Films You Need to See: GASOLINE RAINBOW

Someday we'll find it.

GASOLINE RAINBOW is my second-most-favorite film I’ve seen in 2024 alongside RIDDLE OF FIRE — in fact, I view it as a spiritual sequel or sister film. Whereas RIDDLE focuses on a tight-knit group of pre-teen children, RAINBOW focuses on a tight-knit group of young adults fresh out of high school. Both ensembles are from broken homes or single-parent families, and both films together suggest an arc with a missing chapter in the middle, the trajectory of adventurous childhood to entering the adult world to fend for yourself. When life grows more layers and becomes more complicated. When you realize you’re naked and forced to leave the garden. It’s that loss of innocence and scales falling off the eyes in the second act that doesn’t need to be told, because you and I have been there ourselves and can imagine it all too well. The only thing that kept you and me alive through it was sticking with your tribe, the family that finds you rather than births you, and the brothers or sisters you choose rather than share blood with.

Written, directed, shot, and edited by the Ross Brothers (Bill IV and Turner), GASOLINE RAINBOW is created in a loose documentary style much like their previous feature BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS (one of my top favorite films of 2020). Whereas the former film created a bar set and threw in a cast to improvise their way through a fictional telling of their own true stories, the latter sends five Oregon teenagers on the road to embark on one last adventure to the Pacific Coast before they have to get jobs and try to take it in the wider world. Tony Abuerto, Micah Bunch, Nichole Dukes, Nathaly Garcia and Makai Garza play themselves and simply take us along on their magical journey. There are shots and moments where it boggles my mind how they filmed them and how the line was drawn between any scripted storyline and invented moments while shooting. I don’t really want to know how they did it. The magic is in the fact that I’m captivated by the journey itself and I find myself there to participate in it, share it and observe it.

For me personally, this movie is like a mash-up of other beloved movies and stories of mine — it’s almost uncanny how the pop culture references and allusions to things are like a playlist of “Ken’s favorite things.” The opening voice-over is essentially an homage and summary to songs and spiritual underpinnings of THE MUPPET MOVIE, my favorite film of all time and another road movie about a group of travellers heading west. It’s almost as if The Great Gonzo himself is speaking and alluding to the same dreams and longings felt by Kermit the Frog and Company.

“Sometimes, when I look out at night and I see that light over the hills, and I just wonder what it’s like to be there. I wonder if there’s anybody out there like me thinking the same things as me. Wishing for something better. I always wonder if there’s a place somewhere for us. A place for weirdos.”

”You could get lost in a sky like that…..I’m going to go back there someday.”

Makai, the teenager who narrates this opening voice-over, laments later in the film about being the only black kid in his school community, and connects with strangers along the road who understand exactly how he feels. He finally finds other lovers and dreamers like him searching for that gasoline rainbow connection.

“Come and go with me, it’s more fun to share…”

When the teenagers crash at the home of a rough & friendly musician named Clayton and his wife Rosalind, Clayton makes references to Where the Wild Things Are and Lord of the Rings, asking his Alexa to play “The Shire” by Howard Shore as he makes breakfast. He literally models himself after Tom Bombadil, playing the role of Tolkien’s hospitable caretaker who lodges a group of hungry, weary hobbits on their hard journey.

Setting in the film in the state of Oregon and its coast gives the film more than a nod to The Goonies, even to the point of the kids waving good-bye to a ship from the beach and the film being acknowledged in the end credits.

But even with these easter egg references to things that make me go hmmm and resonate with these personal loves of mine, I observe the drinking, pot-smoking antics of these modern teens and see less of myself and more of people I’ve met along my own road. I may not relate to the same level of brokenness and self-medicating stupors as these characters, but I see in them people I know, people I’ve spoken to, loved and hung out with.

And I’ll tell you something else — the love, generosity, kindness and community expressed in these hard-partying teens, vagabonds, skaters and free spirits is something a lot of stuck-up church communities should be watching and taking notes.

What’s important about GASOLINE RAINBOW, especially in our current political climate, is also how resonant it is as an American film and a window into the young generation currently entering voting age. Nathaly in particular comes from a Mexican immigrant family and sheds tears with a stranger talking about her deported father. Much like Sean Baker’s filmography including RED ROCKET and THE FLORIDA PROJECT, these are films which highlight broken families, single parents and children, forgotten communities and people on the fringes of society. Most importantly, Baker and the Ross Brothers place them in a frame of compassion and empathy rather than exploitation or superiority. These filmmakers, like Maurice Sendak said of himself, are “in love with the world” and the wild things who live here.

There’s a song by Elbow which summarizes both films I’ve seen to date by the Ross Brothers. After the credits stopped rolling for BLOODY NOSE, EMPTY POCKETS and again for GASOLINE RAINBOW, my mind immediately went here…

I'm running out of miracles
(Oh my soul)
And the streets alive with one man shows
(Oh my soul)
The corner boys were moved along
(Oh my soul)
We're plummeting like crippled crows
(Oh my soul)

Oh long before you and I were born
Others beat these benches with their empty cups
To the night and its stars to be here and now and who we are

Another sunrise with my sad captains
With who I choose to lose my mind
And if its so we only pass this way but once
What a perfect waste of time

The BMX apothecary
(Oh my soul)
The architect of infamy
(Oh my soul)
For each and every train we missed
(Oh my soul)
The bitter little Eucharist
(Oh my soul)

Oh long before you and I were born
Others beat these benches with their empty cups
To the night and its stars to the here and now and who we are

Another sunrise with my sad captains
With who I choose to lose my mind
And if its so we only pass this way but once
What a perfect waste of time

-Elbow, SAD CAPTAINS

Life’s like a movie. Write your own ending.