If you’ve ever fantasized that Kristen Stewart invited you to bed by saying, “Hop in, water’s fine,” well, this is a trailer for your permanent collection. The actress and her Bohemian behavior in On The Road get prime placement — there’s even a quick glimpse of her talked-about double hand-job scene — along with co-stars Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley , in this just-released trailer for Walter Salles adaptation of the Jack Kerouac novel. Although the trio appears to get the most screen time, the fast-paced clip does a good job of introducing most of the name cast members, including Kirsten Dunst , Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams , Elisabeth Moss and Alice Braga. The film gets a limited released on Dec. 21 if the world doesn’t end along with the Mayan calendar. You can also head over to iTunes to download the trailer — for your permanent collection. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Kristen Stewart stunned on the AFI Fest red carpet Saturday night, where she met up with On The Road co-stars Garrett Hedlund and Amy Adams along with director Walter Salles and the OTR crew before the film’s North American premiere. Get photos of Stewart, Hedlund, Adams & co. — along with Parks and Recreation ‘s Nick Offerman, who showed up in support of his AFI Fest pic Somebody Up There Likes Me — in Movieline’s hi-res gallery! Click images for more . Also walking the AFI Fest red carpet that night were filmmaker Michel Franco and actress Tessa Ia, whose bullying drama After Lucia is Mexico’s Best Foreign Oscar entry. Get more photos from AFI Fest 2012. Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Actress explains why ‘On the Road’ leading man, played by Garrett Hedlund, was so irresistible. By Kara Warner, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Kristen Stewart and Garrett Hedlund in “On The Road” Photo: MK2 Productions
Before Twilight and even before Kristen Stewart was first approached to be in On The Road by Brazilian-born director Walter Salles, the young actress read the Jack Kerouac novel for school. She told Movieline that she picked up the book because it was an assignment given, but her experience with the now American classic evolved. “I found the book fun,” she said. But after reading and studying it more, it became much more compelling and taught her personal life lessons about growing up, making choices and dealing with inhibitions. She also emphasized that while she played the comparatively wild Marylou, she does not judge her uninhibited character. [ PHOTOS: Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, and Kirsten Dunst Go ‘On The Road’ in Toronto ] “I learned through the book that you really have a choice about who you surround yourself with. [As a young adult] you realize you can choose who you’re surrounding yourself with,” Stewart told ML in Toronto where On The Road debuted over the weekend. “Up until that point you’re really circumstantially with your family or whatever but at some point you can ‘choose’ your family. “I have a great family by the way, but you need to find people who can pull something out from you that might be otherwise unseen. And when I read the book, I thought, ‘Gosh I need to find people like that.’ I’m definitely not the Marylou type. But as I continued reading it as I got older, the weight of it started to mean something more.” In the film version of the book, Stewart plays Marylou who was first married to, then divorced from, and ultimately a lifelong companion/lover/fellow free spirit to Dean Moriarty. The story centers on Dean (based in real life on Neal Cassady) who meets up with close friend Sal (writer Jack Kerouac’s own stand-in) as the two travel across the U.S. as well as into Canada and Mexico. Like Dean, Marylou is anything but monogamous and she dabbles in pleasures that are alien to the wholesome fun of the prevailing culture of the conservative 1950s. Stewart and the rest of the cast, including Garrett Hedlund (Dean), Sam Riley (Sal) and Kristen Dunst (Camille), met and spoke with relatives of the real-life characters they played in addition to other research before embarking on On The Road . Stewart said that she didn’t want to simply approach Marylou as a rebellious young woman with loose morals, but explained that while she gained understanding of her, she remained, to some degree at least, an enigmatic figure. “To play a part like Marylou, she’s very vivid and colorful but also on the periphery,” said Stewart. “You don’t know her heart and head and the how and why she does what she does. By the time that it came to film, I didn’t want to play her simply as this character that is just a wild and sexy girl. With the research we were able to do, applying the whys and getting to know the people behind the characters makes you think about the book differently.” Stewart continued, “It’s not easy to live a life like that and that’s what makes these people remarkable. I did always wonder how she could take it. How deep is that well? How much can you