Towards the end of The Road, John Hillcoat’s faithful (and therefore powerful) adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece of the same name, the man pulls out some decrepit pages from an old road map to show his son they’re not far from the coast.
Both in the book and the film no place names are ever mentioned, but judging from the coastline on the map it looked like Texas to me. I didn’t check it out until my most recent viewing, when I paused and tried to spot a place name and saw Port Lavaca, which indeed turned out to be Texas.
I played back until the beginning of this shot, when I recognized the town of Cuero and shortly after suddenly uttered the words “you gotta be fucking kidding” – or something similar.
There it was: the man’s finger pointing at the start of the route they had taken. Though a bit hard to see, it points directly towards the small town of Westhoff. This insignificant spot on the map has always fascinated me – it being my family’s name ‘n all. Even though there’s absolutely nothing to be seen there (thank you, Google Street View), it’s still high up my ‘to visit’ list. To see it show up in one of my favourite films is just marvellous. And maybe just a tiny bit uncanny…