Into The Wild - Sean Penn interview

SEAN Penn talks about the challenge of making Into The Wild, the true story of Christopher McCandless, a student who gave up his worldly possessions to travel to Alaska on a spiritual journey that eventually had tragic consequences. He also discusses why he feels that travelling should be a right of passage for every young person and why working with the likes of Terrence Malick and Clint Eastwood has helped him to shape his own directorial path. He was speaking at a UK press conference...

Q. How tough was this film to pull together?
Sean Penn: In short form I’ll say it was an approach to the family and to [author] Jon Krakauer that then led to me seeming to rise to the top of the heap of several filmmakers that were trying to get the rights. And by top of the heap I mean in terms of being somebody that was trusted to do it as they said they were going to attempt to do it and that this way of doing it would be something they would be willing to allow. My greatest interest in it was certainly not to avoid those things that were going to be controversial about the family but the interest I had in the story was predominantly what he was pursuing and not as much what he was fleeing.

However, having gone through that period and seemingly having survived the cut the mother, Billie, had a dream that insinuated to her that her son was not ready to see a film of his life made at that time. So, I told her that if I didn’t respect dreams I wouldn’t make movies, but that I would never stop being hungry to make this if something changed. We left it at that and 10 years later I got a phone call saying they were ready to see the movie made. I never asked why, I just started work on it.

Q. Was the casting of Christopher McCandless a long process?
Sean Penn: Well, it was interesting because when I was going to do it the first time in my head was Leonardo DiCaprio [for Chris] and Marlon Brando was going to play the character that Hal Holbrook eventually played. But then when it wasn’t to be and there was no promise that it ever would be I think some part of me didn’t want to attach specifics to it anymore – actors or anything else – because I wanted to see it made that much more badly. The heartbreak that it might not happen wasn’t something that I wanted to face with any more weight. Then, when I got the call to go ahead I never thought for a second as I was approaching it who I would get – that would come later. Again, I think the idea was that I now had the rights to make the movie and I can start writing it but if I have to wait another 10 years before I find an actor that’s right for it, I’d be very happy to do that.

Somewhere in that process, I saw the Lords of Dogtown [with Emile Hirsch] and said: “Who’s that guy?” The first thing that struck me was that he was internally capable and also a physically talented actor. I knew those things were going to be important for this. I knew he had an intelligence in his eyes that I liked. But primarily I saw a mischief that I could work with and so I pursued him in the sense that: “I want to meet you, I want to talk to you, I have a couple of things that I’m thinking about doing…” I didn’t want to put a ring on his finger yet – I just wanted to see who this guy was because there were going to be demands on the actor playing this part that exceeded any that I’d witnessed or had myself as an actor. I had to be very cautious.

But over time – I think several months – we spent lots of time together and, bit by bit, I got more specific about what I was wanting to do. What I asked him, not as an actor who did or didn’t want to do the movie but as a guy who I’d come to know and let know me, was: “Do you want to do this? Can you do this?” I didn’t mean the acting, but rather the eight months that it would take and, frankly, the physical dangers that were involved, because this was also asking a fellow adult if he wanted to go down a river with me. And whatever happened was allowed to happen because we weren’t the boss – nature was and we were not going to restrict ourselves to shooting things that we could control. We were going to shoot what was in the hands of nature. So, when we walk on a frozen river, had he broken through he wouldn’t be sitting here right now. It was going to be that kind of story and we were going to shoot that kind of way. It was going to be his decision. It was the same conversation I had with the crew. But Emile [Hirsch] took some time to think about that before coming back and saying “yes”.

Q. How do you think you’ve developed as a director since The Indian Runner? And had this project got the approval from the McCandless family 10 years ago, do you think it would have been the movie we see today, or are you better equipped to tell it now?
Sean Penn: I can’t imagine it without Emile. I can tell you that my contribution based on my interpretation of the book is unchanged. The other things, in terms of doing the research and following the trail of it, were probably pretty similar to what I would have done then. I think that what makes me celebrate that it took the 10 years is the various other people and contributors that I ended up having on board. I can’t imagine being quite as lucky at any other time – I certainly never have been before. That goes right down from my producing partners to people like Eddie Vedder. But the two things that make me feel that this was meant to be now and not before was that the story itself has more resonance today – I find it a more important story today than it was then – and Emile.

