Eddie Vedder & Sean Penn: Into The Wild (Charlie Rose, 9/21/2007)

Charlie in 1990 Chris McCandless abandoned the conventional post-university path for the adventure of testing himself in the

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s of the United States. He changed his name to Alexander Supertramp. He hitchhiked all over the western United States. Two years later, Mrs. Ella headed to Alaska to face the greatest challenge of living alone. He was found dead four months later Jon Krakauer wrote about it in an article for Outside magazine and it later became the best-selling nature novel. Joining me now is Oscar winner Sean Penn, widely considered the greatest actor of his generation. He is also known for the films he writes and directs, the one he has made now is the most interesting and by far the best.

He has adapted the crack novel into a film. Here's the trailer for Into the Wild, why would I want it in your car? point surrounds great I don't want anything so you're a leather now in the leather yeah another one they call perfect don't you think you should get a job and do something with this life? I only have one Quinn I'm going to Alaska Alaska Alaska we're sick there yeah, in the

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what are you doing when we're there now you're in the wild? Is he doing it? You simply live in the man. I read somewhere how important it is. in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong to measure yourself at least once.

Where do your mom and dad live? someone who wasn't even okay I didn't imagine we heard it I heard I heard Chris Sunny how long You were here a couple of weeks and before that I went to South Dakota. I worked for a guy named Wayne. I like all this. I took the Colorado River to the Grand Canyon and did rapids, what is meant by North? You know, great. Adventure in Alaska, if you want something in life, John Brown, also a freelance writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, has traveled on assignment to Baghdad, hi Ron, and more recently to Venezuela, also joining us is Eddie Vedder, who wrote music for The Sand Trap. the wild I'm glad to have you both at this table having Eddie here with Sean these two friends who have come together on this project it's wonderful to have you here so I appreciate you joining us unannounced.

I didn't tell him. He didn't know you were coming he said guess who's coming I said we had to try to tie him up here so I was going to look I think I could still look you can still look is it true this for a moment this friendship between you two wasn't yesterday well I was in love from afar for a long time and I was counting earlier today that when my daughter was maybe 2 years old was when he would actually come, you know, I'm in the scene. so the rest of us could hear and see and she would, if she was in front of the TV any time MTV was on, she would demand the TV say Eddie Vetter Eddie Vetter, she would yell it and then when he turned it on apparently of her own free will she shouted Eddie and we started watching and that was back on the TV heard tell me when this movie that people are already talking about even though it hasn't been released yet came to your mind why did it? then I'll get you I was III there was a bookstore I used to go to kind of an open air bookstore in the Los Angeles area in West Los Angeles where there was an open air chicken stand it was kind of an open air bookstore free with tube wall and I Sometimes I would look through the books while I was waiting for my lunch and I would buy a book here and there and the cover caught my attention and there was this thing that said in nature this is now a new color it was a new cover here that en Now I'm back in paperback and there was this bus in a black and white picture of this bus and in a light snow and I don't know if it looked familiar, if I felt it, but it really attracted me. eye and then and the title in nature looking at something that was man-made and it just attracted me and I bought it and I took it home and I started reading and I found myself reading it from beginning to end twice in a row, no -stop, I read the first time thinking I was reading a book, I read the second time I dreamed I was making a movie and I said the next day, after I caught up, I rested a little, I just started, you're trying to get it.

I contacted author Jon Krakauer, which I did, we had a conversation, there were a few other people looking at the idea of ​​making a film, but no one had been given the rights because the parents for whom it was still a fairly recent loss. So I traveled with John to Virginia to meet the family with the help of Chris's sister, Corrine, and her parents, Walton Billy, and we had a series of what I would say pretty intense. I was subject to quite intense interrogations. They are an extremely brilliant family. They were an extremely thoughtful family and this was unsettled territory.

The idea of ​​trusting a filmmaker to do it and accepting the idea of ​​it being told, they had been blessed, they felt the good fortune of meeting Jon Krakauer, who was able to lay out the story of what had happened to his son and his brother and A kind of search for the clues that they had not been able to fall into, he was part of the decision-making process. I think I think they consider him like family in a lot of ways and he certainly was influential, take a look at this, this is a clip from an interview I did with John Krakauer on January 30, 1996, when he was 23 years old.

He was young and reckless and it's an equally stupid trip to Alaska. very serious climbing on a big solo expedition and the Stikine Ice Sheet to climb a mountain called The Devil's Thumb and I was very lucky to have survived if I hadn't people would have given me a set like they now say about Chris that I had a death. I wish I knew I didn't sin, people say he wanted to commit suicide. I feel strongly that he was not. I mean, it's what your wish was. The same. It's just hard to articulate because it defies logic.

I thought that if I chose a challenge that was quite difficult and succeeded, everything afterwards would be fine. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but I was convinced of this and it wasn't because it would make me rich, it was just in some spiritual sense that you would feel so good afterwards. doing something so difficult that you know there's a long tradition of people who have done this. I think there's something going on here. It's almost a classic rite of passage that we have in our culture and throughout history in many cultures. have had these were taking risks is something that young men and sometimes young women feel they have to do are forced to do there is something in this story that touched him and touched him in terms of how he feels about the relationship of a young man or his relationship with the rest of the world, well yes, there are some levels.

