agendamagazine “To do justice to the book, we sometimes had to diverge from it. A little bit like a jazz-musician who lets go of the melody only to find it all the better later on.” Perfectionist Walter Salles worked on the film adaptation of On the Road with heart and soul. It is one of the most influential books of post-war North-American culture.
In Cannes, On the Road was deemed too light to win any awards. The film, based on the infamous Beat novel by Jack Kerouac is neither spectacular nor unforgettable, but nevertheless compels admiration. With skill, passion, and insight, the Brazilian aesthete and king of road movies Walter Salles has translated the spiritual sex, drugs, jazz, and literature travels of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty into beautiful images.
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I was not surprised to see that Kristen Stewart can act, but Garrett Hedlund did surprise me. How did you end up casting the actor from the dull movie Tron?
Salles: The casting was done six years ago. Garrett Hedlund was one of the first to audition. He came straight from his farm in Minnesota; he’d had to take one bus after the other and had spent the night in nude bars. After two brilliant readings, he asked to submit a text about On the Road. We were struck dumb by his insights. He also made pertinent remarks about wandering and the insecurity of youth.
Kristen Stewart was a lucky break. I ran into Gustavo Santaolalla, the composer of Diarios de motocicleta, and Alejandro Iñárritu, who had just seen the first edit of Into the Wild by Sean Penn. They claimed to have found my Marylou – a young actress I had never heard of: Kristen Stewart. I met her and she told me that she kept On the Road on her nightstand and that she knew Marylou intimately.
To hard core fans, On the Road is not just another book but a Bible.
Salles: We were all connected by passion. We didn’t care about audience numbers, we just wanted to transfer our passion for the book onto film reels. Without passion, it is impossible to survive a hundred thousand kilometres. Cities have become trivialised in the US. The centres are dead. Little communities have formed in the margins, but they are all identical. The “McDonald’s- and Wall-Mart-isation” of the architecture and geography of the US forced us to spend a long time looking for good locations. A small group of us travelled the whole route together so that in the spirit of Kerouac, we could look for the last boundary. Either consciously or subconsciously, the characters in the book are looking for what remains of the American dream. On the Road is about the end of the road and the end of territorial expansion. What still remains to be discovered? That is the big question. Jorge Luis Borges thought literature interesting when it named things that were not yet named. Those young writers and poets took to the road to find the as yet unfound. Sal makes notes of everything. Is there still land to be discovered? Are there still stories to be told? These questions are more relevant now than ever. Read more at source.
On the Road ●●●
US, 2012, dir.: Walter Salles, act.: Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, 140 min.
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