Q. Did the family’s initial reluctance to have this story made into a film ever play on your mind while writing the script? Were there certain things you pulled back on because you thought they might be too dark? Or did you go with what you felt was the truth?
Sean Penn: I know and like the people that I wrote about. Everything I wrote about is true. To know and like somebody is to be willing to feel any human emotion about them to have a respect to the central character, who was a real person I wish I’d known. I had to allow myself to feel hatred, loathing and anything else necessary to be willing to write it and find the best that I could do for the character…. anything, including love and confusion. Whatever it was. I’m not specifying the things that I did feel. But writing is not a polite enterprise and it’s not a cautious one. What I knew was that I wasn’t interested in an indictment of them as the story I was telling. I was not interested in avoiding the truth of things that were necessary to know about the choices of their son. But I felt very confident and I feel absolutely certain that I stayed true to the commitment that I made them and I made it on the basis of what was important to me about this story.

Q. What was the standout moment for you when you went on the road? Was there ever a moment of epiphany for you?
Sean Penn: Well, the kind of central question: “Do you want to live – and I don’t mean stay alive – do you want to feel your life while you’re living it?” You know, there’s somewhere to go that was here before we were and is going to be here after us, so get out there in it. It doesn’t take somebody who’s got some self-important sense of their own attachment to nature to recognise that you’re just stupid if you don’t go out there and say: “What can you give me about this life thing because I know that I only get to be a pimple in your existence! And as long as I’m a read spot on your face, how can you make me feel it?” And that’s the natural world, so to go out into it with that sole purpose of understanding somebody who did it to such an extreme, I’m sure the answer is yes.

Q. When you met the people that had met Chris, what was their overriding memory of him?
Sean Penn: Well, I wasn’t surprised about this because Jon Krakauer had documented it very accurately and very well but this kid made a real impression on people, and likewise they on him. To talk to them was very moving in many cases because they talk about him like they saw him yesterday. In most cases they knew this kid for a couple of weeks in their whole life and he just lasted with them.

Q. Do you view the film as a kind of call to arms to go travelling, especially to the younger generation? Do you see travelling as an essential rite of passage?
Sean Penn: Yes, I do think it’s essential. I’m not going to recommend recklessness but somewhere just short of it – testing yourself and proactively pursuing a rite of passage has become necessary because in western developed countries we’ve become very comfort-addicted. You can live to 80-years-old on Facebook every day and be dead all 80 years, or you can go out and maybe even risk your life and really fucking live it. I have children and I don’t want them to be reckless but I’m for it. I hope we encourage kids to go out and do it.

Q. Is one of the subtexts of the film that this is an America that most of us will never see – and here’s a chance to see it?
Sean Penn: It’s a foreground of my feeling. That place moves me. And I don’t mean my country; it’s part of our shared natural world that happens to be particular to a sense of wherever my storytelling inclinations come from and my own history of kind of being a road rat and travelling. But part of the way the film looks stems from the fact that I found a partner in [cinematographer] Eric Gautier who was almost the sophisticated, artful and talented version of taking your kid out on the highway on a road trip for the first time. He’d never seen America between the coasts before, so you have this incredible artist coming in who gets to take all of his skills and just see it with a baby’s eyes. I’d have this notion sometimes but he’d say: “And this… look at that!” That was exciting to do.

Q. Do you feel you have managed to adopt new skills as a director from the time you’ve spent working in front of it and seeing other filmmakers at work?
Sean Penn: Look, here’s the thing. The advice you give to young directors for sure is to go out and become some version of a successful movie actor. Do that first and say yes to people like Terrence Malick and Clint Eastwood and Woody Allen when they come and offer you movies. It’s a great front row seat to filmmaking [laughs]. Whatever I was able to do with those experiences certainly contribute to whatever I’m able to do as a director. The corruption in that is that most of what I acted in the last 10 years was to steal film school time from these guys. Those were the people I thought I could learn from as a director.

Q. In the 15 years since Christopher McCandless has died he’s become a legend. Do you see the film as building on that legend or rather more looking at the humanity of this guy and his courage?
Sean Penn: Well, I’m pretty anti legends – I just don’t think they’re useful. So that certainly wouldn’t be my intention. But will it contribute to that? Sure. Any medicine can be mis-used. But I think that there is a great courage, innocence and magic to him that more than a legend is about connection. It’s the legend of who we are in our shared time between all of us. This is a part of my vocabulary that I knew that if I fucked it up or fulfilled it in a way that connected or didn’t connect particularly in a massive way or not, the story itself was something that in its heart I was not alone in responding to. There’s a wanderlust in everybody that makes this a very universal kind of tale.

Q. Will it be 10 years before you direct another movie?
Sean Penn: I don’t think so. I think this movie more than anything that I’ve done made me know what it is that I’m looking for. I like to use the analogy of if what you’re looking for is love, then if you’re looking for it every night in bars in Los Angeles you’re lucky if once every five years to find it. You’ll have affairs but in movie-making affairs with a piece of material are just not going to cut it because you’ve got to stay in love for years to get through it. So, I think I know more about what I’m looking for in that love, and so I’ll probably be a little faster to identify it and force it into submission [laughs].