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Roadrunner: Radio On, Road Movies and the A4
Roadrunner is a book about a film about a road. The film in question, Radio On , was made in 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher came to power in the UK, and from its initial marginal status (“a genre of one, a cul-de-sac in British film history”) it has become an oft-cited cult movie, due in no small part to its celebrated soundtrack (Bowie, Kraftwerk, Ian Dury, Devo etc) and its echoes of J.G Ballard and New German Cinema.
Much of Radio On takes places on the road, and the road in this case is the A4 between London and Bristol. So the subject of the book is also that road, its history, its cultural and psycho-geographical associations, a large part of which is connected to the film. But Roadrunner is about much more than one film or one it’s about all road movies (American, British, French, German etc) and all roads. It's about car culture and its free-loading cousin, hitch-hiking. It’s about Britain’s cultural relationship with Germany, as expressed through film and popular music. It’s about modernity versus antiquity. It’s about 180 pages long. Ultimately, it's about the interconnectedness of J.G. Ballard and Hawkwind, Banksy and Bowie, Nick Drake and Werner Herzog, Nagisa Oshima and the Wurzels.
By combining an accessible approach to film criticism with a fan’s enthusiasm, a social perspective with droll humour, Roadrunner can be said to exist, like its subject, in a genre of one.
Much of Radio On takes places on the road, and the road in this case is the A4 between London and Bristol. So the subject of the book is also that road, its history, its cultural and psycho-geographical associations, a large part of which is connected to the film. But Roadrunner is about much more than one film or one it’s about all road movies (American, British, French, German etc) and all roads. It's about car culture and its free-loading cousin, hitch-hiking. It’s about Britain’s cultural relationship with Germany, as expressed through film and popular music. It’s about modernity versus antiquity. It’s about 180 pages long. Ultimately, it's about the interconnectedness of J.G. Ballard and Hawkwind, Banksy and Bowie, Nick Drake and Werner Herzog, Nagisa Oshima and the Wurzels.
By combining an accessible approach to film criticism with a fan’s enthusiasm, a social perspective with droll humour, Roadrunner can be said to exist, like its subject, in a genre of one.
182 pages, Paperback
Published September 9, 2022
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November 26, 2024
A succinct recollection of the great Chris Petit film Radio On along with parts about JG Ballard, Hawkwind, David Bowie and more. The author loves the movie but isn’t above some condescension. Overall a really well written and detailed book about said movie, the British highways and road movies. At some point he likens Radio On to Eraserhead and Alice in the Cities. Radio On is a mildly obscure film that deserves a bigger audience.
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