In the movie Everybody's Fine (out Dec. 4), Robert De Niro is Frank, a retired widower who takes an impromptu trip across the U.S. to visit his adult children (played by Kate Beckinsale, Sam Rockwell, and Drew Barrymore). But how do you make an American road movie if you're British and haven't spent much time Stateside? That was the dilemma facing Kirk Jones, the writer/director hired to remake the 1990 Italian original into a new drama for U.S. audiences. "I was very aware that I needed to do some research," Jones tells LIFE about taking his own cross-country trip to develop plot details and characters. "It was important that I saw the landscape and spoke to people, just listen to them and their accents." From New York to Las Vegas, Jones snapped photos that would help inform his movie — and ultimately convince De Niro to sign on as the star.