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In Reply to: RE: I Survived Into the Wild. posted by clarkjohnsen on October 09, 2007 at 09:34:05
There's a great article about John Krakauer and Sean Penn getting this story into a movie. It took quite some doing. Penn wanted to make it ten years ago, but the McCandless family wouldn't go for it. It took Krakauer a couple of years working with the family to just get the book into print. He did that by slowly winning their confidence that he would do an honest and respectful job with the truth as revealed to him.Penn also respected their wishes to not make a film without their approval. Finally, ten years later, the family contacted him and said to go ahead. What changed their minds is that they heard somebody might make an unauthorized movie of the story. If was going to happen, they would rather have Penn do it.
Penn wanted to shoot it in Utah to save a buck. Krakauer went ballistic when he heard that and told Penn that the movie would suck if not filmed in the Alaska Range. Up to that point, Penn had never been in Alaska. The terrain and mountains are a big part of the events and the story. Penn shot it on location, thus battling the short season and additional costs to make it authentic. I have not seen the movie nor read the book, but I have lived in Alaska for thirty years. I can tell you without hesitancy that Utah is no Alaska. It was a wise investment.
As Alaskans, we saw many freaky hippy dropout types wandering up to find whatever is there to find. Most came with stupid notions of what it would be like, trying to leave their past behind and just drop out. They got little respect from the residents, although most of us were there for similar variations on the theme. The state is like that. We called the low-end of the spectrum "end-of-the-roaders". Most left after they got their asses kicked by the environment, economics, lifestyle, et al.
Was the kid selfish? Sure maybe, as a teenager will be, but was he also selfless? Also yes, as he wandered trying to lose himself and join with everything else in Buddhist fashion. The turning point for Krakauer in writing the story was when Chis McCandless's sister finally confided a family secret that made Chris start his odyssey. His father had a previous marriage, and continued to "see" his former spouse on the west coast and fathering more kids with her after Chis and his sister were well into their teens or late pre-teens. That's a magnum betrayal, and it fucked up his head. As his sister explained, it messed up hers as well, but she didn't have a flambouyant death to write a book about.
I'm looking forward to seeing the flick. I know the region and the kid's perspective. I hope Penn did a credible job.
Edits: 10/11/07Follow Ups:
They shot everything on location except for the Alaska stuff. I mean... they shot it in Alaska but not right where the bus was.
From Outside magazine's article on the film...
"Of all the locations Penn had to scout, the remote spot in Alaska where McCandless spent his final months proved to be the most difficult to replicate. He started by visiting the real bus, which still sits in the wilderness west of Healy.
PENN: We went in the winter on snow machines. [The bus was] in exactly the same state. The most impacting thing is that [McCandless's] boots are still sitting there on the floor and his pants are still there folded, with the patches he sewed into them. As a story that I'd followed for so long, that was a pretty big moment... It was very moving, but I was also there to work. I knew I wasn't going to shoot there. It would have been obnoxious, a kind of rape of the area to have a whole crew there. I was going there to make a pilgrimage but also to find a reference. It affirmed for me that what I had in my head was quite accurate. Our place is an approximation.
We had a scout by the name of John Jabaley—he was the point man to find our location. We searched for over a month. It was a ton of time walking in the snow and trudging and getting cold and wet and frustrated. I was getting to the point where I was wanting to take it out on John, because we hadn't found what I wanted. But that night he came and said, "I think I might have found it." So we took snowmobiles, and as we approached I could see that this is what I'd had in mind. The hill from the river was dead on. And just as we got to the top, where we eventually placed our bus, there were three moose. And I just said, "This is it."
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
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I'll probably see it because Penn screws up but he does so in interesting ways, as a director.
You really should put a "SPOILER" heading in a post in which you give away critical parts of a film!
It said JK worked closely (and slowly) with them on the book - to convince them of his honesty and probably to gain their trust and have them open up - and that they initially decided not to have the movie made and then 10 years later, when it was going to made by someone other than Penn, they decided to have it made.The reason they initally rejected the film was because the mother had a dream in which the son said he didn't want it made. She told Sean Penn about it and he said... to paraphrase... "If I didn't respect dreams I wouldn't be making movies."
Sounds like you're in danger of letting those couple of paragraphs in the New Yorker taint your perception of this film.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
contacts with the family.
As a former reporter, I never was "trusted" by a subject because they knew I'd not work to get their approval: I served a different master as should Penn.
That means that Penn, if he wished, could cast the young man as a delusional, egotistical little pig who only thought of himself, bringing his miserably short life to an end after having done absolutely nothing for anyone, including himself.
A stockbroker that takes a few hours a week to help out in a soup kitchen is far more worthwhile.
Or the guy who got gobbled up by the bears; he died trying, no matter how miserably, to save those animals.
I'll go with an open mind to the work because I've surprised myself plenty, previously. One can, after all, appreciate a work of art and despise the protagonist: that's the difference between life and art, right?
of the product (book or movie).
I haven't read or heard anything that even suggests they had final approval on anything.
"You can safely assume you have created God in your own image when he hates all the same people you do."
decided to: you seem to be a tad naive here for arguments sake.
Penn knew what he had to do, though to base it upon K's book he probably had to be somewhat true to it.
Why would someone need the family's approval at all?
I don't know why you seem to come to a halt on the adjective "final."
If they approve, they approve and they participate. Penn felt he needed their blessing which a guy like Herzog, a far more accomplished film maker, never did in his many documentaries.
ac
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