It also starred Nicholson as the private detective in 1948 Los Angeles (and he also served as the film""s director - one of the few films he directed).Three other taglines were:"Little did this desperate, out of work actor know when he secretly auditioned for a female role that he""d become he hottest star on television...Hell, what do I got to stay around here for? I got places to go, right?"Joe""s lonely, unfulfilled youth is reflected in a series of fragmented flashbacks about his past boyhood during his cross-country rip across the American heartland, after he boards a bus toward he big city of New York.The passage of the trains on different tracks clearly represent the lives of the two protagonists whose lives ultimately move, without romance, in different directions.