Lost in America 2019

The film follows two archetypal characters from 1980s Los Angeles: David and Linda Howard, a couple firmly rooted in a bourgeois, city-dwelling lifestyle. David works in an advertising agency, while Linda is employed at a department store. When David fails to land a promised promotion and is instead told to transfer to New York, he blasts his boss and is fired. In a moment of bravado, he convinces Linda to quit her job as well and embark on a new kind of adventure. The narrative begins with a drive toward freedom, and the audience is invited to observe the couple as they renegotiate their identities outside the familiar confines of their urban world. The film even features Jackie Speier as Self, a small but telling appearance that grounds the story in a broader social landscape.

They decide to liquidate almost everything they own, sell their house, and abandon their conventional lives to travel the country in a Winnebago rather than chasing the rebellious image of Harley choppers. They leave Los Angeles with US $145,000 and a plan to discover something truer and more spontaneous, chasing a dream that feels borrowed from cinema itself. Their bold plan is as much about escaping routine as it is about testing the limits of personal independence.

Yet fate has a stubborn way of intruding on such plans. Linda loses all their savings gambling at the Desert Inn Casino in Las Vegas, and David’s attempts to salvage the money turn into a desperate plea for a publicity gimmick rather than a solution. The couple’s dream begins to fray as money disappears and uncertainty grows, casting a pall over their ideal of self-reliance. The tension between aspiration and reality becomes a persistent undercurrent through their journey.

With nowhere to go, the couple quarrels at Hoover Dam, a symbolic checkpoint that marks the turning point of their odyssey. Linda decides to hitchhike a ride, and a driver later leaves David with a bloody nose, signaling that the world may be less forgiving than their fantasies. A motorcycle cop on a Harley arrives on the scene, accusing them of speeding—83 mph on a country road. They manage to talk their way out of the fine by invoking Easy Rider and referencing the recent 1984 film The Terminator, illustrating how pop culture becomes a practical tool in moments of crisis.

Their path leads them to the small town of Safford, Arizona, where their plans to reinvent themselves run into the stubborn realities of ordinary jobs. David applies fruitlessly for a delivery position at a local pharmacy and then visits an employment agency, only to learn that there are no $100,000-per-year openings in the area. He takes the best available option—a crossing guard, where he’s taunted by local schoolchildren. Meanwhile, Linda finds work as the assistant manager at a Der Wienerschnitzel, overseen by a much younger supervisor, adding a sharp contrast to their roles and amplifying the sense of being out of sync with the world they had hoped to join.

Within days, the Howard’s experiment has them living in a trailer park, nearly broke, and working modest, unsatisfying jobs that offer little relief from the daily grind. The couple begins to see the allure of their former life dimming, and they reach a collective decision: it might be wiser to return to what they know. They steer the Winnebago toward New York, with David pleading for his old job back. The story closes on a pragmatic note: he is rehired, but with a substantial pay cut of about 31% along with better medical benefits. Even more importantly, the end card reveals that the two are now expecting their first child, a hopeful new chapter that reframes their entire journey and underlines the unpredictable twists of pursuing freedom.