have taken from you? What I found about her is, that uniquely to her — and not to the time she lived in — was her capacity to see through people’s flaws and see past them, which was unbelievable. She was just such a wonderful woman. She was infectious. And, no, I did not judge her.” Kristen Stewart appeared at some moments very pensive and at other moments playful in describing her role and unusually long attachment to On The Road . The period coincided with being catapulted to the height of fame through the Twilight franchise, which morphed into zealous attention from so-called Twi-hards who lived vicariously through her and her equally lauded co-star and real-life boyfriend, Robert Pattinson. And as the world now well knows, that relationship hit the skids in the glare of legions of fans through an onslaught of media spectacle . Just weeks after the tidal wave of attention, Stewart bravely faced media for On The Road , though handlers were clear before assigning interview time — the subject needed to remain “on topic.” Still, Stewart talked about herself personally, saying that the experience she had with On The Road had provided her some life lessons both professionally as an actor and also as an individual. “If this has taught me anything, it’s just that if you stop thinking and just breathe through it, you’re such a better actor. You just have to do the work initially and then trust that you’ve already done that work and not get too analytical. You have to trust that you’ve already completed that effort,” she said. And beyond the work, Stewart said she now has more confidence to say what she thinks with less fear than in her earlier years. “It’s opened me in a way that’s probably more appropriate to my age. I think I’m a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It’s not about being shameful, I’m just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear.” Previously: Kristen Stewart Talks ‘Hard Love’ In Toronto For On The Road Read more from the Toronto Film Festival. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘On the Road’ actor confirms to MTV News at TIFF that he was up for ‘Catching Fire’ before Sam Claflin joined cast. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Josh Horowitz Garrett Hedlund at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival Photo: Jason Merritt/ Getty Images
Kristen Stewart fans may have been disappointed that the Twilight superstar did not make an appearance at last week’s MTV Video Music Awards, but crowds here in Toronto had the chance to see the actress on the red carpet for the North American premiere of Walter Salles ‘ On The Road along with fellow cast members Garrett Hedlund , Kirsten Dunst , Amy Adams and Sam Riley . Stewart spoke with ML about the part she had actually landed before she filmed her first Twilight installment. Stewart shared her thoughts on the steamy relationship between her character Marylou and Hedlund’s Dean Moriarty — a life-long relationship that was rife with affairs, drugs and a wild ride on the road. [ PHOTOS: Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, and Kirsten Dunst at the Toronto premiere of On The Road ] “They really are ‘simpatico.’ It was a tumultuous relationship. And it’s hard to love like that, but they were so in love with each other and you don’t know this from reading the book, but they stayed lovers until the end of his life,” Stewart said during a conversation with ML at a Toronto hotel over the weekend. Stewart first read On The Road as a high school freshman. A short time afterward, she was approached by director Walter Salles who had been told to consider Stewart for the part of Marylou after fellow filmmakers saw her in Sean Penn’s Into The Wild and suggested that he consider the young actress. The project took a number of years before the actual shoot commenced and in the meantime, Stewart began doing the enormously popular Twilight series, propelling her fame into the stratosphere. “I got the [ On The Road ] job on the spot and I drove away vibrating,” Stewart said. In the film version of the book written by Jack Kerouac, Stewart plays the unconventional free-spirit Marylou, the former wife and still frequent lover of Dean Moriarty, a fast-talking charismatic with an insatiable libido. Dean and best friend Sal (Sam Riley), a young writer whose life is shaken after Dean’s arrival take to the road. Marylou frequently accompanies Sal and Dean’s travels across the country in adventures fueled by sex, drugs and the pursuit of the “It” – a quest for understanding and personal fulfillment. “He kind of raised her and she always had a place in his heart, even though there were a lot of spots in that heart, but she was definitely one in the center and the same goes the other way around,” Stewart said of Marylou and Dean, the On The Road names of the real-life individuals described by Kerouac. “They both helped each other grow up.” One of the seminal works of literature of post-war America, On The Road took decades to be made into a film, even after Francis