Random Acts, Coast to Coast

On the new Fox Reality Channel series "Amazing Adventures of a Nobody," airing Mondays at 2 p.m., British filmmaker Leon Logothetis travels from New York's Times Square to Los Angeles's Hollywood sign on just $5 a day. With no car and no food, Logothetis has to look to his fellow man for eats, sleeps and transportation. One surprise: People in the United States are more generous than those in United Kingdom, where the filmmaker pulled a similar stunt in 2006. Post staff writer John Maynard spoke with Logothetis by telephone from his Los Angeles office.

Q. How did you come up with the idea for the series?

A Have you ever seen the movie "The Motorcycle Diaries" [about a motorcycle road trip that the revolutionary Che Guevara took through South America]? Che Guevara was just picking up random people, and I was inspired by the kind of experiences he had. . . . I wanted to put myself in a situation where I had to rely totally on random acts of kindness, like a social experiment of sorts.

How did the U.S. experience differ from the U.K. experience?

The level of generosity, the depths of people's kindness and warmth of heart was just unbelievable. I was traveling from Indianapolis to Chicago, and I met this woman in a hotel in Indianapolis and she offered to give me the keys to her house in Chicago. She said, "I'm going to be at a wedding in Indianapolis. You look like an honest guy. Here are the keys. . . . There's waffles in the fridge."

This kind of stuff happened over and over again. I actually thought it was going to be a lot harder. It was like riding a wave of generosity all across America, with a few blips along the way.

Where were the biggest jerks?

The bigger towns were much more difficult. When I arrived in New York in Times Square, I questioned just what I was doing. . . . People really didn't care about me that much at all. It was very difficult to get anything out of them.

The only true time I felt threatened was when I was in Indianapolis. I was walking downtown at night, and I was stalked by this guy. . . . He wouldn't let me leave. He didn't threaten me physically, he didn't put a hand on me, but he was certainly being aggressive.

Did you capture that on film?

We didn't. . . . It was too dangerous.

Tell me about that night in the Route 66 motel.

I was walking around Gallup, New Mexico -- which is an interesting place, let's put it that way -- and I had managed to get this free room off this English guy who was living in and owned a hotel in Gallup. I walked into the room, and there was blood all over the doorway. . . . But it was a free room, and I was thankful for that. I hardly slept at all, and I put all the furniture up against the door.

Was there any footage that you couldn't put on the show?

There was a scene where a guy picked me up and . . . he was chugging down a beer. . . . I just didn't want to put that in the show. The show is fun. It is really just based on entertainment. . . . If it can enlighten some people and show the good side of others, then great, that's what it was made for.

Are you going to do this again?

I was planning in November to travel from Paris to Moscow for five euros a day, but I was told that if you're caught at night in certain areas in Russia, you may very well freeze to death. So we're actually doing Paris to Moscow in the spring of 2008. What's more interesting is that they don't speak English. If I actually think of what I'm going to do, I get anxious. So I don't think about it.