I saw Walter Salles‘ On the Road at the Cannes Film Festival almost a year ago. Since then, he edited the film before it made its Toronto Film Festival debut after which it was released in four theaters on December 21. It added two theaters in the first weekend in January and quietly added 33 more the weekend of March 22.
The film will expand to approximately 100 screens this weekend (find one near you here) and just yesterday it became available on Video On Demand (VOD). To go along with the small screen release, they’ve sent me an exclusive clip from the film which stars Garret Hedlund, Sam Riley and Kristen Stewart among many others.
The film is an adaptation of Jack Keroac’s novel of the same name and features Hedlund as Dean Moriarty and Riley as Kerouac’s alter ego, Salvatore Paradise. The two young men who journey across the North American landscape in pursuit of self-knowledge and experience. This exclusive clip finds them late in their travels, after crossing the border.
Here Dean and Sal drink, dance the mambo and enjoy some time with prostitutes.
You can read my review of the film right here, but do realize the version I saw was 13 minutes longer than the version that was ultimately released so many of my issues with the film may no longer be issues.
Jonathan Sehring, President of Sundance Selects and IFC Films, spoke of the changes Salles made to the film prior to its Toronto debut saying:
“The response at Cannes was that some people loved it and some people were respectful of it, like some people loved the book. And Walter took a lot of that to heart. He’s gone back, and we’re unveiling a new cut in Toronto, which is about 15 minutes shorter. It’s a little over two hours now. He’s added certain things that weren’t in the cut that was in Cannes… He has been in New York and Rio and L.A. working on it the past couple of months, and it’s going to be very wet when it gets to Toronto. We’re locked, but they’re finishing the mix up right now. We’re very, very excited about it.”
One of these days I’m going to have to check it out again. For now, check out the clip and look for it On Demand right now.
