The question before them is: What is 'On the Road' even supposed to mean when you can Google Earth and Yelp your way across the heartland?
"I think [the Internet] gives people the urge to travel to further and more remote locations to get their kicks ... to find lands that are untouched by human hand," Hedlund says, with slang indicative of the time he spent researching the Beat muse Neil Cassady, Kerouac's model for Moriarty.
There was the cast's three-week Beat boot camp, which included Skype tutorials from an old Kerouac colleague about the proper way to break Benzedrine capsules with beer bottles. In order to get into the spirit of the book, Hedlund estimates that he filled up about 100 notepads on multiple treks across the country's surviving backroads.
Stewart was originally cast at 17 to play Mary Lou, née Luanne Henderson, the sexualized child bride worshipped and scorned by Moriarty and Paradise. "I'm 100 percent nostalgic for times that I haven't lived in ... when there was less insignificant stimulation," Stewart says, tapping her foot with nervous energy, jangling the copper bangles around her wrists, folding her T-shirt with her hands and mostly looking down. "If you're not watching a TV show or downloading something, you're bored," she adds. "Back in the day, there was less to do, people had to use their minds." Stewart speaks infrequently and with caution, cognizant that even her most banal sentences are parsed with vice presidential scrutiny, or at least NBA All-Star. After all, most basketball franchises can't sell merchandise like Team Edward.
Hedlund, whose previous big credit was Tron: Legacy, handles most of the talking — staying true to the dynamic of the film. "I've always romanticized the late '40s and '50s — the cars, jazz, the open roads and lack of pollution," he says, business-casual in a navy blue dress shirt, the top button unbuttoned; his chest is nearly hairless. "Now there are more vehicles, less hitchhikers, more billboards and power lines and stuff. "People wrote wonderful long letters that took months to receive, and now everything is email. "
Both reiterate the idea that the book's timelessness is immutable. Even though a contemporary Kerouac could have seen Cassady's conquests on Facebook, the actors point out that young people will always be hypnotized by the amphetamine prose and intoxicating ideas of freedom and rebellion. "Anybody that wants to walk out that door and leave home for a few months and rely on themselves instead of fate might have some interesting stories to tell," Hedlund says.
Read the full interview HERE.
via LA Weekly. Photo: Kevin Scanlon
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