On the Road

On the Road (2012)

"The best teacher is experience."

Sal Paradise is a young writer whose life is shaken and ultimately redefined by the arrival of Dean Moriarty, a free-spirited, fearless, fast talking Westerner and his girl, Marylou. Traveling cross-country, Sal and Dean venture out on a personal quest for freedom from the conformity and conservatism engulfing them in search of the unknown, themselves, and the pursuit of “it” -- the pure essence of experience.

Date of release
2012-05-22
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (926)
Runtime
2h 22m
Genres
Adventure, Drama
Director
Walter Salles

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: On the Road
  • Filmed in: San Francisco, Montreal, and Mexico

On The Road is a 2012 adventure drama film directed by Walter Salles. It is an adaptation of Jack Kerouac's 1957 novel On the Road and stars an ensemble cast featuring Garrett Hedlund, Sam Riley, Kristen Stewart, Alice Braga, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, Danny Morgan, Elisabeth Moss, Kirsten Dunst, and Viggo Mortensen. The executive producers were Francis Ford Coppola, Patrick Batteux, Jerry Leider, and Tessa Ross. Filming began on August 4, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec, with a $25 million budget.

Development and production

A film adaptation of On the Road had been in development hell for decades. In 1957, Jack Kerouac wrote a one-page letter to actor Marlon Brando, suggesting that he play Dean Moriarty while Kerouac would portray Sal Paradise. In the letter, Kerouac envisioned the film to be shot "with the camera on the front seat of the car showing the road (day and night) unwinding into the windshield, as Sal and Dean yak." Brando never responded to the letter, a…

Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights in 1979. Over the years, he hired several screenwriters to adapt the book into a film, including Michael Herr and Barry Gifford, only for Coppola to write his own draft with his son Roman. In 1995, Coppola planned to shoot on black-and-white 16 mm film and held auditions with poet Allen Ginsberg in attendance but the project fell through.

Coppola saw The Motorcycle Diaries and hired Brazilian director Walter Salles to direct the film. Salles was drawn to the novel because, according to him, it is about people "trying to break into a society that’s impermeable" and that he wants "to deal with a generation that collides with its society." At the end of 2008, he was about to have the film greenlit when the American economy collapsed and French financier Pathe wanted to make significa…

In 2010, Salles had to convince the cast he had assembled in 2007 to remain committed to the project. This included Sam Riley as the alter ego of author Jack Kerouac, Sal Paradise, Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady), who had been linked to the role since September 2007, and Kristen Stewart as Marylou.

Filming began on August 4, 2010, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. After a month of filming in Montreal, the production shot footage in Gatineau, Quebec, on August 17, which stands in for Denver, Colorado, in 1947. The film shot for five days in the middle of October 2010 in and around Calgary, Alberta. The production also shot in New Orleans for a month, then returned to Montreal to shoot the film's final scenes.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended