“On The Road” – The Movie?
by Sean McGahey
Would the film have the same magnetic pull as the book? I guess Sal and Dean’s disregard for conformity during the post war America would strike a chord with the youth of today, or would it? Are the youth of today ready for Jack Kerouac?
1950s & “On the Road”
Back in the late forties/early fifties a number of writers rebelled against conventional values. The “beats” went out of their way to challenge the patterns of respectability and shock the rest of the world. That all sounds very rock’n’roll, but why did it start?
During the 1950s, a sense of uniformity pervaded American society. Conformity was common, as young and old alike followed group norms rather than striking out on their own. Though men and women had been forced into new employment patterns during WW II, once the war was over, traditional roles were reaffirmed. Men expected to be the breadwinners; women, even when they worked, assumed their proper place was at home. Jack Kerouac reacted strongly, as did the other Beats, to the post-WWII 1950s consumerism. He tried to break out of this suburban consumerist middle-class conventional lifestyle, and this is reflected in his writings. Kerouac captured the turmoil of a restless generation caught between the cold war values of the Eisenhower era and the dawning of the “Age of the Aquarius”.
Kerouac typed his best-selling novel “On the Road” on a 75-meter roll of paper. Lacking accepted punctuation and paragraph structure, the book glorified the possibilities of the free life. Musicians rebelled as well. Elvis Presley popularized black music in the form of rock and roll, and shocked Americans with his ducktail haircut and undulating hips. In addition, Elvis and other rock and roll singers demonstrated that there was a white audience for black music, thus testifying to the increasing integration of American culture.
So now we know a little of what’s behind “On the Road” How will Francis Ford Coppola breathe life to something that’s more than just a story? Would he focus on the relationship between Jack & Neal Cassidy who provided the impetus for Jacks adventures?
Will it be the ultimate road movie of two friends travelling across the country looking for something new, possibly the new American dream or old American values? I sincerely hope it won’t end up an over the top start studded film that loses the true meaning of the book due to the ego of a couple of actors. It’s almost like the ultimate collaboration “Kerouac & Coppola” pretty much the coming together of two artists similar to the collaboration of Kerouac and Robert Frank’s photography, the jazzy poetics of Kerouac’s writing & Frank’s black’n’white prints. That distinctive and irony-drenched wisdom of Franks photographs framing the twisted words of Jack Kerouac. Will Coppola do the same?
For those who haven’t heard of Robert Frank, in 1955, the Swiss photographer Robert Frank travelled throughout the United States by car and returned with a bleak portrait of what the American road had to offer. Jack pretty much had done the same thing with a pen; some would argue Jack wrote of the pure beautiful side of his own America. And Frank captured the bleak side?
I guess through the lens of Francis Ford Coppola we’ll see new images of joy & sadness found in the look of waitresses, gas station attendants, general food stores workers, bars and jazz clubs.
I presume Coppola will draw upon what he had previously done in filming two of SE Hintons books Rumble Fish & The Outsiders by presenting a landscape of people and places looking for new hope and promise. Whoever plays the part of Jack I hope he’ll bring back a little of him, just like when I heard the tape of Jack reading from “On the Road”. It was electrifying! Originally recorded in 1955 it captured my imagination and brought words off the page and into the air.
As for the film soundtracks Coppola could use a song funnily enough called ‘On the Road‘ - music by Kerouac, based on an old French Canadian folk tune. I suppose you could include anything by Muddy Waters, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley. Although it wouldn’t be a beat film without Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
I guess it would be a sin leaving out Bob Dylan, yeah I know his music came later on down the beat time line, but to leave out such classics as Desolation Row & Subterranean Homesick Blues would be blasphemy! It’s a shame Dylan never met Kerouac.
So to sum up, would it be a narrative driven black’n’white road movie loosely based on Jacks book or will it be a nostalgic look back on the exciting birth of a new generation and the start of Jacks descent into loneliness and despair. I suppose it could also be a good honest down to earth adaptation of Jacks life. Whatever Coppola does it’ll hopefully turn a few people on to reading a true all American classic.
July 1st, 2005 at 3:06 pm
This has been in the pipeline for ages now. I hope it will be an adaptation of Jack’s life rather than a look at the beats.
I can’t see the film replicating the powerfulness of the book though. But, hey will be something to look forward to, if it ever happens. But who should play Jack?
July 1st, 2005 at 3:44 pm
Someone thought Johnny Depp or Matt Dillon? or maybe it should be an unknown
July 2nd, 2005 at 3:40 pm
If anything, Tom Waits should write the screenplay. He knows the work, and has worked alongside Francis before. Tom’s written a loosely based on the book song already, I can see him without any ounce of troubles constructing a profoundly elegant sort of adaptation.
