89 Fun Facts About Road Trip Movie

Which 1969 film has Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper crossing the Southwest on choppers?

Easy Rider earned Jack Nicholson an Oscar nomination as the boozy lawyer, a part he took over only after Rip Torn left the film.

Which 1934 Frank Capra screwball comedy puts a runaway heiress and a reporter on a long-distance bus?

It Happened One Night was meant for Robert Montgomery and Myrna Loy, two of Capra's early picks for the leads; the film made without them swept all five major Oscars.

Louise's convertible in Thelma & Louise is a 1966 model of what car?

Ford Thunderbird: the convertible carries the pair to the film's last image, when they drive it over the canyon's edge rather than give themselves up to the police.

Which future star played the charming drifter J.D. in Thelma & Louise?

Brad Pitt's J.D. charms Thelma and then steals Louise's savings from their motel room, which pushes Thelma into robbing a convenience store.

In National Lampoon's Vacation, the Griswolds drive from Chicago to which amusement park?

Walley World turns out to be closed for repairs when the Griswolds finally arrive, so Clark pulls a gun on a security guard and makes him take the family through the park.

What is the name of the ugly, oversized car Clark Griswold is stuck with in National Lampoon's Vacation?

Wagon Queen Family Truckster is the metallic-pea station wagon the dealer palms off on Clark, who had ordered a sporty new car that hasn't arrived in time for the trip.

Who directed National Lampoon's Vacation from John Hughes's screenplay?

Harold Ramis and star Chevy Chase rewrote Hughes's first draft, moving the story from the son's point of view to the father's.

In Planes, Trains and Automobiles, what does John Candy's Del Griffith sell for a living?

Shower curtain rings keep Del on the road, and at the end he admits why: he has had no home since his wife died eight years earlier, so Neal brings him back to meet the family.

Neal Page is trying to get home to Chicago in time for which holiday in Planes, Trains and Automobiles?

Thanksgiving looks well within reach until a snowstorm shuts Chicago's airport and diverts Neal's flight to Wichita, forcing him home by train, bus and car.

The car Charlie and Raymond drive across the country in Rain Man is a 1949 model of what?

Buick Roadmaster and some rose bushes are all Charlie inherits; the rest of the $3 million estate goes into a trust for Raymond, the brother he never knew he had.

Rain Man won four Oscars, including Best Actor for which star?

Dustin Hoffman's Raymond was inspired by Kim Peek, a real savant whom screenwriter Barry Morrow had met four years before the film came out.

In Dumb and Dumber, Lloyd and Harry drive from Providence, Rhode Island, to which ski town?

Aspen is where Mary Swanson has flown, so the pair chase her there to hand back the briefcase she dropped, never realising she left it on purpose as a ransom payment.

Which 2006 film's dysfunctional family drives a broken-down yellow VW bus to California for the daughter's big contest?

Little Miss Sunshine's bus loses its clutch early in the trip, so the whole family has to push it up to speed and jump aboard while it rolls.

Green Book takes its title from what?

A guide for African-American travelers was a necessity in 1962: segregation shut Black motorists out of many Southern hotels and diners, so the book listed the places that would serve them.

Mahershala Ali won an Oscar in Green Book playing which real-life pianist?

Don Shirley hired Tony Lip, a nightclub bouncer, as his driver because he wanted protection on a 1962 concert tour through the segregated Deep South.

In which black-and-white 2013 film does Bruce Dern set out to collect a bogus million-dollar sweepstakes prize?

Nebraska's prize letter is a magazine-sales ploy, as his family keeps telling him, but his son David agrees to drive Woody to Lincoln to collect it anyway.

Jack Nicholson plays a retired Omaha actuary touring the Midwest in a motor home in which 2002 film?

About Schmidt puts the retiree on the road after his wife dies suddenly, heading for the wedding of a daughter whose fiancé he can't stand.

In Sideways, which wine does Miles famously refuse to drink?

