Edward Asner

Oliver Cook's life is conflicted. A happy simple life vs. fame & fortune. When Oliver travels to Spring Manor, he is confronted by a mysterious caretaker named Jack. Jack gifts Oliver a bottle of pills, a miracle drug that doesn't exist in this world. Moreover, he hands him an apple of temptation. Oliver chooses rich & famous When his daughter vanishes, there is no material item that he wouldn't trade to get her back. But this deal with the devil has a no return policy, or does it?

This documentary explores the artistic, musical and literary resonances of the mystique of the road - and especially of going off the beaten track - in American lore. The 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. American Road ultimately probes the meaning of what it is to be an American, not just a wayfarer.—anonymous