In December, Kristen attended a screening of On The Road hosted by the Santa Barbara Cinema Society that was followed by a Q&A Session with her co-star Garrett Hedlund. Here is a transcript of Kristen?s portions. You can read the entire transcript at SBIFF?website.
SBIFF: And Kristen, you?ve also been involved with this project for a very long time, since, Into The Wild with Sean Penn?
Kristen Stewart: It was a little after that. I think it was in 2007, I was seventeen.
SBIFF: What was it that attracted you to this role?
Stewart: On The Road was my first favorite book. I read it as a freshman in high school. And then when I heard Walter was directing it I would have done anything to be involved. I would have been his assistant on it. I would have done craft service. The reason you love something, it?s so clear. I don?t even really remember the details of the initial conversation; I think I just drove away shaking. I mean I was fairly certain. Not necessarily that I would get the part, because it could have been decades and we still would have had to wait fifty years for it to begin, but that I wanted to commit to something like that. Which is obviously, at least the way I remember, so irresponsible of me. I wasn?t ready for that part yet, at all. I got involved when Garrett did, and if fifty years had gone by and we?d missed out then it would have been a really painful experience.
SBIFF: Kristen, in the book the women, especially Mary Lou, are shall I say, underwritten. Were you involved in the process of expanding the character of Mary Lou?
Stewart: Yeah, she?s definitely on the periphery of the story. I think some of the people behind the characters thought it would be easier to not change the story necessarily and never add anything really. It was always just sort of felt. I think a really common idea in the book is that the women are treated as sort of playthings like they?re ambience or sexy wild things
SBIFF: Which seems like misogyny to some people.
Stewart: Yeah, which is interesting to me because I always hear men say that like, ?So hey, don?t you think there?s a chauvinist feeling to the use of women in the story?? and I think that?s a kind of simplistic way of looking at it. They?re not on the forefront of the story so you don?t know where their hearts or where their minds are. But at the same time, getting to know Luanne especially, I don?t think anyone could have taken from her. She was so generous and giving and what she was getting in return was not leaving her empty. The same goes for Dean. She was an incredibly formidable partner and talk about a girl who doesn?t know fear. She was just a teenager and it?s not a very typical quality for a teenager to have. That like, really hungry and unselfconscious and self-aware thing. It?s not common. As soon as I met her daughter, she went into great detail; she?s got a killer memory as well, and everything just made sense. I think we were able to feel them instead of having to have to illustrate it. It sort of just came across as we got to know them and how we loved the people.
Hedlund: She?s wise beyond her years, this character. I mean, she?s the one who left me in New York at the beginning. I just thought Dean and MaryLou were so parallel because she was wise beyond her years, he was as well, and they were kind of just great travelling companions. She was kind of the mirror image of him in a way, because just like that she left him to go back to Denver when she reveals that she has a husband to return to.
Stewart: They kind of helped to raise each other.
SBIFF: Kristen, the Hudson is another character in the movie and you obviously spent a lot of time inside this car. What was that experience like, it seemed awfully claustrophobic.
Stewart: Really?
Hedlund: Remember Argentina?
Stewart: Yeah, that got old.
Hedlund: After Montreal we needed snow in August. So we went all the way down to Patagonia in Chile and shot for three days. I remember there was a banana on the backseat floor and that?s how you could tell how long the day was by the current state of the banana. Obviously the banana was getting squished on the backseat floor, and whoever was in the backseat would be you know?
Stewart: Making disgusting jokes about the state of the banana that don?t need to be repeated here.
SBIFF: Kristen, you mentioned MaryLou?s daughter?Has the family seen the film? And what was their reaction?
Stewart: Yeah, I think Anne Marie saw it a few weeks ago, we were in San Francisco and she attended a screening with her husband and daughter. I think she?s really happy with it. The thing that Luanne always did with her daughter, and probably with many other aspects of her life as well, was that she really kept things separate. Which is why I got a really interesting perspective through her daughter. Her values, and desires, and ideals were pretty varying. And yet she was able to provide herself with the life she wanted to live. I mean afterwards, she was just smiling a lot. Her mother had just passed away right before we were about to get this thing going. Out of a lot of characters in the book, she would have been one of the ones that would have been really enthusiastic and into it and would have loved to talk to us, and it?s too bad that it was timed badly. But yeah, I think she?s happy with it. She said that she?s always really shocked and surprised by that aspect of her mom?s life because she came right after. She would tell us stories about people coming back to the house and her mom would never explain to her who they were, so one day she was sitting there, she was sixteen years old and she answered the door to Neal Cassady. He looked at her and?he could always never accept the fact that she wasn?t his daughter. So he was always like, ?Oh look! She?s got my eyes!? when she was a little baby, and Luanne would be like, ?Uh, no, she doesn?t.? Which is crazy, it?s always insane to me that they never had a child together after all that. But anyway, Neal looked at her and said, ?Oh, you?re not as pretty as Jack said you were. Where?s your mom?? and she was like, ?Who are you?? Then she found out years later who he was, and he had shown up on the bus actually.
Hedlund: Oh yeah, the bus from the Electric Kool-Aid Acid test days. But it?s also special, Anne Marie the other night had given each of us a vinyl from her mom?s personal collection. Her mom, appreciated her vinyl so much that all of these had her initials on the back in the top right corner so?
Stewart: Yeah, there?s a little ?Lu? and it?s really cute.
SBIFF: So the jazz, I wanted to ask Walter about the music but one of my favorite moments in the movie is your dance sequence. Was that choreographed, or could you explain how that scene was shot?
Hedlund: Yeah, it was maybe choreographed in the way of memorizing your lines and knowing what to say but having the freedom to improvise. Because at that point, and I know that later we found out that Luanne?s favorite dance was the jitterbug but that would have been a little too clich? for this moment, and at that period we couldn?t find any reference of dance because they were coming out of swing and moving into be-bop. So we just interpreted that and learned a few interesting steps and what to do, and it was much more on the seductive side. Really we just learned a few steps and Walter would film ten minutes without calling cut. So of course we had to use a song that was cut to ten minutes so those were some of the most exhausting days of the shoot. We were just being maniacal on the dance floor and a big sort of bash was going on but after ten minutes, cut. Then we?d run outside to catch our breath.
Stewart: There was no air in the room either. It was totally like a vacuum. It was hot.
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Source: http://kstewartnews.com/2013/01/08/transcript-from-the-santa-barbara-film-society-otr-screening-qa/
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