Merlot paid for the insult off-screen: the film is widely credited with denting its sales while Pinot noir, the grape Miles adores, boomed.

In Zombieland, Woody Harrelson's character spends the zombie apocalypse hunting for what snack?

A Twinkie is the one comfort his zombie killer craves, and he is in a hurry: even Twinkies, he says, have an expiration date.

In Zombieland, where the survivors go by city names, what is Woody Harrelson's character called?

Tallahassee is the fearless, gun-toting half of the pairing; Jesse Eisenberg's Columbus has survived by being scared of just about everything.

In which 1988 film does bounty hunter De Niro escort mob accountant Grodin across the country?

Midnight Run becomes a road movie because the accountant fakes a panic attack on the plane, claiming a fear of flying, so the pair have to cross the country overland.

Which 1973 film cast Ryan and Tatum O'Neal as Depression-era con artists in Kansas?

Paper Moon began as Addie Pray, the novel's title, before Bogdanovich renamed it; ten-year-old Tatum's Oscar made her the youngest competitive winner, a record intact in 2025.

The Motorcycle Diaries recounts the 1952 South American journey of which future revolutionary?

Che Guevara was a medical student on a break before his final semester; the poverty and exploitation he saw on the trip changed his values for good.

Y tu mamá también was directed by which Mexican filmmaker, who co-wrote it with his brother Carlos?

Alfonso Cuarón followed this sexually frank road movie with a very different job: directing Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Which 1994 Australian film follows two drag performers and a trans woman from Sydney to Alice Springs in a tour bus?

Priscilla, Queen of the Desert sends the trio out to perform their cabaret act at a remote casino resort, which is managed by the estranged wife of one of them.

Who played Max in Mad Max: Fury Road?

Tom Hardy's Max starts the film as a captive of the warlord Immortan Joe, then forges an alliance with the warrior who is stealing Joe's wives.

Who played Imperator Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road?

Charlize Theron's Furiosa sets the whole chase in motion by smuggling the warlord's five wives out of his fortress in an armoured truck.

Which David Lynch film, the only one of his rated G, follows an old man crossing Iowa on a lawn mower?

The Straight Story is true: Alvin Straight had no driver's licence, so the mower was his only way to reach his estranged brother, who had suffered a stroke.

In Lynch's 1999 lawn-mower road film, the used 1966 tractor the old man buys is what brand?

John Deere even gets a character credit, "Tom the John Deere dealer", who sells the old man a replacement after his first mower breaks down soon after he sets out.

The teenage journalist in Almost Famous tours with which fictional rock band?

Stillwater stands in for the real bands Cameron Crowe toured with as a teenage writer for Rolling Stone; the film is his own story.

Which 1971 film cast musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson as street racers in a cross-country race?

Two-Lane Blacktop was hailed by Esquire as the movie of the year before it even opened, but the studio barely advertised it and it soon vanished from cinemas.

In which 1971 cult film does a driver named Kowalski race a white Dodge Challenger toward San Francisco?

Vanishing Point begins with a bet: before leaving Denver, Kowalski wagers his dealer that he can have the car on the coast by three in the afternoon.

The Bandit's black 1977 car in Smokey and the Bandit is what model?

Pontiac Trans Am is the Bandit's price for taking the bet: he drives it as a "blocker", drawing the police away from his partner's truck and its illegal cargo.

What are the Bandit and Snowman hauling from Texarkana to Atlanta in Smokey and the Bandit?

400 cases of Coors beer made the run bootlegging: Coors was then sold only in the West, so trucking it east of Texas was illegal.

Smokey and the Bandit was a huge hit in 1977, but which film was that year's US box-office champion?

Star Wars dwarfed everything that year, yet Smokey was a surprise hit for Hal Needham, a stuntman who had never directed and got his break when his friend Burt Reynolds agreed to star.

The Bluesmobile in The Blues Brothers is a retired police car of what make and model?

Dodge Monaco: Elwood bought the retired patrol car at auction after trading the brothers' old Cadillac for a microphone.

