Lost in America

Lost in America is a 1985 American satirical road comedy film directed by Albert Brooks and co-written by Brooks with Monica Johnson. The film stars Brooks alongside Julie Hagerty as a married couple who decide to quit their jobs and travel across America. Plot David and Linda Howard are typical 1980s yuppies in Los Angeles, dissatisfied with their bourgeois lifestyle. He works in an advertising agency and she for a department store, but after failing to receive an expected promotion and instead being asked to transfer to the firm's office in New York City, David angrily insults his boss, and he is fired. David coaxes his wife to quit her job as well and seek a new adventure. The Howards decide to sell their house, liquidate their assets, drop out of society, "like in Easy Rider", and travel the country in a Winnebago recreational vehicle. They leave Los Angeles with US$100,000 ,but their plans change drastically when Linda loses all their savings playing roulette at the Desert Inn Casino in Las Vegas, where David desperately and unsuccessfully persuades a casino manager to give the money back as a publicity gimmick. With nowhere to go, the couple quarrels at Hoover Dam, eventually arriving in small-town Safford, Arizona. David unsuccessfully applies for a delivery job at a local pharmacy and resorts to an employment agency. After a counselor obnoxiously reminds him that he was fired from his high-paying job in advertising, David accepts the best position available — as a crossing guard, taunted by local schoolchildren. Linda, meanwhile, finds employment as the assistant manager at the local Der Wienerschnitzel, working under a person half her age.