Miriam Byrd-Nethery

A hapless, hustling young attorney, Leo Harrigan (Ryan O'Neal), is on the run from an irate client when he falls into the hands of pioneer independent filmmaker H. H. Cobb (Brian Keith). As Harrigan begins writing for Cobb's Kinegraph Studios, he meets Kathleen (Jane Hitchcock), an aspiring actress, and falls instantly in love. Hoping to avoid the prying eyes of larger, rival production companies, Cobb hustles Harrigan off to direct several silent action films in the prairies of the Midwest. Although one of the major studios sends an enforcer, ex-alligator wrestler "Buck" Greenway (Burt Reynolds), to make trouble, after a fight with Harrigan, he agrees to join the company as its leading man. And during the filming of an action sequence, Buck and Kathleen are brought together in the basket of a runaway balloon and agree to marry. The entire crew, including Alice (Tatum O'Neal), a teenage truck driver who runs her own prop rental business, moves to Hollywood where they walk into a nickelodeon that is showing edited versions of the films they have been sending Cobb. Irate, they confront the studio tycoon and announce plans to form their own company. But the restrictions of a large studio and a romantic triangle conspire to break up the relationship until they reunite at the opening of D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation," where a new age in filmmaking is born.

A wonderful spoof of disaster films, The Big Bus is about the world's first nuclear-powered bus - a 75-ton monster on 32 enormous wheels - and its maiden journey from New York to Denver. Jockeying the world's greatest bus, of course, is the world's greatest bus driver. His co-pilot is given to sudden blackouts and has a penchant for driving on the shoulder of the road. A pair of evil-doers vow to destroy the bus at the outset, thus providing lots of hilarious suspense.

A nuclear powered bus is going Non-stop from New York to Denver and is plagued by disasters due to the machinations of a mysterious group allied with the Oil lobby.

This homage to the childhood days of the motion pictures starts in 1910, when the young attorney Leo Harrigan by chance meets a motion picture producer. Immediately he's invited to become a writer for him - the start of a sensational career. Soon he's promoted to a director and shoots one silent movie after the other in the tiny desert village Cacamonga with a small crew of actors. But the competition is hard: the patent agency sends out Buck Greenway to sabotage them. When they visit L.A., his crew is surprised by a new species: fans!