Film Captures Young Man's Journey 'Into the Wild'

ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

MELISSA BLOCK, Host:

And I'm Melissa Block.

It's been more than 10 years in the making, and now the bestselling book, "Into the Wild," is a movie. It's the true story of a young man, Chris McCandless, who cut all ties with his family after graduating from college and went to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness.

(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "INTO THE WILD")

EMILE HIRSCH: (Chris McCandless) I'm going to be all the way out there, all the way out there just on my own, you know? No, no watch, no map, no axe, no nothing. No nothing. Just be out there, just be out there in it, you know? Big mountains, rivers, sky, game. Just be out there in it, you know? In the wild, you know?

BLOCK: In 1992, Chris McCandless spent nearly four months living in the woods near Denali National Park in an abandoned bus. That's where his body was found. He had starved to death.

Jon Krakauer wrote "Into the Wild" with the cooperation of the McCandless family. And when director Sean Penn called to ask about the movie rights, Krakauer told him the family would have to agree.

JON KRAKAUER: I wanted the family to sign off on it. I just couldn't do that on my own. I wanted them to be totally comfortable. So I, in fact - when we were discussing whether to make this movie and with whom - I played the devil's advocate and said, okay. Picture the worst thing you can imagine about your life or even something misconstrued about your life. And if you can't imagine being able to stand seeing it up there at 30 feet high in front of millions of people, we shouldn't make this movie. And, you know, we had many discussions about that, you know?

They're courageous people, the family, and they thought, no, you know, we're okay with it, you know, as long as it's true, we'll be fine.

BLOCK: It's interesting because in the book, what motivates Chris McCandless, in part, is rage against his family, but the sources of it are not entirely clear. I think you mention in the book that the rancor in the family was more smoke than fire. On screen, though, it's a very different portrayal of the parents there. They're much less sympathetic characters, and there's overt violence, and it's really a damning portrait of them, I think. And they went along with that.

KRAKAUER: Right. You know, they, of course, didn't see the movie until it was done, and I think it was a big shock for them. But there's a lot that's revealed in the movie that isn't there in the book. It's certainly more nuanced in the book. It's just a movie is so much more visceral and so much more emotional. I mean, it affects you in different ways. And, yeah, I agree. It's much more powerful. Certainly, his anger at his parents was a huge factor in doing what he did. But I think it's important to emphasize that Chris wasn't running away from his family. He was running to this adventure.

I mean, he was an intense kid, you know? He didn't see the world in gray at all. Everything was black and white, right or wrong. And he also, he, you know, he was a young man who wanted to test himself. That's not uncommon. What is uncommon is the degree to which he needed to test himself.

BLOCK: There is one detail in the book that answered so many questions for me about his family and how they endured his absence and not knowing where he had gone for so long. And it was that his mother, when she would leave the house, would leave a note on the door for Chris. And that's also not in the movie.

KRAKAUER: Right. Not only would she leave a note on the door, but she was constantly scanning for every young man she passed on the street. She would double back and check, you know, any hitchhiker. She was seeing Chris everywhere. Yeah, the movie - it's a movie. I mean, it had to leave a lot out. I think the movie is a remarkably faithful representation of the book and of Chris McCandless. I mean, I know Chris's siblings. He has seven surviving siblings or half-siblings, as the case may be. You know, I saw it with them in Denver, an advance screening. And they all thought it was really good and accurately portrayed their brother.

BLOCK: What was that like to watch it with them?

KRAKAUER: Oh, it was so intense. I mean, you've seen the movie and, God, that last 45 minutes is so wrenching. I mean, so it's just the extended family in this huge multiplex theater. By the end, everyone's in tears and sobbing. And no one could talk. We all, kind of, stagger out into the daylight and look at each other and go, what do you think? You know? What do you think? And people were, like, that was really good. But it was really hard. I mean, someone had to leave in the middle of - I didn't, don't remember who.

BLOCK: They must have imagined for years in their own mind what that must have been like for their brother to be starving and ultimately dying alone in this bus.

KRAKAUER: Yeah. I'm sure. And, you know, I don't know what it's like to starve, but I've read a lot about it. And it's a terrible way to die. You have this chemical imbalance in your brain from the lack of nutrients, you know, these convulsions, you're extremely sensitive to cold, there's severe muscle pain. But as the movie tries to show, I think, in the end, some people who have come really close to dying of starvation have reported that in the very, you know, at the very end, there's this euphoria that the pain is masked and there is this transcendent clarity. And that's somewhat comforting. I mean, I hope that was the case.

BLOCK: You describe, in "Into the Wild," you describe a trip that you took when you were about Chris McCandless's age. You go up to Alaska to climb Devil's Thumb under extremely severe circumstances and weather conditions, and you describe it as sort of wanting to peer over the abyss and to, sort of, look death and terror in the face a bit. When you were watching this movie, did you see yourself up there in some way?

KRAKAUER: Oh, yeah. I mean, I've always identified with Chris. I mean, I make no bones about the fact that I'm not, you know, most biographers at least pretend to be objective and, you know, unbiased. And I never pretended that. I identified with Chris McCandless. And in researching my book and seeing this movie, I mean, I felt those same things. You know, what I did in 1977 when I was 23 was much more stupid and reckless than what Chris did. That's why - and I certainly wasn't suicidal. I mean, I wasn't very smart, and I was way too intense, but, you know, when you're that age, you think you're immortal, and Chris certainly thought that. You think you're invincible.

You know, I remember calculating before I went to Alaska on this my great adventure, this solo to Devil's Thumb, that my odds of surviving are probably at least 65-35, you know? Maybe 70-30. Those are really good odds. And now, you know, I'd be appalled. I wouldn't do anything that I had a 30 percent of dying. I wouldn't do anything if I had a 1 percent chance of dying, you know? But when you're that age, you just, you don't think like that. He was 24 when he died, you know, he was still gaining wisdom and growing. And, you know, I like people to remember that.

BLOCK: Is that International Harvester bus where Chris McCandless lived for weeks and then ultimately died, is that still there?

KRAKAUER: Oh, yeah. I mean, I visited the bus twice this summer. Now, his sister, Corrine, who he was extremely close with, had never been there. She just wasn't ready to go there. But because the movie's coming out, Sean Penn and I were worried that the bus will attract more people. And so we wanted her to go there before the movie came out. So I took her there about a month ago, she and her husband. It's amazing. I mean, Chris's jeans were still there. And up until this summer, his boots were still sitting under the stove. Someone's taken those, unfortunately.

But many of his artifacts are still there. His silverware, his pots and pans. But these jeans that he, you know, that still smell like Chris were still there. So I took Corrine there, and it was very powerful for her. She went in the bus by herself and spent a couple of hours there. And when she came out, she was really, really glad she went. So the bus is still there, still very much the same. It still feels like Chris has just walked out for the afternoon. It's spooky, very spooky.

BLOCK: Well, Jon Krakauer, thanks very much.

KRAKAUER: Oh, my pleasure. Thank you.

BLOCK: Jon Krakauer is the author of "Into the Wild." You can see clips from the new film based on his book and hear Krakauer discuss his new theory about what ultimately killed Chris McCandless at npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.