Where the Buffalo Roam is the prototype for such later Potter ventures as Moonlight on the Highway and Rain on the Roof, dramas that explore the psychology of the disturbed adolescent. Willy, a somewhat fragile but imaginative teenager, escapes from the dreariness of his working-class home in an industrial town by fantasizing he is the cowboy Shane, Alan Ladd's mythic creation. Potter juxtaposes the harsh realities of parents and school with clips of old American westerns that suggest Willy's private world of heroics, a world that ultimately betrays him. For Potter, the movie clips are not nostalgic but an incisive device for defining character. The ethos of Hollywood films, the romantic gestures, the codes of conduct, have infiltrated the very core of Willy's being. This early work anticipates Pennies from Heaven by employing popular culture as a palliative for a dreary existence.