on the motion pictures rendering of 'on the road'

it is a truism that it is difficult to make a movie based on some books. some books are translated well into movies, some are enhanced, some are destroyed. concerning this particular movie/book combination, i'm not yet sure what has happened. let me write this review/analysis and hope to gain some clarity in the process on what it really means to talk about a book like on the road, jack Kerouac, and a movie based on the book.

“I never thought it’ll come to this, I’m actually buying a ticket for the On The Road movie,” I mention to the ticket issuing lady as she clicks away to print my ticket.

“Have you read the book?” she asked.

“Oh yes, I’m still reading it, I’ve never stopped reading it actually, and have long stopped counting how many times I’ve read it.”

“I did begin the book, but never got past it the first few chapters.”

I frowned.

“Well yes,” I said, “it did take me quite while the first time, but you have to keep at it.”

“I hope it’s a good movie, and you like it.”

“Thanks, but I don’t. I can’t expect anything, let’s just see how it is.”

The last few weeks I’ve been squeezing some minutes where I can, with the book in an attempt to finish it one more time before I went for the movie. I am on 93% with Dean and Sal in Mexico, just finished partying up with the girls. It has been seven years now since I first read the book. And now, after reading and re-reading it several times, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. The first few times it had been a travel book with unnecessarily long passages on mad people and jazz parties. Then it had been this exploration of psychedelic drugs and the restlessness of life pushing people out on the roads, flinging themselves across the continent of America. It is about Dean Moriarty, and Carlo Marx, and the others. It is a sad, grave book on life. It is a funny book on life. And in my most recent reading, it occurs to me that the book is entirely on, for, and about Dean Moriarty.

The movie starts in complete silence. Sal begins the narration: Across to Mississippi, across to Tennessee, Across the Niagara, home I'll never be, Home in ol' Medora, home in Ol' Truckee, Apalachicola, home I'll never be. Several shots of him walking across the different terrains of the world follow. Walking on grassy roadsides. Walking on dry earth. Walking in snow. Walking on asphalt. He hitches a ride on a trailer, full of bums and young hitchhikers like him. Montana Slim and the blond boys going for the harvest. You know which part of the book you are witnessing.

“Five months ago” to the death of his father, and a gross, unnecessarily chronic departure from the book, on quite an inconsequential matter: the great event in his life wasn’t the death of his father, it was when he was sick and when his wife left him. But you get the father version with the funeral in the rain and all.

You meet Carlo Marx first, and Chad King for a bit. Carlo is this thin squinty eyes writer with wavy hair and thick glasses, certainly not what I had imagined him to be, but this one was likable. He did say poetic things all the time. In an unassuming scene Sal meets Dean at his apartment in New York. Marylou isn’t “jumping off the couch” as they arrive, but is lazily lying on the bed topless, watching them as they walk in. It was the beginning of the movie and I was watching with extreme scrutiny, as if I was the producer. This was strike one.

Then, when Dean met Carlo nothing tremendous happened, “two piercing eyes” didn’t glance into “two piercing eyes”, but it was shown quite literally as they are walking down an alleyway that Dean and Carlo are digging each other, and paying no attention to Sal, who is left behind to drag himself to their madness. Strike two.

And, Sal says he is always “scrambling behind people who interest him, because the only people who interest him are the mad ones, those who are mad enough to live, who never say a commonplace thing, or yawn, but burn, burn, burn, like roman candles across the sky.” Roman candles across the sky, and not exploding spiders across the sky? This is probably the most quoted line from the book, everyone knows it, why screw with it? I wrote that line off my head right now, in my 22^nd hour without sleep. This was indeed strike three. Okay, need to recalibrate my expectations from the movie. This isn’t going to be Lord-of-the-rings-peter-jackson.

The good things: most of the good scenes from the book are in the movie. Some with great detail. The chronology is completely screwed, but thats okay. The book has five parts without much of a narrative connecting them anyway. For instance, the part when Dean is thrown out of his house by Camille and him and Sal hit the bars of Denver, Dean with his infected thumb and the dirty bandage around it, when he held it near his chest all the time, after they have hit some bars they end up with a black guy and go to his apartment to smoke up and the black guy’s wife is sleeping and doesn’t mind the noise at all and smiles as her husband recounts events in his high. That’s in the movie, and that was good to see. There are many such things in the movie that needn’t be, but are in an attempt to remain faithful to the book.

Roughly, the story is linear, not the zigzaggy narrative from the book. Marylou and Sal are dumped by Dean when they reach San Francisco, then there is Camille, then Marylou back again, etc. I won’t go into much details.

Old Bull Lee. I don’t know what to make of him. His children weren’t that adorable, and his wife comes across as this crazy witch. There is absolutely no hints of any deep chemistry between them. Oh yes, they lovingly share a martini, but then, who doesn’t? Remi was totally cut out. Terry was done for the sake of it. Everything was rushed up. And that’s the feeling that sticks with you through most of the movie. There is very little that is out of the book, mind you, characters, dialogues, even the exact words are from the book, but only in different places.

And Dean Moriarty, well, it is a great effort, but it was doomed.

There is very little of the LonelyPlanet travel feeling. Maybe this is my personal problem, as it was my early perspective on the book. There were many parts in the movie where I was lost, and uninterested in the story, where it was going, what was coming after. There was no great buildup to anything. The search for “it” was loosely referenced to.

The written word feels much different from the visual word. The movie was based on the book, but my relationship with the book is hardly affected by the movie, and this, I am very happy and extremely sad to observe. But it was expected.