July 2nd, 2005 at 8:28 pm
I think the movie would work best as doing the story but not trying to replicate the poetics of it with a lot of voiceover, etc. I think of something akin to Badlands, or
other Terrence Malick movies as far as feel goes.
The faces of the actors and America itself should convey the poetry of the journey.
i think a lot of name actors would be distracting, but they might be ok in supporting roles.
July 2nd, 2005 at 11:11 pm
coppola met with robert frank a few years ago to discuss the On The Road project. lets hope the film is never made. the youth shoud read the book.
July 3rd, 2005 at 4:34 pm
Yeah, Johnny Depp would be good. He has already played Jack in a Kerouac documentary, so he knows the soil so to speak.
July 3rd, 2005 at 11:39 pm
I don’t really think it matters who plays the characters, as long as the director and others involved stay true to the book. I just hope they don’t try to use “hollywood license” and add stuff in there that didn’t happen to try to make it more “exciting”.
July 4th, 2005 at 2:58 am
It will not resonate much in the US. This country is now more like the 50s than the 50s. The major goal of people here is pecuniary emulation of the leisure class while attempting to enter the leisure class (as in Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class). It would be more interesting to make a film of Veblen’s work, though it would be a challenge to adapt a long scathing essay (diatribe?) into a film, particularly for the US film industry as embued as it is with cliche and the fatuous worship of cliche. Copolla is one of the most celebrated of the muddled thinkers, but with little more than a giant ego inversely proportional to ability, he is a legend in his own time.
It is no wonder that the country is led by lawyers, medical doctors and now MBAs. These members of the leisure class are trained in the art of conspicously wasting time and conspicuous consumption, which is part of the trend of US education. We let in the immigrants to train to do real work: mathematics, science, engineering, technical trades, labor, anything productive, and indoctrinate our own people in striving for occupations of service only to the pecuniary pursuits of the predatory class. Medicine does have uses beyond the service of the predatory classes and corporations, of course, but that is becoming a thing of the past as MDs on the payroll of large pharmaceutical companies join boards making up newly tightened standards for such health measures as cholesterol, high blood pressure, and other areas that will allow physicians to prescribe drugs not needed even less than a decade ago.
In short, I don’t see the current generation in the US as being able to identify with Kerouac’s work in any way at all.
July 4th, 2005 at 4:56 pm
It would be an interesting project any way you look at it. Despite the stong urge to protect the literay classics from the inevitable bastardisation of our culture, through re-makes, adaptations etc, I do think it’s possible to be done well, and with a true reflection of Kerouac’s style. Gilliam managed it in ‘Fear & Loathing’, why not let him loose on this.
I do think the potential for failure, whoever’s involved, is uncommonly big but overriding that I believe that any sincere effort to accomplish this task could well introduce a new generation to Kerouac. How is this a bad thing? The book can’t be changed, it stands as a classic forever, but maybe others can be inspired to educate themselves through this type of introduction?
Jim C: I think you’re spot on in what you’ve said, but surely if America is more like the 50’s now than back in the 50’s, then they need these sort of projects more than ever. And if the current generation in the US cannot identify at all with Kerouac then Uncle Sam is going to the dogs quicker than I realised. I think the only option is an enforced ‘On the road’ experience, load them up on bennies, supply a vehicle, and send them out into the world………
July 4th, 2005 at 9:03 pm
Jay, I don’t disagree they need it, but they also need Veblen. I am just saying it will be pissing in the wind, as we say here.
July 5th, 2005 at 9:55 pm
it’s a huge project to take on — i’d rather just see the spirit of the book live in some sort of adaptation — there is no way a movie can capture kerouc’s words — the actors from the documentary mentioned above — hopper as burroughs and john tuturro (sp??) as ginsberg would be solid choices to play alongside depp — don’t know who would play dean — i thought the documentary (which i can’t think of the name) did a pretty solid job honouring the time and place — good luck francis is all i can say — whatever turns people on too the book and that’s what the marketing machine of distribution will do —
July 16th, 2005 at 11:32 pm
I think Jim Jarmusch would be perfect to direct, as the auteur behind downbeat tragi-comedies such as Dead Man, Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law etc.
July 17th, 2005 at 4:52 pm
I found out about this project by querying IMDB to see if On the Road had ever been made into a movie, mainly because I wanted to make it into a movie. I’m reading the book right now, for the first time, and the only thing I’ve been able to think about (aside from how phenominal the book is) is what a great movie this would make.
If the casting is done correctly–which unfortunately it would be too easy to screw up–and the writer of the film follows the book TO A T…this could potentially be one of the best movies to come out in a long while.
