On The Road Filming Update

This Friday, the team of 'On The Road' passed their last day on the plantation of Magnolia Lane before resuming the trip. Some of the first footage also showed the start of Sal (Sam Riley), Dean (Garrett Hendlund) and Mary Lou (Kristen Stewart), leaving behind their hosts Jane and Old Bull Lee (Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen) their two children (played by two pairs of small blond actors) and the Dunkel couple, Ed and Galatea (Danny Morgan and Elizabeth Moss).

It was a lot of people on the wooden porch in the midday sun, which was evaporating all the water that had fallen the night before. Walter Salles - director - and Eric Gautier - director of photography - shot a first-wide, classical choreography of goodbyes, hugs, one over the luggage in the trunk of the Hudson, the doors slamming, the car moving off.

Then Eric Gautier snuck into the crowd with a handheld camera. Looking on the small portable monitor, we suddenly saw a lot things: Mary Lou's coldness towards old Bull Lee, melancholy Ed Dunkel who sees his friends leaving, the Sal Paradise's refound energy for the idea of getting on the road again. It was enough that Sam Riley accelerated the pace, as the maid accompanies the small splitting crowd that that concept is embodied. These moments are crystallized according to the indications of Salles, to give in the end a fairly accurate assessment of the long break in the southern trip of Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

Once the sequence was done, Walter Salles made a little speech, the first of the day, to salute the departure of Elizabeth Moss, who left during the filming of Mad Men. Everyone applauded. They applauded a lot on the filming: the end of a particularly difficult sequence, the final shot of the day or an unusual feat.

Thus the owner of Candy's Quality Reptiles was acclaimed. Among the testimonies gathered by Barry Gifford and Lawrence Lee Jack's Book, several state that Joan Vollmer, the companion of William S. Burroughs liked to use a broom on a dead tree in order to bring down lizards (Joan Vollmer lived under the constant influence of Benzedrine she ingested in large quantities). Whether a question of climate, time, memory or unreliability in any case it was found that the modern lizards are found on living trees of species that are well defined. It was therefore necessary to plant one tree and appeal to the department's Quality Candy Reptiles. A large team (the problem with the lizards, it is the entourage) came to install a small enclosure around the bush and began extracting dozens of reptiles in cartons with holes. The little green beasts rushed between the green leaves, which did not simplify the work of Eric Gautier.

In her dress, under her matted hair, Amy Adams resumed her air of hallucination (we didn't imagine it possible watching Julie and Julia, but she can be scary and did not hold back) and attacked the tree lizards with broom strokes. The last shot of the actress displayed her feet covered with green beasts. When she had successfully extracted a lizard that was caught in her hair, she in turn was complimented by the director and team and said goodbye to the plantation.

It was nine o'clock at night, but the day was not over. In a nearby fire station, a studio was improvised where Bull Lee, in a monologue, had to live in a nightmare that disturbed Sal Paradise, much later in story, much later in the shooting plan. Viggo Mortensen, who likes to tinker, had prepared a cutup texts from Burroughs, that he served as a ghostly voice. And finally, he read, in French, one page of Journey to the End of the night: "travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work."