The Journey
Interdependence
There’s an aha! moment in The Journey, and thankfully it comes early enough in the movie that it keeps your attention, keeps you involved in the rest of what is to come. We see Eric Saperston, apprentice Deadhead, owner of a bright yellow Volkswagen minibus, preparing to leave on a cross-country voyage of self discovery. He somehow manages to talk himself into an interview with Jimmy Carter; they sit down, talk about life and suchlike. Eric comes to the aha! moment soon afterwards; he realizes that he should have had a camera with him, should have immortalized the words of wisdom he heard, should have shared it with others. In other words, he makes the decision, right there in someone’s Atlanta living room, to be a filmmaker. And that’s kind of cool.
It’s one thing to make a decision like that; quite another thing to follow through on it. The Journey is, in a way, Saperston’s journey from being an aimless soul to having the goal of making a movie, from being a wandering generality to a meaningful specific. That he’s working on this goal makes The Journey fascinating; that he doesn’t quite realize it himself makes it maddening.
The concept is simple enough. Take one part reality TV, like Road Rules, with young people roaming across the country in search of America or wisdom or what have you. (Saperston and his crew even run into an MTV crew filming Road Rules, and even manage to poach one of the staff.) One part classic Americana road trip; John Steinbeck and Travels with Charley, Jack Kerouac and Charles Kuralt out On The Road, William Least Heat Moon out on the Blue Highways. And then add to that one part Barbara Walters, with Saperston working the phones and working the faxes, trying to get the “get”, the interviews that make the movie about something more than a bunch of twenty-somethings and a dog in an ancient VW bus.
What makes The Journey work, to the extent that it works at all, is Saperston’s genius. He is not a genius filmmaker, by any means. (One of the drearier parts of the movie is his running battles with David, the semi-competent cameraman.) He’s definitely not a genius interviewer. What he is, though, is a marketing and PR genius. He’s able to magically conjure checks from major companies, seemingly from out of nowhere. From being a one-man show, selling cheese sandwiches for a dollar in rest stops, he suddently has financing for a crew and cameras and gasoline and cappuchino.
It’s a skill that helps him tremendously in getting interview subjects. The way Saperston works his network, getting people as diverse as Ann Richards and Billy Crystal to appear in his movie, is nothing short of breathtaking. And he does this in the nicest, most polite way possible — no horrid guerilla-movie tactics here. The Journey wants to believe it’s a movie that teaches valuable life lessons; it succeeds in teaching some of them, and these are the value of persistence and networking and creativity and tenacity.
For example, early on in the movie, Henry Winkler gives Saperston a giant plastic pencil, almost as tall as he is. Saperston totes the pencil with him on all his interviews with some surprisingly elite Hollywood times. It’s a good-luck charm, but it’s something more; it identifies him and breaks the ice. When people know you’re the guy with Henry Winkler’s giant pencil, they tend to remember you. You gotta have a gimmick.
When The Journey plays to Saperston’s strengths, it’s an interesting, quirky documentary. He’s clearly talented, honest, and often engaging, and he makes the movie watchable and interesting, up to a point. Unfortunately, Saperston has significant weaknesses as well, and they play a significantly larger role.
The worst part is that he has no narrative gift to speak of; The Journey is ostensibly about storytelling, but it does nothing of the sort. It just bumbles along, never settling on one thought or one theme for very long. At times, it’s about bridging the “generation gap”, but it’s unclear if this is the movie’s real purpose or (more likely) a way for Saperston to scam a free helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. At times, it’s about twentysomething alienation and depression. At times, it’s just about having fun. The movie just runs off on too many directions at once. It’s kind of like watching a golden retriever chase a ball around a yard; you can tell he’s having fun, but he’s not getting much accomplished.
Also, The Journey spends a lot of time interviewing people that aren’t famous or successful, or have any particular words of wisdom. There are too many detours along the way, too many pointless encounters with Kinko’s managers or old college roommates or older married couples for there to be any real coherence or point to the movie. (Saperston also spends a lot of time dealing with the mechanics that service his aging VW Microbus; getting a $1100 bill for an engine rebuild teaches you a lot more about life than any conversation with random people ever could.)
Early on, one of the corporate CEOs funding this extended road trip points out that one of the problems people have is not asking for help. There’s nothing wrong with The Journey that some professional help couldn’t cure, in the form of a screenwriter or an editor or some professional someone to make all of this make sense. One of the things that all of us learn on our individual journeys is the power of interdependence; that all of us need to help one another and take advantage of each other’s strengths. No matter how smart and talented we are, we can’t do it alone, none of us can. The Journey shows, clearer than anything else can, that even the most bright and talented person can’t create a movie on their own. Saperston has a good idea, and does his best to pull it off, but it doesn’t quite work. The movie’s energy and daring are advantages, and even its lack of skill or craftsmanship can be endearing. But a little bit of professionalism, here and there, would have helped it a great deal, and that’s just missing.
The real problem with The Journey is that Saperston still doesn’t seem to get this. The climax of The Journey shows his reconciliation with his parents, which is fine from his perspective, but it doesn’t provide the audience with a sense of closure. We also see an epilogue showing what the rest of the crew is doing now, but all we hear about Saperston is that his bright yellow VW is sitting under a tarp, somewhere in The Greater Atlanta Metro Area, waiting for the next adventure. The only reason to stick with the long rambles of The Journey is to see whether Saperston learns anything along the way, but we really never see that happen. Which is a pity. Hopefully, the next installment of his personal journey will turn out to be more worthwhile, or at least more coherent.