What inspired you to make this film?
SEAN PENN: The quickest answer is Jon Krakauer's book. I bought the book and I found myself reading it cover-to-cover twice. There was something that spoke, for lack of a better word, freedom about it-something that seemed very present at the time and all the years that it took before I was able to make it and just stuck with me. And those things are what dominated the way I chose to tell the story.
Chris is an extremely complex character. How did you even begin to get into his head?
SP: The thing about Chris McCandless that was very helpful was that he left a lot of clues behind. There was a wealth of very deep understanding between he and his sister, and so his sister was very helpful. There was also the journal and the photograph that Chris took on his road trip. And then on top of that we went on the road and met all the people he ran into at the time the story's being told. And so we take all of those things and at the very least [they] make human sense in the broadest sense.
And then you're telling a story. This is a story of Chris McCandless, and it's also a story primarily of those couple of years he was on the road. In the broadest sense, I think I was borrowing his complication to dramatize things that are part of all our lives.
What did you personally gain from this movie and what were your favorite scenes or favorite scenes to film?
EMILE HIRSCH: For me, I was happy to be part of a film that I felt was a real adventure. Just making it, you get to know a different part of America.
I went to places I don't know if I would have ever been to and got to meet a lot of interesting people. For me, it was an adventure of a lifetime and I was happy to be a part of it. And really, it was everybody--not just me-but everybody on the crew got a chance to step outside their comfort zone and do things they maybe they didn't think they could. We were doing rapids on a kayak-me and Sean both did rapids in kayaks on the Colorado river in the Grand Canyon. This isn't the kind of stuff you normally get to do when you make a film.
SP: And I would say for my part again that the feeling out there is that we all have this baggage from society, if you want to call it conditioning or fraud, that we carry around on our backs-our own baggage placed on us that when you go out into the relentless circumstances of the natural world you get outnumbered. And no place does that like Alaska, no place for me anyway. This was something where the mountains were steeper, rockier and bigger. Rivers were more muscular and everything was what I call "nature on steroids."
It was so alive and big and a wonder-you never got bored of it. It didn't take a naturalist to stay interested in the environment there. It was an exciting place to be and in the best sense you would feel small. And that felt more accurate then what you can feel in other places when you think you're controlling something.
You have a reputation that depicts you as rebellious, intelligent and uncompromising, sort of like Chris is in the movie. Was this movie autobiographical in any way?
SP: Well, I think that any autobiography that's of any value is an autobiography of all of us and that we each contribute to it or design it in a way that... it means something. My movie means something if the audience of the movie-if their interpretation- means something. So yes, it's personal and it's universal.
What were some of the emotional triumphs or struggles involved in the family and the friends that Chris encountered on the road that had to be overcome in order for this film to be made?
SP: Clearly, there were difficulties in the family that did not shine favorably on the parents in the film and they were all true. Everything I put in the film was true and I think that represented an enormous amount of selfless courage on behalf of the parents... allowing me to be relatively unflinching in the portrayal.
In fact, I should say in terms of allowing me to do this, there were no stipulations on what I could or couldn't do. The spirit of the movie I wanted to make, I was clear about, and then [his parents] had to make a decision about gambling how that would portray them or not. They stuck with it throughout the difficult times.
It was a big roller coaster of emotions, but ultimately I think everybody was in it for the same reasons, which was to celebrate the spirit of their son's journey and to do that there's going to have to be some blemishes. And so they took those things and let the story be told. And if they had not dramatized those things I think that we would have let Chris down because those are important aspects of what drove him.
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