The Beat Goes On // Like The Motorcycle Diaries but with fewer communists and more jazz, Walter Salles’ adaption of Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel is shaping up to be 2011’s coolest movie.
Kerouac’s autobiographical, drug-fuelled odyssey across America is so hip they could have put anyone it is, but the cast has cojones. Sam Riley (Control) is Kerouac’s alter-ego Sal Paradise, while Tron: Legacy star Garrett Hedlund plays Sal’s impulsive muse Dean Moriarty, as they freewheel across America meething thinly disguised as beatnick idols such as William S. Borroughs (Viggo Mortensen) and Allen Ginsberg (Tom Sturridge).
After an equally well-travelled shoot last August - taking in Canada, Chile and Argentina - Hedlund is fired up about finally being On The Road. “I first read [the book] when I was 16 or 17 - it was extremely special to me. I had been attached for about three years. I think if I hadn’t been able to do it, part of me would have drowned a little.” // From the June 2011 Issue of Total Film.
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