USA: Writer-director Sean Penn takes on the true story of a young man's journey communing with the wilderness and coming out enlightened, yet losing his life

Record ID: 220572

  • Title: USA: Writer-director Sean Penn takes on the true story of a young man's journey communing with the wilderness and coming out enlightened, yet losing his life
  • Date: 20th September 2007
  • Summary: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES (SEPTEMBER 18, 2007) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF EXTERIOR DIRECTOR'S GUILD OF AMERICA "INTO THE WILD" PREMIERE VARIOUS OF "INTO THE WILD" CAST POSING FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS
  • Embargoed: 5th October 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Usa
  • Country: USA
  • Reuters ID: LVA8UBEGFTMKUQFCLM8G3XKV46WL
  • Story Text: Making its Los Angeles premiere on Tuesday (September 17) was director/actor Sean Penn's latest film, "Into the Wild" based on the popular book of the same name.
    The movie, adapted from the Jon Krakauer book, tells the true story of 22-year-old Christopher McCandless, played by Emile Hirsch who abandoned his possessions and traveled America before living and ultimately dying in an abandoned city bus in the Alaskan wilderness.
    "He is a terrific director, Sean and you know I think the movie really hits on all cylinders in that the visual of it is really effective in telling the story. That the acting and the performances are really effective, the editing, the music . I think he really uses the art form in many different ways and that's really effective with the type of piece that this is,"
    said Vince Vaughn, who portrays Wayne Westerberg in the film.
    Using the book as a guide, the filmmakers went to the locations it described. They studied photos that McCandless took -- photos discovered by his family on undeveloped film after his death -- and matched up mountains and ranges as best they could. And as much as they could, they went to the same spots as McCandless did, experiencing the harsh desert conditions of Lake Mead, Nevada, and the swamp-muck of springtime in Alaska.
    "He is very, very intelligent I think I could listen to him talk forever. I think one of the differences that separates Sean from other directors, not just actor-directors, there is a skill in actor-directors that I am beginning to find there is a through line to. But he listens, Sean listens, listens to the questions, he listen to the answers, he listens to the scene," said Marcia Gay Harden, who portrays Billie McCandless in the film.
    The story first came to national attention in the fall of 1992, when the body of an unidentified young man was found in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness after apparently he had starved to death.
    The movie shot in 2006 from late April-November in a schedule that tried to balance the seasons described in the book and Hirsch's weight loss as McCandless starves.
    "You know I saw the 20/20 episode when I was about 8 or 9 years old and I immediately connected with the idea of someone... I didn't connect at all with Chris McCandless because I couldn't believe someone would just go out into the wild on their own and live out there. I mean the courage to do that; I mean to a kid that's unthinkable you know for me at the time. Someone that goes out on their own; I don't know that just seems alien, " said Emile Hirsch, who portrays Christopher McCandless in the film.
    Each strand of his journey is woven into Sean Penn's screen adaptation of Jon Krakauer's acclaimed bestseller, Into The Wild, which is as much about the insatiable yearning for family, home and connection as it is the search for truth and happiness.
    "Well I think it is going to be interesting and you know from having seen his films before you can kind of have a certain expectation but then I read this book. So applying it to the book you sort of are just I don't know what to expect. I have to say "The Crossing Guard" is like one of my favorite films of all time so I am pretty excited," said actress Christina Ricci on the arrival line.
    McCandless' quest took him from the wheat fields of South Dakota to a renegade trip down the Colorado River to the non-conformists' refuge of Slab City, California, and beyond.
    "It hit me like nothing else I had ever read. I thought to myself 'what it is I want to say? How do I want to say it? ' This is it," Penn said before going into the screening.
    Along the way, he encountered a series of colorful characters at the very edges of American society who shaped his understanding of life and whose lives he, in turn, changed.
    In the end, he tested himself by heading alone into the wilds of the great North, where everything he had seen and learned and felt came to a head in ways he never could have expected.
    The production used actual homeless people for the downtown Los Angeles shelter scene, giving the transients food and a fee and making a donation to the area. At a hippie commune McCandless resided at called Slab City, the production engaged locals as extras and actors.
    "It was kind of a gut reaction. I saw "The Pledge", which is the movie I think he made in 2001 and something about that, and who he is, and what he said, and I just had a sense he could do it and he did," said Krakauer, writer of the "Into The Wild" book on which Penn based the film.
    Pearl Jam leader Eddie Vedder, a fellow surfer and good friend of Penn, created the soundtrack for the new movie .
    The film will be released in Los Angeles and New York on September 21.
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