Penn Stops in Pelham:
Filmaker Debuts "Into The Wild" at Picture House

Next: Joe Pantoliano of "The Sopranos" Presents "Canvas" - Sept 26

by Jon Chattman, photos by Jay Ackerman  

(September 13, 2007) The Hollywood industry has been abuzz with the annual Toronto Film Festival, but Pelham - of all places - was a hot spot for film connoisseurs last week.  In an effort to generate buzz and bucks to renovate the Pelham Picture House, a 1920s “one-plex” slated to become a three-screen, state-of-the-art film and education center, the theater hosted two special advanced screenings of two buzz-worthy films from this fall.

Following each film, Rolling Stone film reviewer Peter Travers, a nearby Mamaroneck resident and Pelham Picture House board member, led Q&As with the stars.

First was Tuesday, September 4, when Oscar-winner Sean Penn presented his new film “Into the Wild,” based on Jon Krakauer’s 1996 best-selling biography of Christopher McCandless, a 22-year-old college grad who ditched his family and vanished penniless into the Alaskan wilderness. A tough, touching little film, this is the actor’s fourth turn at directing. Next was Friday, September 7, when actor Michael Douglass answered questions following a screening of the quirky “King of California,” in which he plays a mental patient trying to reconnect with his daughter.

Sean Penn Opens Up

We were there for the Sean Penn outing, and it’s very clear the aforementioned works are exactly the kinds of fare Mr. Travers envisions for the new Pelham Picture House when it opens: small, intricate films that inspire and conspire. As Mr. Travers said, audiences need an alternative to “the multiplex.”

Penn in Pelham: Peter Travers questions Sean Penn after a screening of "Into the Wild."

Last Tuesday, after his film screened, Mr. Penn, usually outspoken yet shy, opened up about the process of bringing the McCandless tale to the big screen.  Christopher McCandless graduated from Emory University in 1992, but unlike typical suburbanites in his neighborhood, he then abandons his family and his possessions, gives his entire savings to charity and hitchhikes his way to the Alaskan wilderness. Along the way, he encounters a series of characters that shape his life.

Mr. Penn admitted that he was drawn to the book some 10 years ago, because of the search for “self.” “It cried out to be a movie,” he said. Throughout that time, the actor-director forged relationships with the McCandless family, who was naturally very reluctant to see the book turned into a film due to their son’s ultimate death in the wild. (No spoiler here – we’ve all likely read that the young man died either from starvation or poisoning or both.) Plus, the young man’s parents were not necessarily going to be painted in a positive light.

Still, Mr. Penn said he never gave up. One young man’s quest to throw off the trappings of society was “impossible not to take personally,” he said. “[It] forces a person to strip away from every influence in life, and then bring back to society a basic feeling for living,” he told the Pelham Picture House audience.

Ultimately, Mr. Penn secured the rights a decade later, having finally won over the McCandless family. He credited the family for their bravery in allowing the young man’s tale to be told.  Now, with the movie, he said, “they’ve accepted his vision.”


When filming, Mr. Penn chose to travel to all the places McCandless has traveled, and to meet the people he had encountered on the journey. The filmmaker said it would have been easy to just use blue screen instead of heading cross country, but he wanted the film to be authentic. “It was the only way to find a realistic version of life—rather than the way movies are made today with all those special effects,”  he said.

Mr. Penn also admits that filming in sub-zero weather didn’t win him any popularity contests with the crew or cast, particularly the star Emile Hirsch who had to wade into a river buck-naked.  He needed a “hungry” actor for the main part, and Mr. Hirsch, perhaps best known for “The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys,” fit the bill  “He was magic,” Mr. Penn said.

The filming was grueling but inspirational. Mr. Penn believes it helped him find a “stronger place in his head and heart—a feeling of absolute love.”  

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