Ford Coppola acquired the filmmaking rights to the story. Stewart said she believes that society may have not been ready to see On The Road in theaters in the immediate years after the book was published, acknowledging that the film, which has not yet been rated, is racy. “I think it’s a good time to see this story visually because we are not shocked by some of the things that we were so shocked by before and it would have veiled it,” said Stewart. “It would have been so shocking seeing people doing drugs and having sex that you wouldn’t have seen the spirit of [ On the Road ]. You wouldn’t have seen the message behind it. Maybe it would have been good because it would have forced people to look, but maybe they weren’t able to do it then.” She also expressed the need for young people to have dreams and a zest for life, similarly to the characters in the film, even if those dreams are not fully comprehended. “At that stage of your life there’s so much ahead of you, at least it feels that way. At that age you need to have a faith and feelings you can’t articulate yet because at some point you need to hold onto them and you’ll find the words to describe them.” [ Movieline will have more from our interviews with Kristen Stewart, Garrett Hedlund, and Walter Salles this week. ] Read more from the Toronto Film Festival. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
From plot to performances, critics weigh in on the Walter Salles-directed flick after its Toronto International Film Festival premiere. By Kara Warner Kirsten Dunst, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart at the “On the Road” premiere Photo: George Pimentel/ Getty Images
Charlie Sheen celebrates his 47th birthday today, though the actor really got his gift on August 29. That’s when FX made the unprecedented decision to pick up Sheen’s Anger Management sitcom for 90 more episodes , ensuring it goes into syndication and likely earning the actor another $100 million or so. Perhaps we should all beat up women and take a lot of drugs. Sheen, of course, has recently said he was never actually “winning” and has referred to his ridiculous episodes in early 2011 as a ” psychotic break .” That’s a start toward some kind of redemption, we suppose. Send Charlie a few birthday wishes if you’d like and also consider the following celebrities who turn a year older today: Shawn White (26), Garrett Hedlund (28), Nick Wechsler (34) and Dave Ramsey (52).
With the out-of-nowhere success of 2016: Obama’s America , the nation could finally have a conservative counterpart to Michael Moore . I say the nation rather than the Republicans, because a balanced box office is good for us all, at least as a reminder of our right to oppose the current government and make a profit in doing so. Similar to Moore’s release of Fahrenheit 9/11 during the summer of 2004, author-turned-filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza offers a one-sided, first-person documentary that challenges the incumbent President during his campaign for re-election. Unlike his liberal predecessor, however, D’Souza, who co-directs with writer/producer John Sullivan ( Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed ), doesn’t have much to fall back on in the way of entertainment value and so only delivers a transient attraction for the anti-Obama crowd. You could say that a film like 2016 shouldn’t be entertaining, and maybe it is true that the left’s overdependence on jokesters and satire have hurt their efforts in the past. But while Fahrenheit 9/11 might not have influenced enough voters eight years ago, it remains a popular work of cinema in its own right primarily because of Moore’s appeal to a certain audience both personally and stylistically. D’Souza is neither engaging as a character nor as a storyteller, but even worse here is his lack of intensity. As a pressing piece of propaganda, the film could use a louder voice and edgier tone. To truly be an effective Moore equivalent, frankly, D’Souza could stand to be more of a nuisance. Basing the documentary on his best-selling books The Roots of Obama’s Rage and Obama’s America: Unmaking the American Dream , D’Souza, retains a very subjective angle for his exploration of the President’s true identity and political motives. In fact, before really even addressing the titular subject, the filmmaker takes the first portion of the film to set up his own biographical relevance, which aside from his being born outside the U.S. (oh, hush) corresponds quite uncannily as a way of comparing his own background to Barack Obama’s and then raising the question of how they ended up on such contrary idealistic paths. Through interpretation of passages from Obama’s book Dreams From My Father and an interview with a psychologist, D’Souza comes up with a thesis involving the President’s daddy issues. Paralleling the last administration’s critics, 2016 at times comes off like a slightly deeper kin to Oliver Stone’s W. without the fun of caricaturistic portrayals. More complex than Bush’s supposed need