Sean Penn and Eddie Vedder Press Conference
Has Chris McCandless’ family seen the movie and have they shared their feelings of it?
Sean Penn: “Oh yes, I can't go to the point of disclosing private conversations with them. This was an incredibly selfless and brave thing, in my view, for them to allow his story to be shared. But at the end of the day I'm always aware that if you take away all of the flaws of the family, you've still got two parents who are watching the story of their lost child they loved dying, so this is not a pleasant experience for them. I hope that it will be a healing one and I know that they're very supportive of it.
It's one of the trickiest things involved in making a movie like this, the double-edged sword of making speculations about someone you didn't know, Chris, and about being trusted in the hands of his parents on such a triumphant but difficult story. So I like to think - they're people that I - in my time with them, which was a different time in their life, a different stage, these are people I consider friends of mine. I have a great respect for a very intelligent, very caring people. I did have their help throughout, and I would call it all to the degree a partnership with Carine, Chris' sister.”
How much do you want to articulate your views in the work that you create?
Sean Penn: “Well, articulating things is what it's… I guess it's one of the first questions to Eddie and I. I don't mean to be too hyperbolic about it, but I feel like you're probably looking at two guys who'd have a relative death without their work and work is articulating something or expressing something. It's like the gentleman's question over here before about my objectivity on the thing. Objectivity and subjectivity are to me a ball and chain potentially, to get hung up on this thing. The bottom line is that this thing that I was tracking, in response to his question, was neither objective nor subjective. That was just the wrong paradigm for me.
The idea was it's a hunger from deep inside is touched when somebody - this will that I talk about, and you can apply it to everything that's happening in the world, you can apply it. Let's forget about getting into global politics, just the movies. I'm so dissatisfied; it's good movie, bad movie. I almost don't care. I just want to feel that the person who made it did. And then that'll tell me enough, I'll get exhilarated about life better from seeing that movie on that basis alone. And so I just feel like I'd apply this to somebody who was talking about the use of breaking the fourth wall, which I do a couple of times in the movie with the character. It's like, ‘Hey man, we're near the end. Break every f---ing wall if you have to,’ is where I'm at. And it doesn't mean that I'm going to tell anybody to like that I did it or not like that I did it, or anything else. Or that it works or doesn't work every time somebody does do it. I'm proud of the whole thing. It's the way that I wanted to tell it. But for sure we've got to find out what's on the other side of these walls, and that's what he did.”
What was your song writing process on this film?
Eddie Vedder: “It was kind of all different ways. One nice thing it just kind of, I don't know how, but it just kind of grew organically. I may have been intimidated if Sean were to have said, 'We need this, and we need a theme, and it would be nice if it were structured this way or that way, and then it revisits this at the end.' None of that happened, or not consciously, and he started finding places to put the songs.
I've been learning from listening to the actors and Sean talk, Sean gave the actors - gave Emile, as closely as Sean was paying attention to detail to tell an exacting story being so responsible to Chris, he also gave Emile the freedom to be that person and how would that person be? What I'm saying is, with the music basically he allowed me to write my own lines, a couple of cover songs. He gave me a few lines that I could interpret. He gave me a lot of freedom, and I think the biggest thing was trust, which was just kind of unspoken. The story is so inspiring, just so inspiring, and the images were inspiring. It was so easy to focus that it really became kind of an out of body experience. It went real quick and instruments were being handed to me and we were just doing all the takes real quick. And then we'd send it to Sean and he'd find places for it, and ask for a couple of more. It just kind of grew that way. I don't know if I'd want to do this again, because I know it wouldn't be as good as this experience was, so I could just leave it at this. This was great.”
If Alaska hadn't been the climax of Chris' life, what would he be doing now?
Sean Penn: “For what it's worth what I think, my romantic vision of it is he's doing what John Krakauer is doing. He'd be writing. He'd be adventuring more and writing about it more. But your guess is as good as mine beyond that.”
