Made in the USA

Director: Ken Friedman
Screenwriters: Ken Friedman

Institute History

  • 1988 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Made in U.S.A, is an environmentalist’s Easy Rider, a road movie across America the not-so-beautiful. Despite its off-beat humor and real locations, the film ultimately has the quality of a chilling, contemporary fable.

High-tailing it out of Centralia, Pennsylvania, where coal fires burn beneath deserted streets, Tuck (Christopher Penn) and Dar (Adrian Pasdar) head west for California. Using a series of stolen cars and pilfered groceries the two drift to Times Beach, Missouri, another town destroyed by environmental disregard. There they meet Annie (Lori Singer) and continue westward with a string of more car thefts. They divert long enough to return a young Indian girl to her reservation, a land left barren by a legacy of uranium mining. Their final arrival on a California beach offers something other than what immediately meets their eyes..

— Tony Safford

Screening Details

Credits

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