In The Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood are on a 'mission from God' to save what?

The orphanage they grew up in will close unless it pays a $5,000 tax bill, so the brothers get their old band back together to raise the money with one big show.

In The Cannonball Run, Burt Reynolds's team tries to fool the highway patrol by racing in what vehicle?

An ambulance with a fake patient is their excuse for speeding, a trick screenwriter Brock Yates took from the real outlaw race he had founded.

Which Hong Kong star appears in The Cannonball Run's ensemble alongside Burt Reynolds and Roger Moore?

Jackie Chan owed the part to the producers: this all-star Hollywood comedy was made by Golden Harvest, a Hong Kong studio.

In The Muppet Movie, Doc Hopper chases Kermit across the country to make him the face of what?

A frog-legs restaurant chain is the last thing Kermit wants to advertise: he turns Hopper down and drives off with Fozzie, so Hopper has them followed.

Which early Spielberg TV movie has a travelling salesman terrorised by a tanker truck on California desert roads?

Duel never shows the truck driver's face, so the rusty tanker itself becomes the villain bearing down on the salesman's car.

Which 2020 Golden Lion winner stars Frances McDormand as a widow taking seasonal jobs across the American West?

Nomadland's Fern takes to her van after the gypsum plant where she and her late husband worked in Empire, Nevada, shuts down in the recession.

In which 1993 film does David Duchovny's writer researching serial killers unwittingly carpool with one?

Kalifornia's writer brings it on himself: short of petrol money, he advertises for someone to share the drive, and the parolee who answers is a killer.

Which 1957 Bergman film follows an elderly professor's drive to collect an honorary degree?

Wild Strawberries turns the drive into a reckoning: the hitchhikers he picks up, one the image of his first love, set the old doctor brooding on his life's failures.

Which 1954 Fellini film has Anthony Quinn as the brutish strongman Zampanò, who buys Gelsomina from her mother?

La Strada means "The Road": the pair tour the Italian countryside as performers until Gelsomina meets a kindred spirit, the circus fool, and thinks of leaving.

In Rain Man, the brothers end up driving because Raymond says he will fly on only which airline?

Qantas has "never crashed", Raymond insists; in 1989 at least fifteen airlines cut the scene from their in-flight version of the film, while Qantas showed it intact.

Felicity Huffman starred as Bree, who drives her long-lost teenage son from New York to Los Angeles, in which film?

Transamerica's Bree bails the boy out of jail without telling him she is his parent, posing instead as a Christian missionary who can give him a ride west.

Which 1985 Rob Reiner road comedy stars John Cusack as a freshman carpooling to California over Christmas break?

The Sure Thing is a beautiful Californian a friend promises is waiting for him, so he joins a carpool west, only to share it with the classmate who has already turned him down.

In Due Date, why is Robert Downey Jr.'s character so desperate to reach Los Angeles?

His child is about to be born in Los Angeles, and after a run-in with a would-be actor gets him thrown off his flight from Atlanta, a drive with that same stranger is his only way home.

In We're the Millers, Jason Sudeikis assembles a fake family to smuggle what across the border?

Drugs from Mexico will clear a debt: robbed of his cash and stash, the small-time dealer must fetch his supplier's shipment, and reckons a family in an RV won't look suspicious.

Which 2017 film has an aged Wolverine driving an ailing Charles Xavier and a young mutant toward safety?

Logan opens with the hero in hiding near the Mexican border, done with heroics, until a young mutant who is very much like him forces him back onto the road.

The brothers Ian and Barley Lightfoot in Pixar's Onward are what kind of creature?

Elves in a world that has given up on magic, the brothers cast a spell to bring their late father back for one day, and manage to conjure only his lower half.

In The Mitchells vs. the Machines, the family road trip is meant to deliver daughter Katie where?

College was meant to be a plane ride away, but her dad cancels the flight and turns the trip into a family drive, just as the world's machines rise up.

