Taking to the Road with Walter Salles and Jack Kerouac

Talking with Walter Salles was already one of the great pleasures I’ve had even before he used the word “polyphonic.” In our talk on December 8, 2012, he revealed himself to be a filmmaker as kinetic and passionate as Jack Kerouac’s prose. All the better to adapt Kerouac’s seminal book.  From betraying the source material in order to be faithful to it, to riding a bicycle with Kerouac intimate, Jack Ferlinghetti, Salles’ focus was on getting the mood as right as the tempo of Kerouac’s prose, while maintaining the emotional truth of the story of a young man’s search for freedom in a world of conformity. 

This isn’t Salles’ first road picture. His MOTORCYCLE DIARIES, about a young Che Guevara on the road to find

Walter Salles, San Francisco, CA 12/8/12

himself, also deals with youth searching for meaning, though with the strains and stresses of filming stories about cross-country treks, it isn’t surprising that Salles sometimes daydreams about filming a story that takes place all in one room. It’s the last thing we talked about, and it gave another insight into the way this filmmaker throws himself body and  soul into every film he makes. You can listen to my interview with him here.