It took a lot of persistence (more on that in this week’s FilmCouch), but I managed to get an interview with Sean Penn. Penn is here with Into the Wild, which he directed. Based on a book of the same name, the film follows the real life story of a young man’s journey into the heart of the Alaskan wilderness. We chatted about what it took to get the film made (Penn spent 10 years securing the rights), and what a relief it is to be behind the camera rather than playing extremely tortured individuals.
3 Comments
Penn likes to go off the beaten path and it’s easy to see how someone who literally threw his life away so he could starve himself to death in Alaska is definitely off the beaten path. Beautiful locations but the main character is a somewhat not a sympathetic one for he does turn his back on his family and even detaches himself from people he meets on the road. Catherine Keener comes the closest with her shares but is saddened that this loved kid just ran away from everything.
There’s a very touching performance of Hal Halbrook towards the end. This film is very thought provoking but generally quite depressing because he didn’t have to end up this way.
I am not sure why this interview was highlighted as a bad thing in your 2007 year end wrap up email.
The use of
signifies you were unhappy but yet you have nothing here that indicates you got shot down.
If you only get 2-5 minutes with a director at a festival make it work since everyone is jones for their story as well.
Just curious, nothing else.
Hi Tommy,
The interview in this post was a few days in the making because about five minutes after Kevin got into Telluride, he was turned down by Daniel Day Lewis, PT Anderson and Sean Penn at once. It was a blow to his ego, but he recovered like a pro. You can hear about it in our FilmCouch #36 podcast from Telluride.
http://blog.spout.com/2007/09/07/filmcouch-36/