The problem, I think, has to do with what a lot of people are saying here, that “the youth of today isn’t ready/won’t recieve Kerouac”. Really, who cares? If Hollywood tries to make this appeal to the youth of today, they’ll detract from the whole point. And the point is, the “youth of today”, the 1950’s American society that still prevails today…the point is not to be force-fed to them; the point is that they DON’T get it and may never will. I mean, we’re STILL in that society that the Beats tried to break down. Clearly that shows that the point was missed, nobody got it and nobody cares.
In order for the movie to work it needs perfect casting and lots of voice-overs, borderline narration, from Kerouac’s character. And I think Coppola’s the perfect choice to direct, since he clearly never went out of his way to appeal to anybody, and wound up appealing to damn near everyone in the end.
I just wish Charlie Kaufman wrote the script…
July 20th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
I read this in the Telegraph.
“In Paris in 1997, Coppola told me he originally wanted to shoot On the Road in black and white on 16 mm film. “I tried to make it, but couldn’t get the money,” he said. “Now it keeps becoming more important.”
Banks is the fourth screenwriter to try adapting the novel. The first was Michael Herr, author of Dispatches, the acclaimed part-fact, part-fiction work about Vietnam. (He also wrote the narration for Coppola’s Apocalypse Now.) The next effort, written several years later, was by novelist-screenwriter Barry Gifford.
It is known that Coppola and his son Roman worked on a version of On the Road in the 1990s, before Banks was chosen to write a fourth script.
Each time news of the planned film surfaces, the hot young actors of the day become linked with the leading roles. “I’d get calls from gossip columnists, asking if I knew Johnny Depp was auditioning?” recalled Banks. “Brad Pitt was mentioned. I’d say, ‘What do I know? I’m just the writer.’ ”
Yet he has a unique insight into the story. He met Kerouac in 1967, two years before his death. Banks was then at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, married and slightly older than most students.
“A friend, hitch-hiking back to town, got picked up by a man who turned out to be Kerouac. He said, ‘Where ya going, kid?’ My friend said, ‘Chapel Hill’, and Kerouac said, ‘I always wanted to go to Chapel Hill.’ He had two Indians with him, who he said were his cousins. They drove, and he was in the back.
“I got a phone call from my friend downtown. He said, ‘Hey, Russ, Jack Kerouac’s in town, man, and he wants to party. Can we come to your house?’
“I said, sure, come on out. About 30 people showed up, including Kerouac and the two Indians, and turned our lives upside down for a week.
“Kerouac was sick with alcohol and also mentally in terrible disarray. One minute he’d be a raving anti-Semite, the next he’d be the old Jack. We were all young activists and artists, involved in the anti-war movement, civil rights, and here we were at the feet of one of our heroes. But he was a decidedly mortal man. It was a remarkable event.”
Banks used this real-life episode to frame the story of On the Road. He views Kerouac’s novel as a period piece about the last time when Americans could still be innocent.”
So who knows - what’ll happen -
July 29th, 2005 at 1:51 am
Let’s just hope it’s better than the Keanu Reeves portrayal of Jack in Last Time I Committed Suicide. Depp’s got my vote.
Or how about some great B-movie cats like Eric Roberts and Fred Ward.. throw Shannon Tweed in there, as well. Now that would be a film.
July 30th, 2005 at 12:58 am
I’ve just graduate from high school and recently picked up a copy of On The Road. That book was exactly what I was looking for. That book was recommended to me by a friend and not only that but he had about five people in line waiting to read his copy. Since then I’ve devoured anything I could find about Jack Kerouac and other beat writers. Jim Chaffee must be right about us being more like the 50’s then they were in the 50’s because I related to this book more than I ever have to any other writer from any other time period. I think Jack Kerouac is exactly what people my age are looking for and a big name like Johnny Depp would help them find him. Unfortunately not enough kids read anymore and a film may be the only way to get through to them, but that may be what drives them to pick up a copy for themselves someday. It would be great if the movie did justice to Jack but the very least that can happen is that the name of Jack Kerouac and the Beat generation would go back into circulation among younger people and as far as I’m concerned that’s the most important part.
August 1st, 2005 at 8:14 pm
Your essay was interesting but facile and relies on a mythos that has done Kerouac as much harm as good. On the road ranks with Moby Dick as one of the great American novels and both are replete with their own kind of tremendous flaws. I doubt that On The Road was such a spontaneously freaky outbreak of memorable prose. It helps with the legend though. Hey, the guy had been working on some of that stuff for quite a while, possibly in the form of stories. Reread the book and go back through it again, this time paying attention to its organizational structure in terms of being a writer yourself. I think you’ll find what I’m getting at. Interestingly enough what I get out of the volume is a good deal of camouflaged pain. Drugs and pain are the implied theme that all that bop cool mania of jive speed (both personal and cultural) can’t quite cover. In terms of my own grapes of wrath, a European director would be best. Of course, I’m crazy.
