The Ross Brothers Made a Road&Trip Movie. They Didn’t Come Back the Same.

For filmmaking brothers Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross, every movie is a journey. The directors behind acclaimed hybrid projects like “Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets” blur the line between fiction and nonfiction, presenting real situations that have been preplanned, allowing their characters (often played by non-actors) the space to discover authentic moments. The results are often fascinating, but they require the Rosses (now both in their early 40s) to take major risks, operating on faith that the experimentation and improvisation will lead to something revelatory. The brothers find their movies along the way—to quote Sonic Youth’s “Hoarfrost,” “We’ll know where when we get there.” That sense of uncovering is even more potent in their latest film. “Gasoline Rainbow,” which opens Friday, focuses on a pivotal period in so many young American lives—the summer after high school, adulthood stretching out in front of you in all its glorious potential and anxious uncertainty. Bill and Turner worked with slightly more structure than they have in the past, hiring casting directors to help them select five first-time performers to star as versions of themselves: Makai, Micah, Nathaly, Nichole and Tony. In “Gasoline Rainbow,” the characters light out from their small town in Oregon, all packed in a beat-up van, on their way to the Pacific Ocean approximately 500 miles away. The rest of their lives will be there when they get back—this road trip is about holding onto adolescence for at least a few more days. The directors presented their cast with scenarios each day of the trip, letting the actors take it from there, and what emerges is a beautifully free exploration of how we become the people we end up as. Making lame jokes, savoring the pleasure of having no responsibilities, singing along to songs that come on the radio, the characters are presented as nothing more than themselves, the Rosses refusing to offer any strained, overarching statement about Gen Z. As always, the brothers emphasize looseness and spontaneity. Or, as Bill tells me, they’re striving “to have enough confidence about what you’re doing and what your goals are to be like, ‘Yes, I feel very comfortable taking this wild left turn.’” Those detours prove to be richly rewarding: As “Gasoline Rainbow” rolls along, these teens start to open up to each other and to the people they meet in their travels. We hear about broken homes and deep insecurities—we discover that some of their futures are far from rosy. By the time we reach the ocean, you feel that they’ve changed—that something profound has happened to them. Something profound happened to the Rosses as well. Over Zoom—Bill in Texas where they shot their 2015 bordertown saga “Western,” and Turner at home in New Orleans—they discuss that transformation, how much they relate to these journeying teens, and why they insist you have to suffer for your art.  Were you road-trip guys as kids? Turner Ross: Oh, man, we have been our entire lives. When we were growing up, our dad was going to school in Mississippi, and we were born and raised in a small town in Ohio, so every summer we had to go live in Mississippi. We got down there via a giant economy van with a desert mural on the side and a water fountain inside. That love of vans has never gone away.  I think what [the characters in our movie] are doing is something that we’ve done over and over—and still do in this life. It’s a really incredible way to connect with people, confront otherness, engage with unknown spaces. It seems like a real utility at that specific moment to re-engage with the world—also, it’s just such a rite of passage at that age. “Gasoline Rainbow” chronicles a crucial moment in a young person’s life—that summer right after graduating from high school. What did you two do that summer? Bill Ross: I worked at a restaurant. I had a girlfriend a year younger than me—I thought I was just going to stay in town and go find work and just sort of lead that life.  Turner: Summer I turned 18, Bill and I moved down to Georgia—I have never really stopped moving around and exploring places, and we had lots of adventures down there. But, really, our first big foray was leaving from Savannah and moving out to Los Angeles. Bill: This is how naive we were. We’d always made movies growing up. [Laughs, sheepishly] “Movies.” Just as a fun thing to do, never taking it seriously or thinking of it as like, “Oh, this is what I’m going to do with my life.” Where we’re from, that was so outside the realm of possibility, but as we got older, into being young adults, it was like, “Well, they make movies in Los Angeles and New York City, so we’re going to have to go to one of those two places in order to do this.” Turner: There is a reason that we love “The Muppet Movie.” [Laughs] Bill: Yeah, we went out to L.A. to get the Standard Rich and Famous Contracts. [Laughs] So Turner came into my room and he was just like, “Well, where do you want to go? New York or Los A