Auto Center Drive

Whilst in Weit Weit Weg Bjørn Melhus dreams of America from Sasnak – an acronym for Dorothy’s hometown, Kansas – in Auto Center Drive he has arrived there. Teenager Jimmy, the All American Rebel, stalks his way through the Californian desert to meet idols of his youth such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin, all of whom he plays himself. Protected by another mythical screen character, the silent, terrifying bodyguard, he seems unable to make any contact: dreams remain unattainable in the homeland of dreams; the fantasised world of childhood is irredeemable. Dorothy, the one now abandoned, appears only marginally, as a homeless alcoholic. Her wish to return home, so often repeated in Weit Weit Weg, has not been fulfilled: “there is no place like home”.