August 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Take the “Doors” film by Oliver Stone, what good did that do the myth/reality of Jim Morrison? as a poet he wasn’t taken seriously by publishers or academics (that doesn’t surprise me), yet on the underground circuit he was considered a god. I suppose the question is - did the Oliver Stone film do more harm than good? What I actually found shocking is that I spoke to someone who didn’t know anything about Jim Morrison????
August 3rd, 2005 at 7:33 am
There’s an article about this in today’s Daily Telegraph in the UK:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/08/03/wkero03.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/08/03/ixnewstop.html
The details seem to be coming together. Script will be by Waleter Salles (of Motorcycle Diaries fame), Billy Cudrup will play Sal, and it’s possible that Colin Farrell will play Dean Moriarty (why oh why?!)
Rob
September 2nd, 2005 at 4:33 pm
Personally, films have done little more than dilute the senses of the book. I’m worried what a movie would do to the generations that may possibly read this book in the future. As for the fear of American youth, it’s well founded. We are once again assuming a state of pretention akin to the pre-beat era. Even though nonconformity is prominant in many areas, it is often simply for the sake of self-preservation, which wasn’t the case (wholly) with the Beat Revolution. But being a youth in America, literally (14), motives addressed in On The Road are becoming back-burnered at the expense of lesser media and fad life.
but i suppose it’s inevitable now, the film I mean. Billy Crudup will do an amazing job, in his previous work he has infiltrated the characters with a prowess that rivals many others. but Colin? Indeed, WHY?
{rachel}
November 20th, 2005 at 7:26 am
All I need to say is Billy Crudup for Paradise
Val Kilmer for Moriarty
June 29th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Very Very nice information here… Thanks
October 30th, 2006 at 8:04 am
Just read all the comments and will add to what I said, retracting none of it.
I am glad a young guy read the book. Unfortunately, he is a minority in the US: fully 70% of US COLLEGE graduates cannot read what is called difficult prose (that is, a high school science book) with comprehension. (When I went to college in the early 70s, after returning from Vietnam, it was 30% who couldn’t read; worse, of that 70%, fully 20% can’t understand the damned newspaper.)
Coppola is not the guy to direct this. Maybe Jarmuch, but for my money it ought to be John Houston, who had a great knack for turning literature into film true to the literature. See his version of Under the Volcano, a damned difficult book. We need to bring him back from the dead for one last film.
However, the film will not come out anywhere near the novel, since if it did it would not make it to the screen. As for playing Kerouac, the actor needs to be good looking and have his nose broken, and work as a hustler (ie, male hooker) in Denver for a month or so first. You know, method acting.
Besides, I prefered The Dharma Bums. And I don’t go to movies any more. Got so I couldn’t tell film from television, and I hate television.
June 11th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
To do this right, you’d have to take time with the shots, and by that I don’t mean let them drag, and hum, bleakly, like the indepedants do. You’d have to really undertstand the feeling or roadside America, and let the feeling sink in like Bonie and Clyde, Cool HAND LUKE, Paper Moon…. really, to make a NEW old movie… would take the guttsy music, the big face close ups, the inhabbition to use black and white, or re-discover technicolor, the angles of the camera… I bet they’ll get a 6 or 8 and leave it in the memory so that anyone who later wanted to do it right will say, wait, didn’t they already do that….
You’d needf life in this to do it right. Not that COplaa hasn’t done it before. But as time gos on, and the old masters set aside gut for homosexual nerd gooroo technique, it seems that stories are more and more typical… independant or not….
June 11th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
On the road is a youthful novel… about the only GOOD novel Kerouac completed… though his prose and discriptions can be amazing and vibrant, stories tend to fell apart after that…. But since it’s a youtful novel, these guys are in thier twenties at the time it takes place, why is it that the leads considereda re in thier forties….
Even Matt Dillion is like, 35 now. I don’t want to watch is whored for a block buster. Agree with Daniel Power about. You’d have to, like Jack, think outside the box and FEEL america, as it was.. which, frankly, most writers and directors have long since swarn off, being too “TRUMAN” for all that “hick road house” stuff…. Sad, but true. Easy Rider fails as a story, but is a brilliant picture of contrast, hypocrisy open faced honesty and denile in 1969 America. But that’s beacuse people writing SAW and FELT it. Now days, writing takes place in cold A-sexual offices where peoples thoughts seem bent on money for starbucks….
Start with Jack in all the hyteria of the sixites, which he grew to hate, then back to the purity of the landscape, a car on the horizon, “i first met Dean-”, etc. Thats the way to go. Clean Swift. Vibrant.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
All i can say after having seen and heard how Johnny Depp reads Kerouac is that he’s the one and only for Moriarty’s role. As for Paradise, it could be anyone, still the lead is already too perfect.
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