The desire to leave, drop out of society and dismiss our responsibilities has always been there to begin with. It’s an inevitable side effect of progress. But, how many of us can truly take that leap? How many can afford it? The answer is very few. This desire, however, reached its pinnacle in the 1980s, an era defined by the evolution of mass media and the commercialization of everything and anything. In the US, this was the Reagan era, meant to empower white collar workers – they represented the ultimate American dream.
In cinema, few movies showed awareness of this phenomenon, and even fewer dared to address it in some kind of constructive manner. In a cinematic age defined by loud blockbusters featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris, underappreciated comedian Albert Brooks took it upon himself to deconstruct and show the absurdity of the greed and artificiality that surrounded him and the elite he, and many others, belonged to in Lost in America (1985).

As the title suggests, the movie revolves around a couple – David (played by Brooks himself) and Linda Howard (Julie Hagerty) – that is not so much as geographically lost, but spiritually. Or so they think.
David and Linda, after all, have plenty of money to spare. They’re successful. Both have high paying jobs and just purchased a new home. David is even ordering a new Mercedes for himself. But then, something breaks – David doesn’t get the promotion he thinks he deserves and is fired. As a result, their comfortable life is replaced by a need for adventure and spontaneity, because David figures that they’ve been tied up by false dreams and expectations for too long. “We need to touch Indian, see the mountains and the prairie,” he tells his wife. The idea is simple. David and Linda have almost $200,000 in savings (roughly $500,000 today). They will buy a motorhome and drive all over the country and live off their savings for the next twenty years. “It’s just like Easy Rider,” David tells Linda, referring to the cult classic hippie movie from 1969 with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. “Only this time it’s our turn.” The absurdity of this statement soon reveals itself to be the crux of the film.

The couple depart on their journey in their immaculate RV fully equipped with satellite, HI-FI, television and a microwave oven that only takes 28 seconds to produce – what David considers to be – “the best melted cheese I’ve ever tasted.” As if in a dream or personal fantasy, David gives a thumbs up to a motorcycle driver in sign of a secret alliance between the two. The guy on the motorbike responds with a middle finger.

Yet, despite feeling in tune with Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda’s hippies from Easy Rider, David and Linda keep putting off their big spiritual adventure in favor of comfort. First they decide to hold off their planned ceremony of matrimony in a Las Vegas chapel. Then, they make up their mind and splurge a lot of money on a bridal suite at the Desert Inn. What they get in return is a Junior bridal suite with two separate heart-shaped beds. Their initial plan of escape and freedom is surprisingly moving very slow. Will they ever get there?

Indeed, the fantasy is short-lived because Linda gambles all their money away before they can even exit the city limits of Las Vegas, Nevada. “Why didn’t you tell me when we got married that you were this horrible gambling addict?” David screams at her. “It’s like when you have a venereal disease, you tell somebody!”
From this point on, our protagonists are on their own, with less than 800 bucks to spare for food and accommodation for the next twenty years. Just like Easy Rider, right? Linda and David don’t recognize the circumstances as favorable to their fantasy. “Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda had cocaine in Easy Rider! They sold cocaine. We have nothing!” David rants.
The two are obsessed with special treatment and afraid of facing the real world they seemed to long for only a short while ago. When pulled over by a cop, they manage to avoid a ticket by referring once again their passion for Easy Rider, which turns out to be the policeman’s favorite movie. Unsurprisingly, none of them understood Dennis Hopper’s iconic road movie. David even laughs when the cop says, “I loved when they got blasted in the end!” ignoring the film’s overarching message about modern oppression and violence.
Brooks – the writer and performer – completely deconstructs the perception of the 60s and points how out absurdly tone deaf that same generation went on to become. By this time, the 60s were gone. The ideals, the counter-culture, the slogans – all dead. Referencing Easy Rider to get out of a speeding ticket is for Brooks the ultimate proof that we live in a commercialized bubble, almost as bad as today’s concept of “content” and “content creation” which has replaced and trivialized the understanding of art.

The characters of Lost in America see the world as one big commercial.
Brooks’ protagonist is an advertising executive whose first reaction to his wife gambling “the nest-egg” away is to try and convince the casino manager to nullify their debt and hand them their money back as a sign of good will in an advertising campaign to improve the casino’s reputation: “As the boldest experiment in advertising history, you give us our money back!”
The scene plays out like an intense negotiation between David and the casino manager (played by Gary Marshall), resulting in Davide’s complete capitulation. Not even the creative director of one of the world’s largest advertising firms can change the morals of the casino business.
Our protagonists, like Icarus, get too close to the sun and risk of scalding themselves. After all, without their nest-egg, who are they in this world? The answer is, regular Joes. But, for David and Linda there is nothing scarier than being a regular Joe and the indignity of working poor paying jobs that comes with it.
During one of their stops, David heads to an employment office out of pure desperation and asks for “a white collar box, a box of executive, higher paying jobs.” Like animals trapped in a cage, David and Linda instantly rebel themselves against their unfortunate situation without realizing that they’re as close to really dropping out of society as they ever will be. They’re in the land of Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda, but do they really want it? Or was this a one-act play that has gone too far?

When faced with normal, underprivileged day-to-day life, David and Linda are helpless. How can this be the dream they envisioned since they were teenagers? Where’s the soft leather of David’s dream Mercedes? Where’s the safety and security of Linda’s job in Personnel? Interactions with locals resemble the interactions you’d have with an elephant in a zoo. Who is the freak in all of this, Linda and David or everybody else? The motorhome has lost its appeal. Even the toast doesn’t come out as tasty as it used to. In the end, what is David’s solution? “Get my job back in New York and eat shit for the rest of my life,” he confesses to Linda with a smile on his face. For the first time in his life, he’s realized his place in the world.

I continue to maintain that Albert Brooks’ comedy is underappreciated, and that his films are still a hilarious and simultaneously powerful time machine capable of pointing out the flaws and idiosyncrasies of people and society’s obsession with progress. His eye is much more keen on socioeconomic and artistic matters than, say, Woody Allen whose comedies from the 70s and 80s are still celebrated to this day unlike Brooks’ Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981) or Lost in America (1985).
Unlike Allen, Brooks doesn’t use comedy to show his superiority. On the contrary – he puts himself at the same level of ridicule as the characters he creates. His obsessive, compulsive, over-the-top on-screen persona is one that serves to observe rather than mock. Lost in America is the prime example of the deconstruction of modern day trends through comedy. We are hardly any better than David and Linda, but at least we can reckon with what our current priorities are, and what our dreams used to be.