to make his still-living father proud, the deal with Obama is that he’s apparently impaired by a romanticized adoration of his never-there father as well as a desire to honor the elder Obama’s anti-colonial principles. On that track to expose the President’s ultimate goal of turning America into a flaccid, non-imperialistic country that is run with outdated collectivist policies, D’Souza’s intended ace in the hole is an appearance from Obama’s half-brother George, whose tiny abode in Kenya D’Souza refers to as “something out of Slumdog Millionaire .” The filmmaker fails to get the young man to talk negatively of his powerful brother’s neglect of poor family members abroad, even with literal attempts to “rephrase the question.” Finally, he settles on simply revealing George’s belief that the third world was better off under colonial rule. So what? Other than potentially inspiring an interesting and metaphorical novel about two brothers with divergent relationships to an unknown father in a long-post-colonial world, the disconnect between geographically and temporally distant siblings doesn’t provide much substance for the film’s argument that the President is the worst leader in U.S. history. And really neither does Obama’s presumed paternal problem, which borders on an obsession for D’Souza. Still, it’s a reflection of a certain concern Americans have with the singularity of the executive branch and our compulsion to focus on the individual character of our Presidents over the plans and actions of their overall administrations. Eventually, 2016 does get into real criticisms with Obama’s initial election, which is basically credited to white guilt and the allure for people to be a part of history, and with his first term, which, it’s claimed, shows hints of a larger anti-colonialist agenda. A shot at the relevancy of NASA seems especially misdirected given the excitement of the Curiosity rover landing on Mars earlier this month, however. And further speculation of the President’s full-on dismantling of the U.S. as a superpower once he’s over the hump of re-election is again too hypothetical. Meanwhile, given the concentration of the Romney/Ryan campaign, it’s unfortunate that only a couple minutes near the end of the film are devoted to Obama’s handling of the national deficit. Of course, this isn’t a documentary in support of Mitt Romney or any Republican candidate so much as it’s an extensive attack ad against Barack Obama. It should illuminate just how much of a repeat this election year is of 2004. Then, it wasn’t about voting for Kerry; it was about voting against Bush. Now it’s just politically reversed, not about voting for Romney but against Obama. And if Romney does win, someone, whether Michael Moore or another liberal filmmaker, will give us the next documentary in the cycle of opposition. If there is one major thing I’ll give 2016 credit for, it’s that much of the film plays almost as well to a pro-Obama audience as to those against him. It preaches to both choirs in that a lot of the intentions and policies of the President, which D’Souza sees as negative, are those which the leader’s fans see as positive. Much of the left would surely love it if Obama truly transformed the United States into a nuke-free nation with socialized medicine and education. Some might watch this documentary and think, “well, yes, that’s our Obama.” Of course, there is the occasional blast of clear vitriol, such as when the President is baselessly said to be less concerned with helping the poor than stripping the wealth of the rich. But that’s to be expected with these films, which are less concerned with what kind of President is good for America than what kind of President is not. And I’m sure it’s expected of me to be less focused on what would have made this a good film than what makes it a bad one. I can only say it’s not a very memorable one, and regardless of the outcome this November, after Election Day I guess it doesn’t need to be. Christopher Campbell is an Atlanta-based movie blogger specializing in documentary. Follow him on Twitter @thefilmcynic . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
“… The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww! ‘” Sam Riley’s Sal paraphrases the famous Jack Kerouac line, but it works: Watch the jazzy, frenetic first U.S. trailer for Walter Salles’ On The Road and feel your pulse quicken. The adaptation, which also stars Kristen Stewart , Garrett Hedlund, Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Amy Adams, Terrence Howard, and more (phew!) debuted at Cannes but premieres at the upcoming Toronto Film Festival ahead of its December release. I’d count this as the most effective of the many trailers to debut so far; something about the pace and the energy and abandon glimpsed in snatches and quick edits ratchets up my excitement. Or maybe it’s the looming long holiday. Here’s to everyone out there burning like Roman candles this Labor Day weekend. Thoughts? On the Road debuts in limited release on December 21. [ Yahoo ]
