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Emile Hirsch on Into the Wild
By Fred Topel | Image property of Paramount Vantage.
Christopher McCandless tried to live alone in the wilderness but died in 1992 from eating poisonous berries. Filming his life story in Into the Wild, actor Emile Hirsch got to experience the benefits of such a journey without the tragic ending.
Hirsch Goes Into the Wild
"This film for me was just a tremendous adventure," said Hirsch. "The opportunity to go on the road trip of a lifetime with [director] Sean [Penn] which I'm so grateful to have the opportunity to work with him. He made everything so authentic and so real. We shot in all the real locations, went to all these different places. Saw these beautiful slices of America and these wonderful portraits of nature burned into my memory thankfully. Days where we were camped out on the Grand Canyon on the Colorado River. We shot there for about a week or two. Just looking at the side of these cliffs and it's like, 'That rock there is three billion years old. Wow.' It's really an incredible, a very humbling experience."
While he appreciates the privilege of such an experience, Hirsch is careful not to get too pretentious about it. "I was just getting to experience so many different places and meet so many different people, was forced to be very responsible. Sean demanded me to really step up and give him everything I had to give. So I'm not going to wax on about how I'm mature now. If you're trying to get that out of me, I'm a little nervous about the presumptuousness of that. Maybe I'm a little bit more capable."
As McCandless encounters different people along his journey, the film plays as a series of vignettes between Hirsch and a rotating collection of costars. "It was fun because for me I got to jump around all these different locations. At each new location would be a whole new set of people and actors. They didn't know about each other. They just knew what they were working on and their part of the film. So I would get to go and experience all these different scenes and places with these different people and have my own fun times. I can't tell you how much fun me and Vince Vaughn had when we were in South Dakota. I think it's gonna be pretty exciting for all the other actors to watch the film and see what else we were making too. Like 'Oh wow, you guys were all over there too.'"
Into the Wild
Into the Wild
Into the Wild
This is Hirsch's third biographical film. Each story afforded different levels of access to the real people and he approached each role uniquely. "[Lords of ] Dogtown I was able to meet Jay Adams. Alpha Dog I was not able to meet Jesse James Hollywood. There was a certain point where I decided I was just going to do my own interpretation. I wasn't relying on research or anything like that. But Into the Wild, I was not able to meet Chris McCandless obviously, but I did as much research into him as I could because I was so fascinated by him. I felt like he was such a complex personality, such a messy pile of contradictions and love and anguish and courage that I felt like I owed it to his memory to learn as much about him as I could."
As the film resurrects the debate over McCandless's actions, Hirsch does not get defensive for his character. "We didn't think that we were making Chris McCandless into a martyr. We didn't think we were putting any makeup on any blemishes he had. We were trying to present him as we thought he was, which is a complicated, flawed, courageous, loving person. This is a guy who cared about people. When he was in high school, he would get cheeseburgers and drive down to downtown LA and hand them out to homeless people, on a Friday night when most kids are going out and doing whatever they do these days or back then. So there's that aspect of him where he's a real humanitarian. He cares about people, cares about humanity but then he doesn't contact his family for two years, and his sister who he loves more than anybody. So the controversy about Chris is one of the reasons why I think people talk about it so much and why McCandless has become such an enigmatic kind of public lightning rod figure to talk about. I don't think Chris McCandless would have wanted that any other way. I think he was very about truth. I think that that was something he really took seriously and was really looking for. I think McCandless wouldn't have probably hesitated to criticize himself near the end."
Into the Wild opens to theaters on September 21st.
For the trailer, poster and more movie info, go to the Into the Wild Movie Page.
Fred Topel
Sources: Image property of Paramount Vantage.
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