Winner of several Best Documentary awards, this feature documentary explores the artistic, musical and literary resonances of the myth of the road – and especially of going off the beaten track ‐ in American lore: Westward expansion, the Dust Bowl era, hobos, post‐war suburbanization and the Beat critique of it, hitchhiking, the upheavals of the 1960s and early 1970s, and the current generation of backpackers clutching their Lonely Planet and Rough Guides. The American road ‐ from the frontier iconography of John Ford’s films through rent‐a‐car cross country itineraries of the US – has inspired poetry, art, folk music, novelists and playwrights. In Hollywood the road film is a major genre.

The thematic touchstone is the egalitarian ideal of the “open road” first expressed by poet Walt Whitman. Whitman clearly inspired Woody Guthrie through the hard traveling times of the 1930s, the purposeful meanderings of Jack Kerouac and his scruffy associates through the early post‐war years, and the adventures and misadventures of much of the 1960s generation. There is a coda on travel today. Whitman's open road, said D. H. Lawrence, was "the bravest doctrine man ever proposed to himself.’ American Road is an exploration of that doctrine in action. The road is a physical thing but it also is a metaphor for personal and national transformation. This film ultimately examines what it means to be an American, not just a wayfarer. Interviewees include poet Anne Waldman, legendary musician Tom Paley, award-winning writer Achy Obejas, cultural critic Russell Jacoby, novelist John Nichols and many other savvy travelers.