In Pixar's Cars, Lightning McQueen gets stranded in Radiator Springs, a forgotten town on which highway?

Route 66 once brought Radiator Springs a steady stream of travellers; then an interstate bypassed the town and its businesses lost their customers.

Who voices Lightning McQueen in Cars?

Owen Wilson's hotshot racer tears up the town's main road and is made to repave it, which is how he gets to know the locals he was in such a hurry to leave.

In RV, Robin Williams's family rents a motorhome for a trip from Los Angeles to where?

The Colorado Rockies are a cover story: his boss wants him at a meeting in Boulder, so he scraps the family's Hawaii holiday and hides the work trip inside a camping one.

In Queen & Slim, what sends the couple on the run?

Killing a police officer at a traffic stop was self-defence: on the pair's first date, the officer drew his gun during the stop and Slim shot him with it.

In The Peanut Butter Falcon, Zack Gottsagen's character escapes from what?

An assisted living facility is no place for a young man who dreams of the ring: he slips out to find his hero's wrestling school, coached on the way by a fisherman on the run.

In Sullivan's Travels, a Hollywood director sets out to live as what to research a film?

A tramp is what he becomes to learn about suffering for a serious film, but after watching convicts roar at a Disney cartoon he decides to go on making comedies.

In The Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family leaves which state for California?

Oklahoma's Joads end the film on Ma's defiant "We're the people" speech, which John Ford's version moved there from about two-thirds of the way through the novel.

The Coen brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou? is loosely based on which epic poem?

The Odyssey shows in the hero's name, Ulysses: he lures two fellow convicts off the chain gang with a tale of buried treasure, when all he wants is to stop his wife remarrying.

Who directed the 1998 film of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas?

Terry Gilliam came in late: Alex Cox had been hired to direct first, and he still shares the screenplay credit.

Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern go on the run as Sailor and Lula in which 1990 David Lynch film?

Wild at Heart comes from a Barry Gifford novel whose ending Lynch disliked: the book parts the lovers, so he wrote a new finale, and the film won the Palme d'Or.

Who directed The Darjeeling Limited, in which three estranged brothers cross India by train?

Wes Anderson's brothers think they are on a spiritual journey; one of them has secretly planned it all to reach their mother, now a nun in a Himalayan convent.

Who played Bonnie Parker opposite Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde?

Faye Dunaway won the role over a crowded field: Jane Fonda, Tuesday Weld, Sharon Tate and Ann-Margret were all considered for Bonnie.

Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat travels across the United States as a journalist from which country?

Kazakhstan was not amused: its government denounced the character and placed a four-page supplement in The New York Times to repair the country's image.

Which Pulp Fiction star rides with Tim Allen, Martin Lawrence and William H. Macy as the suburban bikers of Wild Hogs?

John Travolta and friends play middle-aged men escaping humdrum lives on a motorcycle trip, until they fall foul of the Del Fuegos, a hardcore biker gang with no time for novices.

In The Guilt Trip, which actress plays Seth Rogen's mother on a cross-country sales trip?

Barbra Streisand's Joyce doesn't know it, but her son has a second reason for the trip: he hopes to reunite her with the old flame he was named after.

The 2002 Britney Spears road movie Crossroads was written by which future TV showrunner?

Shonda Rhimes, later the creator of Grey's Anatomy, turned a concept Spears and her team had come up with into the screenplay, about three childhood friends reunited on a cross-country drive.

Central Station, a 1998 road drama about a boy and a jaded letter-writer, is set in which country?

Brazil is the setting: at Rio de Janeiro's main station, Dora writes letters for people who can't, often keeping the fee and never posting them, until an orphaned boy changes her.

In Joy Ride (2001), the brothers provoke a killer trucker by pranking him over what?

A CB radio lets the brothers pose as a woman called Candy Cane to tease a lonely trucker known only by his handle, Rusty Nail, who then comes after them.

Who played the murderous hitchhiker stalking C. Thomas Howell across West Texas in The Hitcher (1986)?

