[IMG:L]Sean Penn seems like a serious guy. He wades through the trenches of post-Katrina New Orleans, goes to Iraq to look for WMDs and speaks out publicly against George W. Bush. Then there are his movies. Penn‘s filmography addresses serious issues, including the death penalty, child kidnappings and assassination attempts.
But Penn hasn’t lost the sense of humor that landed him the role of stoner Jeff Spicoli in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Earlier this year, he spoofed his own political rhetoric by appearing on The Colbert Report and competing in a “metaphor off” with Stephen Colbert.
When he directs a film, however, it is no laughing matter and Penn had no such metaphors to describe his latest film, Into the Wild. “I always like to have at least 10 people who relate to my movies, and I’ve always had to be the 10th on the others,” Penn explained. “This one I like to say is everybody’s movie. It was when I started it. It was before I started it. I just would like for it to answer for itself every time it can.”
Into the Wild revolves around Christopher McCandless, a young man who chose to leave modern society after graduating college in 1990. He set out to live in the wilderness, surviving off of the land, and succeeded for two years–until his death in 1992. Though it ultimately ended tragically, Penn respected McCandless’s efforts to learn as he went.
“When I buy a Nikon camera, I have no tolerance for the instructions. I’m ready to make some mistakes using it and get some bad pictures back until I’ve figured it out for myself. I guarantee that if you do it that way, by the time you learn it, you learn it better than any instructions will tell you,” Penn explained. “If that’s what he wanted to do, maybe he could have put the rifle away and come out with the bow and arrow. He could have gone out there naked in the woods. You go out there and challenge yourself the way that you want to challenge yourself.”
Debate around the time of McCandless’s death included park rangers who found him in Denali National Park in Alaska claiming he was underprepared. The last person to see him alive as he wandered into Alaska offered him additional tools, but McCandless refused. Penn was inclined to rail against the authority figures.
“I think that this isn’t about there was more equipment to be bought at Patagonia. It’s about somebody who had a will that is so uncommon today, a lack of addiction to comfort, that is so uncommon and is so necessary to become common, or humankind doesn’t survive the next century. I’m just not willing to participate,” Penn said. “I’ll welcome anybody’s criticism and they can express it any way they want to, but I would caution you on listening to people in uniforms on this issue.”
[IMG:R]Regardless of Penn‘s view of authority, the park ranger at least represents the view of someone who would be tasked with rescuing a civilian in danger. Penn was not sold. “The guy said he wasn’t in any hazardous condition. What’s the big deal of driving his four-wheeler out and rescuing him then? He didn’t bring anybody into hazard with what he was doing. We don’t live our lives to avoid bureaucratic mandates and your job description is to go in and do something or not do something. Put it on yourself.”
Penn offered an even more controversial perspective in defense of McCandless’s ultimately fatal decisions. “Do you have children? You never corrupted them or fucked them up in any way with any of your sh*t? There’s no such thing as that. Alright, so who’s a bigger fuckup, Chris McCandless for hurting himself or you for hurting your kids? We’ve all got our sh*t.”
Lest anyone find Penn‘s comments oversimplified, he will take as much responsibility as he dishes out. “And me too, by the way. I’m not attacking you [for raising the question]. I’m saying the point of this thing is that the heroism of this will and courage that this young man had. All the rest of it is somebody else’s folly for me.”
Since he is so assured in criticizing the administration’s policies, Penn even addressed McCandless’s journey in the grand scheme of things. Though McCandless did not have an “exit strategy” for Alaska, Penn hardly found him as accountable as those that got America stuck in Iraq.
“I don’t see a parallel in that way because Chris wasn’t putting babies at risk like that, for one. I think intention counts for a lot, and I don’t think it competes in the level of purity. But also, I don’t know if I entirely agree. There is no exit strategy from Mother Nature if she doesn’t want you to have one. You can go to anything lengths. The degree to which he wanted to challenge himself is the degree to which he made a stripped-down trip. The exit that was necessary was the exit from authenticity. Then, you can see if you can handle the rest if you have the good luck and good fortune to do so.”
To portray McCandless’s journey, Penn had to go Into the Wild himself with his crew. Shot on locations across the country where McCandless himself journeyed, Penn‘s crew learned to stay on their toes.
“We ran this movie in a way where we were, on the day, searching out a location, because something shifted in the weather from what I planned. We got pretty quickly to the point where my crew, with me in the front of a boat – going down the Grand Canyon–my crew behind me would start to giggle as soon as we saw the most impossible cliff side to climb, because they knew that we have to go up there and shoot from there. I was going to trust that what energized me was not just going to be an indulgence, but it was going to be what this journey should be for us making it and that would fall onto the film. And so I pursued those things.”
The basis of Into the Wild came from Jon Krakauer’s biography of McCandless’s journey and information shared by the McCandless family. The McCandlesses cooperated with Penn, but the specifics are only privy to Penn.
“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,” he said.
[IMG:L]When it comes to the themes in Penn‘s directorial efforts, he retreats. While some point out that The Indian Runner, The Crossing Guard and The Pledge all deal with men trying to escape their past, Penn did not want to analyze McCandless’s story in terms of his own past work.
“I could probably give you a long-winded answer that would have some truth to it but I would say the basic nature of it is not very analytical in terms of something I looked at various things at various times. It’s probably first and foremost being a man trying to come to terms with himself and his past.”
Into the Wild opens in theaters Sept. 21, 2007
