ON THE ROAD directed by Walter Salles, written by José Rivera from the book by Jack Kerouac, with Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart and Kirsten Dunst. An Alliance Films release. 125 minutes. Opens Friday (January 18). For venues and times, see listings. See review.
Kristen Stewart swears a lot. This instantly makes her a human being rather than the tabloid icon she’s unwillingly become at age 22 thanks to the Twilight saga and its constant media presence.
Stewart’s at the Toronto Film Festival with On The Road, an adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s classic beat novel in which she plays Marylou, the sexually adventurous child bride of the charismatic Dean Moriarty. (Yes, there are nude scenes. No, they aren’t explicit.) She’s been paired with Garrett Hedlund, who plays Moriarty, and the two of them are at their most animated when discussing the freewheeling, improvisational style director Walter Salles encouraged during the rehearsal process.
“I tortured myself in the most amazing, wonderful way for four weeks,” she says, “and then as soon as the four weeks were done it was like, ‘You need to stop thinking, because if you don’t you’re gonna regret this entire experience. You’re gonna look back and say: I fucked up. I thought too much.'”
Hedlund credits the resources that were made available to the actors over what turned out to be a very long pre-production period. Both he and Stewart signed onto On The Road in 2007, but it took four years to get to the first day of principal photography. Fortunately, that just let everyone soak up more material.
“We’d gotten so many wonderful stories,” Hedlund says. “From real-life characters like Al Hinkle, who was in the book as Ed Dunkel Neal [Cassady]’s son told me a lot of wonderful stories, we’d read plenty of stories from Carolyn Cassady’s Off The Road, wonderful stories from LuAnne Henderson’s audiotapes. We always had stories to go for if there was space for improvisational infusion.”
Stewart says the fact that she was playing a real person – the aforementioned Henderson, who was the basis for Kerouac’s fictional Marylou – made her a little more careful about her own improvisations.
“It’s always fun to have freedom and have, like, happy accidents where you go, ‘Wow, that’s cool, I didn’t expect that,'” she says. “But when you’re playing somebody who’s [actually] existed, you know….” And she stops herself, rethinking her position on the fly.
“I don’t want to discredit what it feels like to play a character who’s been written by somebody,” she continues. “You feel just as responsible to the writer and to everyone who’s been affected by that character.”
There is no doubt in my mind that she’s referring to Bella Swan. And I have to respect her instincts given how many millions of people worship the Twilight movies and could turn on her in a second for a valid observation taken out of context, it’s the savvy thing to do. But it’s also crap, and she knows it, because as soon as she’s finished that statement, Stewart returns to her real point and her energy shoots right back up.
“I’ve played Joan Jett,” she says, “and because she was on set every day I couldn’t improv. I couldn’t. Everything I said, I spoke to her about it. You know – you can’t put words in their mouths unless you know. Unless you really feel it, and it’s coming from the right place.”
Interview Clips
Kristen Stewart on On The Road’s improvisational shoot:
Garrett Hedlund and Stewart on the skills of director of photography Eric Gauthier:
Hedlund on the wait for the movie to actually start shooting:
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