ABSTRACT

In the space of a little more than a year, from November 1987, to December 1988, three buddy-road movies appeared in theatres: Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987), Midnight Run (1988), and Rain Man (1988). They shared a number of elements, beginning with the same master narrative: One buddy is a self-involved man with a distaste for intimacy who is battling a deadline to achieve some highly desired personal goal. For reasons that will become clear shortly, I will call him the “high flyer.” The other man, whom I will label “the neurotic,” is as apparently deficient in capitalist/masculinist qualities as the high flyer is in excess of them. Either truly mentally handicapped or simply fussy, nagging, and feminized, the neurotic and his personal idiosyncrasies initially drive his companion to distraction; they also interfere with the expeditious completion of a cross-country trip necessary to accomplish the first man’s goal before the deadline expires, putting them both on a road filled with many detours and also eventually cutting off any access to financial reserves. Gradually, however, commitment to the previously scorned road companion becomes more important to the high flyer than making the deadline or closing the deal.