Ghost of the Highway
Ryan Clarke
Comedy Feature Screenplay
Genre: Road Trip / Dark Comedy / Drama
Setting: Texas to California, 1978
Awards: Semifinalist, ISA Emerging Screenwriters Competition
Target Audience: Adults 35-65, fans of character-driven road movies, bittersweet family comedies, period Americana, and emotionally grounded brother stories
Comps: Nebraska (family road trip and deadpan melancholy), Planes, Trains and Automobiles (comic travel friction), The Last Detail (road-worn male bonding and regret)
Logline: When two estranged brothers are forced to drive their dead father’s decrepit station wagon across the Southwest to claim his inheritance, the disastrous road trip makes them confront the abandonment, guilt, and family lies they have spent their lives outrunning.