Rutger Hauer's hitchhiker announces that he is a killer almost as soon as he gets in the car, and after the young driver escapes, he keeps coming back for him.

Which rapper-turned-actor drives two troublesome kids across country in Are We There Yet?

Ice Cube's character offers to escort the children to win over their divorced mother; after a mishap at the airport, he ends up driving them in his prized SUV.

Tommy Boy paired Chris Farley with which fellow Saturday Night Live alum on a desperate sales trip?

David Spade plays the late father's tightly wound assistant, sent out with Tommy on a last-ditch trip to win orders and keep the family's auto-parts factory from closing.

Terrence Malick's Badlands was loosely based on the 1958 killing spree of whom?

Charles Starkweather went on the run with his teenage girlfriend, Caril Ann Fugate, after killing her family; Malick renamed the pair Kit and Holly.

Sean Penn's Into the Wild follows Christopher McCandless to the wilderness of which state?

Alaska was the goal of a long escape: McCandless, a top student, gave his savings to charity and cut himself off from his family before heading north.

In Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown, a disgraced shoe designer travels to his late father's hometown in which state?

Kentucky calls at the last possible moment: fired over a shoe that lost his company a fortune, he is planning to end his life when word comes that his father has died there.

Which actor led the cast of the 1985 road comedy Fandango, about Texas students on a last trip together?

Kevin Costner, later of Dances with Wolves, starred in a film that grew out of director Kevin Reynolds's student short, Proof: Steven Spielberg saw it and offered to back a feature-length version.

In which 1995 film do Whoopi Goldberg, Mary-Louise Parker and Drew Barrymore share a cross-country drive?

Boys on the Side starts with a personal ad: Jane, a singer fresh from a break-up, answers a stranger's request for a travel partner, and they pick up a friend fleeing an abusive boyfriend.

In Lost in America, Albert Brooks and Julie Hagerty drop out of yuppie life to see the country in what?

A Winnebago gets the couple to Las Vegas, where their entire savings are lost at a roulette wheel and the dream of dropping out falls apart.

Which comedy director made his first scripted feature with Road Trip (2000)?

Todd Phillips, later of The Hangover, had made only documentaries before this comedy, in which the wrong videotape is mailed to a student's girlfriend and he races across the country to intercept it.

Pee-wee's Big Adventure was the feature directorial debut of which filmmaker?

Tim Burton got the job because Paul Reubens saw his short film Frankenweenie and was impressed enough to pick him as director.

Which former child star plays himself in Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle?

Neil Patrick Harris turns up as himself and makes off with the pair's car, one more obstacle between them and their burgers.

Which German director won the Palme d'Or in 1984 for the road film Paris, Texas?

Wim Wenders opens on a man walking out of the Texas desert after years missing, with no idea who he is; his brother takes him home to the son he left behind.

Who composed the slide-guitar score for Paris, Texas?

Ry Cooder built the film's title theme on an old gospel blues, Blind Willie Johnson's "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground".

Which actor plays Miles, the gloomy teacher who takes his friend on a wine-country road trip, in Sideways?

Paul Giamatti's Miles is an unpublished novelist as well as a teacher; the week among the vineyards is his send-off for Jack, an actor who is getting married on the Saturday.

The Grand Canyon finale of Thelma & Louise was actually filmed in which neighbouring state?

Utah supplied the cliff, just below Dead Horse Point near Moab; though the story runs from Arkansas to Arizona, most of the film was shot in California and around Moab.

In A Goofy Movie, Goofy drags his teenage son Max across the country to bond over which pastime?

Fishing at Lake Destiny, Idaho, is Goofy's answer to Max's trouble at school, but Max secretly redraws the map so the road leads to a pop concert in Los Angeles.

Which A-list star cameos in EuroTrip as the punk singer of "Scotty Doesn't Know"?

Matt Damon was already in Prague filming The Brothers Grimm when old friends who wrote EuroTrip asked him; he wore a wig in that film, so he shaved his head for the part.