A rich girl steals her dad's Rolls Royce and heads off to Las Vegas to get married. However, her angry parents, a jealous suitor, and a bunch of reward seekers are determined to stop her.

A Midwestern ingenue arrives in Hollywood to try her luck as an actress. An incompetent agent hooks her up with a production company which specializes in low budget B-movie fare, which starts being plagued by strange, deadly accidents.

Built in 1942 by a maverick film preservationist, this small Los Angeles theater championed silent film at the very moment when the Hollywood studios across town were busily destroying their nitrate inventories. With hard chairs, phonograph-record accompaniments, and mostly original vintage prints, the dingy mom-and-pop operation was nonetheless a palace to the fanatical few who became its loyal audience.

Coy "Cannonball" Buckman and his blazing red Pontiac enter the Trans-America Grand Prix, an underground road race spanning the continent in which there are no rules, no speed limits and no heed for the law. En route, Buckman jockeys with an international ensemble of racers for a $100,000 purse. But there are none more important than Cade Redman, his direct competition for a guaranteed spot on the elite Modern Motors racing team.