I mean, I think one of the key things that Jon Krakauer talks about and this is the rite of passage, which I think in a sort of organic social sense, it's not like that. It almost doesn't exist anymore in terms of something that is presented to you, but whether you choose it or not, but just for your survival, it is mandatory and that exists very, very, very rarely, particularly in our culture here in the United States. More and more, I think it is becoming something that men and women are recognizing is not a human luxury but a human need to challenge oneself to find the highest conduct of oneself and, most importantly, return to oneself because It's a kind of stripping away of whether the conditioning is corrupt or not, it's conditioning from the outside and being able to begin to define yourself in one and you know from within yourself for the first time that it's something that you know has always been available in other traditions in other times in terms of just survival, you know, just for that reason it's a powerful story, he's also running from something that has to do with his relationship with his family, well, I see this a lot more, you know, I described this movie many times and I have talked about her.

You should also know that it is like a mathematical pie chart where a portion, of course, is a leak of many things that he considered fraudulent and therefore had a strip of his soul before he could start living in his own life, yeah, but I think what's so compelling about this book and what really drove me and in the spirit of this movie is that the rest of those pie charts are dominated by a wonderful lust that is stimulating to everyone and everyone shares with diverse degrees on that cake, yes, I told you and I want to involve a swirl in this part.

I told you that when you started watching the movie there is a feeling that this movie will make it because you relate to it. with him, you care about him, you feel him and you're part of the journey or it won't work out for you because you won't like him and I don't care about him, you won't want him to succeed. you have a brand, you have to bridge that gap somehow, so you had one with him, how did you see it, this man's journey, this story that Shawn tells and you wrote the music. You know as soon as they let me in. story in the book in the movie that it all happened in a matter of days.

I was inside. I don't even know what I saw because I was like inside looking out. I think I mean he wouldn't want to romanticize. my opinion or the process, but I have to say it because it's true and, you know, what happened was two weeks or three weeks and I woke up and it was done and I don't really remember much about it. I really don't know, I know you know me as a father myself. I went home at night and read books to my son, but I don't really remember much of what happened, it was more like waking up and having done work and from somewhere I'm not quite sure where I was and and and I just think I did it.

What happened was just getting out of the way, what did Sean ask or demand of you? Well it really wasn't a big one it never was a sinister task because it started out saying if you feel something do it you know what you can do what you feel and I did three days of work and I sent it to him and then you know early the next morning and we finished late because Nowadays you can send music through computers, you don't even have to send it by FedEx, but you know, I just woke up one night and I was working and he had already put two pieces of enemies and in the movie he said he had already He elevated it and said if you could do five or six more you could be the inner voice of the character and I was okay with that because I knew this was a sensitive story, a sensitive young man and I felt like he was in good hands, you know, with Sean and, honestly, I felt like I couldn't, that I could be responsible to him too, the music enhances it in some way, well, the way it had impacted the first movies you had.

A lot of times in this movie you have a man alone and naturally you know there's some sort of obvious sense in which you know music can help maintain an audience, I would do that with that, but actually this was structured for songs. this was what I consciously left out the narrative where that was that was there for a composer to come in and fill out and make transitions similar to the first movie that the Indian Runner did and I realized when I made this movie that I had a kind of I left that behind in terms from my vocabulary in the way that I want to experience making a movie and I've always enjoyed experiencing watching a movie and there are some great traditions of this kind of thing.

Ashbey's films did that quite a bit. a little bit and then, if there's the famous example of Simon and Garfunkel in the Graduate, more and more as I went on I realized that it should be a singular voice and not a combination of composers involved and really what happened is that with the bias towards Eddie I think when it really clicked was because of Emile's hearse performance at some point in the middle of filming. I began to recognize something in what I can only call the heart of him that reminded me of Eddie and what Eddie does as a musician and as a songwriter. and as a singer and when I mentioned that to David Webb in my first announcement he gasped and I followed that lead and when we finished the movie I called him and it just flowed but again I had also planned songs to tie together areas of the story and in the pace of the film and that, as it was presented, that was in the plan and then the sauce was how accomplished it was by him, this is a demanding and demanding role for a young actor, yes, and you walked away from He had a extraordinary performance, well, I would say no, I did that.

I would say I didn't help, but you know this, don't let directors come here and tell you that they got a performance out of someone that starts with an actor's own talent. and as young as he is, this is a very talented young actor, where did you find and see a movie called A Dog Town and he played someone that he had had some interaction with as a teenager? It was a true story in it it was about a group of surf skaters from the next beach south of where I grew up and I was a little starstruck, but when he did it and his physicality and there was something there, it was very moving too etc.

I went with him and quickly knew I could handle it as an actor, but as a man who was actually a boy becoming a man, that's the moment I had to choose, which was vital for casting, while we were filming. We were going to see in real life this actor go from a boy to a man and that is a very brief window in which you can capture that and people do it at different ages, but the most important thing is that the most important thing besides his enormousyes, and present it well. Eddie, best, thanks, Mike.

It's great to have you here. Thank you, sorry, it's a pleasure, yes. Mine in the Wild is a film that is becoming increasingly popular. lots of praise and lots of conversations I think it's the best work Sean Penn has ever done. I think it combines many things. I'm not a film critic, but it's in its passion, in its acting, and in bringing together a variety of talents that it's an extraordinary work and tells a story that many of us are familiar with, Jon Krakauer's book, it's one of those films that it adds an even deeper and different understanding to the story.

My thanks to Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder. Thank you. John. A pleasure. Thanks for joining us. See you next. time you