Here’s a project we thought we’d never hear about again — the long-gestating adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s seminal 1957 beat generation novel, “On The Road” about a cross-country bohemian odyssey.
The novel has been stuck in development for almost three decades. Francis Ford Coppola optioned the book back in the 1970s, but in August, 2005, the filmmaker — along with Focus Features and Coppola’s American Zoetrope who were co-developing the project — hired “The Motorcycle Diaries” director Walter Salles and screenwriter José Rivera to helm and adapt the novel (btw, Focus tell us they are now no longer involved).
Kerouac’s novel centers on Sal Paradise (a Kerouac surrogate) and Dean Moriarty (the character based on beat generation figure Neal Cassady)— two young men who journey across the North American landscape in pursuit of self-knowledge and experience, and obviously Focus and Coppola thought Salles and Rivera would make a perfect fit for the adaptation given how closely “The Motorcycle Diaries” resembles the above short book synopsis. On paper, they’re are absolutely perfect.
But it’s been five years of development and we’ve heard only scant movement since. Salles updated the world three years later and it sounded like he was still at work on the adaptation. “I am not really interested in doing a period piece that wouldn’t have a correlation with what we are living right now,” Salles told CNN in 2008. “There is a strange modernity to the theme, and maybe ‘On the Road’ is more contemporary today than it ever was.”
However, this week there’s a flicker of movement and life. Production Weekly is reporting that 25-year-old actor Garrett Hedlund, best known for role (at least to us) in the feature-length version of “Friday Night Lights,” the fact that he vied for the “Captain America” role and will star in the upcoming “Tron Legacy,” is in talks to play Moriarty. Even better? The project is evidently supposed to start shooting this summer. The actor is a little pretty boy-ish for our taste in general (see this pic), but hopefully that’s nothing some scruff and hitchhiking sweat and dirt can’t fix. But let’s face it, young attractive actors like this get pictures made these days and being on that ‘The First Avenger’ shortlist probably didn’t hurt his up-and-coming status (and Salles’ last picture “Linha de Passe” didn’t even get U.S. distribution — one of us saw it at TIFF ’09).
Who will play Paradise, in Kerouac’s largely autobiographical work? No word yet, we just hope it’s not too many other Marvel-vying pretty boys (imagine Chace Crawford getting this role? Ew). IMDB has been reporting since 2009 that 30-year-old English actor Sam Riley (star of “Control”) was on board to play Paradise, but that hasn’t been confirmed anywhere remotely official (and IMDB as we all know can be unreliable).
Meanwhile, Rivera was also hired to adapt the novel, “American Rust,” another project that Salles will direct, but presumably with Hedlund in talks to play one of the two key “On The Road” roles, that film will have to wait and come next. Update: something that we neglected to add and had even reported on in the past. While attempting to bring the Kerouac novel to the screen Salles’ has concurrently been working on a documentary about the book since at least 2008 called, “In Search of On the Road (a Work in Progress),” and it will finally screen at the San Francisco Film Society on April 28th.
Incidentally, in 2001, Fox News’ Roger Friedman (our pal) reported that Coppola said Joel Schumacher was going to direct the project and the rumored plan was to have Billy Crudup as Kerouac/Paradise and Brad Pitt as Moriarty. Those are great acting choices, but with Schumacher at the helm? Man, the history of cinema dodged a bullet on that one.
Note, American writer and poet, Russell Banks (the author of novels turned into films like, “The Sweet Hereafter,”and “Affliction”) adapted that version of the the screenplay for Coppola and he talked about it in early 2005, saying it was, “a little bit like writing an original screenplay,” but this was long before before Rivera and Salles were officially announced and we can probably assume he might get a co-credit, but it sounds like the ‘Motorcycle’ duo started fresh (and when Variety first reported the Salles/Rivera version, they noted that Coppola had tried to jump start the picture with various screenwriters brought on to try their hand at writing a script that would earn Coppola’s approval — apparently with no success).
If this widely regarded “unfilmable” picture can finally make it to the screen — and its had several false starts, CNN reported it was to shoot in the spring of 2008 and that obviously never happened — can we hope that novels like the “Catcher in the Rye” or “A Confederacy of Dunces” may one day get there as well? Terrence Malick and David Gordon Green (who once almost directed ‘Dunces’ under the aegis of Soderbergh before it was deep-sixed), we’re looking in your direction.
“The beauty of road movies is that they teach you that the further you go from the place where you originate from, the better you understand where you are from,” Salles said in ’08, “and that is kind of a blessing to be able to discover one’s identity.” The other part of the delays? Salles has essentially said he’d rather not make the film if he doesn’t have complete freedom without compromise.