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Really, the residential areas set up the best connection between heroes and the landscape: suburb, city and country life are taken for granted that they are the places where American way of life comes to life! From Road to Madisson to Desperate Houswifes or Friends it's the landscape of intimacy.

Suburban rut 

In the suburbs, the hero endorses a common opinion with family life: breakfast, lunch, sleeping, TV, reading, hobbies, garden party, kids education, church or shopping activities. The suburbs are America and that's why they are the stars:  American Beauty, The sopranos, Beverly Hills, Six Feet Under, Malcolm, 7th heaven, Desperate housewives and many others. It's the land of two places separate and connected at the same time (an that's the whole interest): The house land (the rooms, the pool and the garden) and the house area (life with the other families). For screenwriters it's the place of the common problems: educational (Lisa and Bart in The Simpsons), couple (Revolutionary Road) or professional (Six feet Under). 

Country house: calm and surprises

On the contrary, the country emphasizes American quietness and these surprising moments. Identical to the suburbs in appearance, it's the people who change everything:  farmers in Superman or The Grapes of Wrath; outcasts of the city in Out of the past, Days of heaven or The Village; vacationer in horror films as Deliverance or Funny Games; amazing rich people in citizen Kane or Giant but also lower-middle class people in Road to Madison, Frozen River, No Country for old men, Sleepy Hollow, Bagdad Café or Fargo. For filmakers it's seems like the true America with  unformatted characters, a place of freedom and beauty. It's the American secret of the cinema: when a filmaker rediscovers the American countryside he always falls in love with it, the last great example was Cars from John Lassester about the Road 66 (he rediscovers the country during family vacations and writes the story about it). 

City apartment: a faster life

At last, it all comes down to the city flat. It's a land of contrast between the upper classes in American Psycho, Birth, Spiderman or Eyes Wide Shut and the lower classes in They live, Home Alone 2 or Gangs of New York.