53rd SFIFF: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu interviews Walter Salles

Alejandro González Iñárritu was the “surprise guest” interviewer for Walter Salles who was presented with this year’s the Founder’s Directing Award at the SFIFF. For the most part, the Mexican filmmaker asked the Brazilian questions on the film’s in his filmography and working with non-professional actors, but they managed to get into Salles’ own background and the reasons why he turned to film. Always far from home, Salles’ father was a diplomat and this lead him to watch a lot films in order to escape. The notion of the “traveling” cinema has become Salles’ signature – his films feature characters who make life-altering road trips as cited in Central Station & The Motorcycle Diaries. As far as non-professionals are concerned, it depends on the roles. It took a year to cast the boy in Central Station because he was one of the main characters, where in MD it was mostly improvisation and capturing the interactions between Gael Garcia Bernal and Rodriego de la Serna with the non-professional people in the first takes that lead to that aestheticism.

As part of the evening’s festivities, Salles then screened a short he did for Chacun Son Cinema for the 60’s anniversary of Cannes for second and last time — it features his son as Salles wonders how cinema will change him featuring clips from his favorite films Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas“, Mario Peixoto’s “Limite” and Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator.”

Then Salles introduced an hour long “work in progress”, not a feature, but a documentary entitled “In Search of On The Road,” which was specially made for the evening only. It was the product of the two years of research that he made to explore the possibility of a feature film. Salles did a similar research for “The Motorcycle Diaries” when he travelled the path that young Che did when he wrote the diaries. However much to Salles regret he didn’t film those journeys because they were crucial on how the feature turned out.

After the success of MD, Salles has been working to adapt Jack Kerouac’s mythic novel On the Road which has been attempted by many directors including Francis Ford Coppola who holds the rights and Jean-Luc Godard amongst others. Actors from Marlon Brando, James Dean, Sean Penn, Johnny Depp and Russell Crowe have all been attached or interested at some point in their career to star.

The film adaptation which still proves a daunting challenge because of the colossal scope of novel — it means a great deal to many people around the world and inspired a generation that changed the world. In the documentary Salles also shows rare footage of Kerouac and the people who inspired him and how the book came about including several key members of the Beat generation. It remains to be seen whether Salles will make the film (Garrett Hedlund has been mentioned as of last week that he’d be taking on the role of Dean Moriarty) but he’s definitely the right director for it with the right attitude who has the blessings of many in the film community.

In the audience were several people from the film industry such as legendary editor Walter Murch, actors Peter Coyote and Jeanne Tripplehorn, producer Rebecca Yeldham amongst others as well as several people from the Beat generation including Carolyn Cassady, the wife of Neal Cassady who were immortalized in the novel “On The Road” as Camille and Dean Moriarty, one of the two main characters in the novel, other being Sal Paradise which was Kerouac himself.

While the status of On the Road remains somewhat clouded, what we do have in Salles’ documentary is a compelling, personal artifact that might gets its chance to shine at a major festival before the actual feature account sees the day.