over it's $8 million budget.

[stethacantus]

Well, that's it. We finally reached our destination.  Thanks to everyone who chipped in for the gas. I can't help but think that some of you may have not quite thought out your lists. Perhaps assumed you hadn't seen that many road films in your lifetimes and put some films on your lists that sort of slightly counted as they involved travel. Like I said, if you had something like My Dinner With Andre on your list because you legitimately believed it counted as a road film ( "Yes it takes place entierly at the same table... but there is that 30 seconds where Wallace Shawn is in a cab!" ) then you had every right to have it on your list. But I can't help but think that a lot of films here were just to fill out a list to 25. I did say that if you thought about it, you would realize a lot of your favorite films did fall into the road movie category.  Perhaps one or two of you have seen a film or two on this LoC that you realize definitely should have been on your own list. Which is why I would think this topic should be revisited again soon, as opposed to waiting another 100 lists to use it again. Even I have seen a few movies submitted that I felt should have been on my own list.


Everyone had their own strategy to generating their lists.  Mine was this: first I went over my top 50-ish favorite film list, which I had generated years ago with plans to purchase every movie on that list for my home video library. From that I picked out every film that involved travel. Next, I tried to remember every film I saw in theaters or rented video, where I remembered seeing Damnation Alley and The Warriors and a lot of other films. Next, I wanted silent movies on my list, so went over my silent movie collectist and found a few with travel.  Finally, I checked lists of road movies on Wikipedia, IMDb and other sites to find anything I forgot about.  Once I had a list of hundreds of the road movies, the next step was to pick from that list all the films I wanted on my top 25. Some because I liked the films a lot. Some because it was so unusual or dumb that I wanted it on my list. That narrowed the films to less than 50, but more than 25. Usually at this point when making an LoC list, I simply rank the films from favorite to least favorite, then number them and reluctantly cut whatever was above 25. This time I self imposed a formula for a road film with several points in the formula that a pure road film should have. There were several films that for one reason or another fell outside the formula because they didn't have every point. Basically, the closer you came to being a formula road film, the more points you got.  I ended up having to cut From Russia With Love, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Sparrows, The Thief of Bagdad, Kelly's Heroes, Von Ryan's Express and a lot of my other favorite films. Leap of Faith and The General were also short of being in the road movie genre, but came closer than the other films cut from my list.

# 25 Damnation Alley
# 24 Red Blooded American Girl 2  a.k.a. Hot Blooded a.k.a. Red Blooded 2  a.k.a. Hit & Run
#23 Curse of Chucky
#22 Around the World in 80 Days ( 1956 )
#21 Smokey & the Bandit
#20 National Lampoon's Vacation
#19 Duel
#18 Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back
#17 Sugarland Express
#16 Pee-wee's Big Adventure
#15 It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
#14 Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
#13 Trafic
#12 Logan
#11 The Kid With The Golden Arm
#10 The Wiz
#9 Fandango
#8 The Muppet Movie
#7 The Warriors
#6 Rat Race
#5 Leap of Faith
#4 The General
#3 The Wizard of Oz
#2 The Blues Brothers
#1 Starlight Hotel


Okay, someone else's turn to be host.....

[Edward J Grug III]

Thanks for putting the list together

The Muppet Movie was my number one by a mile.

I didn't forget Thelma and Louise, by the way - I've never seen it.

1   The Muppet Movie
2   Il Sorpasso
3   Sulivan's Travels
4   The Wages of Fear
5   Two-Lane Blacktop
6   O Brother, Where Art Thou?
7   Midnight Run
8   Lost in America
9   Wild Strawberries
10   Rat Race
11   Apocalypse Now
12   The Shooting (1966)
13   It Happened One Night
14   Paper Moon
15   Midnight Special
16   Follow That Bird
17   Duel (1971)
18   The Searchers
19   Night of the Hunter
20   North By Northwest
21   Stagecoach (1939)
22   Mad Max: Fury Road
23   The Darjeeling Limited
24   Detour (1945)
25   Paris. Texas

[LucasM]

Thanks, stethacantus.  Even though I couldn't manage a list, I enjoyed reading the summaries of films I might be interested in seeing, and the comments.

[Pak-Man]

Great job, stethacantus, on a list with a lot of lead time. Wasn't the list's fault the participation was low. We just don't have enough regulars these days to fill out a decent LoC.

If anyone feels like taking one on regardless, they're always free to. It's always been some of the best fun we've had on these forums.

[RVR II]

Great Job stethacantus

My list:
1-Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior
2-Mad Max
3-Beavis & Butthead Do America
4-Beavis & Butthead Do the Universe
5-Cheech & Chong's Up in Smoke
6-National Lampoon's Vacation
7-Speed
8-Speed 2
9-Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy
10-Dumb & Dumber
11-Dumb & Dumber 2
12-The Blues Brothers
13-Planes Trains Automobiles
14-The Great Outdoors
15-Borat
16-Tommy Boy
17-National Lampoon's Vegas Vacation
18-Pee Wee's Big Adventure
19-Titanic
20-Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
21-Mad max Fury Road
22-The Wizard of Oz
23-Cannonball
24-Cannonball Run
25-Cars

[Charles Castle]

I think I focused in on the word "journey" here more than the word "road". Most of my choices were road films as well, but I did not consider fidelity to a road film formula in ranking.

