“Laughing, Screaming, Crying with Joy” | Bill and Turner Ross, Gasoline Rainbow
Courtesy of Department of Motion Pictures.
With Gasoline Rainbow, celebrated directorial duo the Ross Brothers (Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets and Contemporary Color) turn their pioneering hybrid approach to the cinematic road trip.
Screening Wednesday, May 8, at 4:30 p.m. at the Music Box Theatre (get tickets here), as part of this year’s Chicago Critics Film Festival, the film is an expansive portrait of the new generation as told in their own words, undoubtedly candid yet deeply loving.
With high school in the rearview, five teenagers from small-town Oregon decide to embark on one last adventure. Piling into a van with a busted tail light, their mission is to make it to a place they’ve never been—the Pacific coast, five hundred miles away. Their plan, in full: “Fuck it.”
Courtesy of Department of Motion Pictures.
By van, boat, train, and foot, their improvised odyssey takes them through desert wilderness, industrial backwaters, and city streets. Along the way, they encounter outsiders from the fringes of the American West and discover that the contours of their lives will be set by trails they blaze themselves. They are forgotten kids from a forgotten town, but they have their freedom and they have each other, hurtling toward an unknowable future—and The Party at the End of the World.
Ahead of Gasoline Rainbow screening at the Chicago Critics Film Festival, Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross graciously took the time to answer this year’s CCFF filmmaker questionnaire. Below, their jointly authored responses.
How did you first become interested in filmmaking? What was your path toward directing your first film?
I don’t think we knew what “filmmaking” was, when we first started messing around with our mom’s video camera as kids. It was just fun to get our friends together and make stuff. While we gradually learned what directors did in a professional sense, we still make movies with our friends because it’s fun.
What inspired you to make the film you're bringing to the festival?
We started talking about it during the COVID lockdown. I think there was a text between us: “Who does this suck for the most?” We landed on teenagers. To be that age and wanting to get out of the house anyway—and then not be allowed to. That’s an awful scenario. That led us to talking about our upbringing, and it went from there.
Bill Ross IV, co-director of Gasoline Rainbow. (Courtesy of MUBI)
Tell us about a film that you consider a guiding influence (whether it has informed your overarching vision as a filmmaker, directly informed the title you're bringing to the festival, or both).
The Muppet Movie has infected our personas since we saw it as kids. It not only inspires our senses of humor and our approach to life, but also our filmmaking. You may not see it on the surface of our films, but it’s always there.
Tell us about a location that's held significance to the film you're bringing to the festival: a setting where filming took place, a geographic area that provided a source of inspiration, or another type of space that comes to mind for you in thinking about the film. What made this place so special?
My Own Private Idaho is a very special film for us. When we were first thinking about this film and where to put it, we flew to Oregon, and one of the first places we went was the middle-of-nowhere road where River Phoenix stands at the beginning and end of that film. We sat there for some time and talked about what the film could be. Eventually, we brought our cast there, for what would become one of the loveliest moments in the film.
Turner Ross, co-director of Gasoline Rainbow. (Courtesy of MUBI)
The theatrical experience brings us together to celebrate artistic experience and expand our horizons as human beings. Tell us about a memorable theatrical experience from your life.
When we were making Western on the US/Mexico border, we took a bunch of ranch hands and cowboys to the movies. They rarely left the ranch, but we persuaded them that day that they had to. We saw Jackass 3-D, and they absolutely lost their shit. We love those movies anyway, but it was like a religious experience for them. They were running up and down the aisles laughing, screaming, crying with joy.
Gasoline Rainbow screens Wednesday, May 8, at 4:30 p.m, as part of the Chicago Critics Film Festival (May 3–9, at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago). Get your tickets now.