My list, and some I toyed with including:

1. The Passenger
2. Paris, Texas
3. The Straight Story
4. One False Move
5. North by Northwest
6. Wild Strawberries
7. Wild at Heart
8. No Country for Old Men
9. Bottle Rocket
10. La Strada
11. Badlands
12. Mystery Train
13. Apocalypse Now
14. Dead Man
15. Aguirre: the Wrath of God
16. Detour
17. Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
18. Sullivan's Travels
19. The Muppet Movie
20. Fitzcarraldo
21. Stranger than Paradise
22. Pee Wee's Big Adventure
23. Drugstore Cowboy
24. My Own Private Idaho
25. Near Dark


Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Adventures in Babysitting
Twins
Kingpin
Dumb and Dumber
Vagabond
Easy Rider
Lost in America
They Live by Night
Time Bandits
Stand By Me
Broken Flowers
Thieves Like Us
Neverending Story
Watership Down
The Hobbit
LOTR
Terminator 2
Krull
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
Bonnie and Clyde
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

Actually, I did not toy with including any Lord of the Rings or Hobbit films because they did not occur to me until after my list had been sent and excluding them seemed more acceptable to me than attempting to wedge them in, alter rankings, and lose one or more films i had already included.

Among those films that turned up on other lists, I most regret just not thinking of:

The Searchers
Midnight Run
Paper Moon
Night of the Hunter
Leap of Faith

I don't have the Mystery Train write up in front of me, but I will share a few not so brief thoughts. I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. My family home was right across the Tennessee/Mississippi border in a no traffic light town called Walls, Mississippi. My father's business was in Memphis, and riding to work with him as a child was a journey on it's own past cotton and soybean fields, kudzu lined hillsides and in to the urban complex of Memphis which had fascinated and begat so many of the most influential musicians of the 20th century. My parents divorced in 1984 and my father bought a house in Memphis when he remarried in 1988. I stayed there most of that summer before moving in permanently to go to high school in 1989. I would walk and take the city bus all over the place that first summer of 1988, exploring parts of the city I had mostly only seen from a truck in and out of the apartment complex my father owned, and holy shit was it ever a mind expanding summer for a 12 year old Catholic school boy that had otherwise only ever gone to malls or other kid fun destinations in the city. One day I opened the Life section of the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper and read that an independent movie - then with the working title One Night in Memphis - was filming not far from my dad's house in a pretty run down area that I had walked through a handful of times going to and fro. Memphis, at least within the city limits, is the type of place where super nice neighborhoods very quickly merge in to run down, if not entirely deserted neighborhoods or former areas of commerce where only a small % of occupants remain.

Using the newspaper's blueprint, I set out to see some moviemaking magic on the streets of Memphis, and I found it with ease. They were right out on the street filming at Main and Calhoun. I couldn't believe it! I watched everything I could without getting so close that I would be in the way, and I went out there and found them 9 different days and spent hours soaking it all in every time. At the time, the only on screen talent I recognized were all musicians: Joe Strummer of The Clash (!), and Rufus Thomas and Screamin' Jay Hawkins who were both very celebrated locally and I suppose Hawkins a little more so outside of the region. I eventually came to know who Steve Buscemi, Tom Noonan, Rick Aviles, and Cinque Lee were, but at the time they were just people I saw in the vicinity of shooting, actually shooting scenes, and/or talking with the wild haired hipster fellow making the film.

I still remember seeing the video box at my local rental shop, Video Magic, and lunging at it, only to find no available copies behind it. It took several weeks before they actually had it available. I snapped it up, got home, called and demanded my brother drive over with his VHS player so we could connect A/V cables between our machines and make a copy. We watched it also, of course. The first story of Mystery Train follows a young Japanese couple (big fans of Elvis, though the male prefers Carl Perkins. Mystery Train gets mileage out of how ubiquitous Elvis is in Memphis, while comparable if not even greater talents like Carl Perkins who got their start at the same little music studio - Sun Studios - were by then nearly anonymous by comparison) who arrive in Memphis via train, walk all through the city with their luggage and settle in at a run down motel in what might as well have been a ghost town. In a moment that made me almost lurch out of my seat, the young man (Jun) says while looking out their room window "To be 18, feels cool. And so far from Yokohama. It feels cool to be in Memphis."

Yeah, I was still only 14, and I was not from Yokohama, but I felt that right down in my gut. The opening shots of the movie, the train tracks coming in to Memphis surrounded by fields of kudzu, these two young characters were seeing Memphis just the same way I had my entire life until recently. They knew of amazing things that had happened there in the past, but now it just looked like a dying urban landscape, yet those ghosts of the past were calling them and it really was fucking cool to be a young person, to be looking at things that couldn't possibly be more different than what they were used to, and to just sit there and soak it up, whatever it was. It felt as close to a religious moment as I can ever recall having in my life. Like my journey to that point in life right there on my TV. I was crying, like convulsing, and the movie was only 30 minutes in. I don't expect many people to watch those scenes and feel what I feel, but it's a pretty romantic piece of film poetry either way. It's about the death of America, of great American cultural centers, and of Western civilization in general. But with no bitterness or anxiety or rage at the end or what is to come. It is pure love of what has been. I feel hypnotized just talking about it and thinking about it and thinking about watching it being made from street corners as a curious kid.

I got up at a Q&A in 2005 and told Jim Jarmusch how much that movie meant to me and why and expressed as much of what I have typed here as I could manage in just under 60 seconds. He was silent for what seemed like an hour, but my colleague told me was about 10 seconds, and finally responded in his trademark monotone: "Wow. You went to Main and Calhoun by yourself when you were 12?"... (10 more seconds)... "That's like a 4th Mystery Train story, and the filming of the movie is one of the ghosts of Memphis."

In full circle mode, the final story in Mystery Train centers around characters who need to get the heck out of Memphis and never go back. I moved away for good in 2008 and I don't know that I want to ever be there again.

Is Mystery Train a road/journey film? Yes, absolutely, it is.

Thanks for hosting this list and for the extensive write up when possible. It reminds me how much I love the message board format. I guess those of us still here are like characters in Mystery Train, wandering around this dying format, a relative ghost town compared to the glory days.