The road

Subject: Re: The road Sun May 25, 2008 1:52 am

You're welcome! And I can't wait for this movie either. Cool

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Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
- Mark Twain

This is me for forever / One of the lost ones / The one without a name / Without an honest heart as compass

Subject: Re: The road Wed May 28, 2008 4:47 pm

There are a lot of excellent full length articles available from many sources at the moment, giving detailed insight into the Cormac McCarthy's story, the filming, and the relationships on and off screen.

Here are a few photos associated with The Road. Full credit is given
Macall Polay/Dimension Films .

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Subject: Re: The road Thu Jun 12, 2008 8:50 pm

Weinsteins Unveil Road Release Rollout
Source:The Weinstein Company
June 12, 2008

The Weinstein Company announced today its release plans for John Hillcoat's The Road, an adaptation of the post-apocalyptic novel by Cormac McCarthy starring Viggo Mortensen and Guy Pearce. Expect a November 14th bow in New York and Los Angeles followed by a limited release on November 21st before it opens wide on the 26th (you follow all of that?) - obviously an effort to generate early buzz. Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall and Kodi Smit-McPhee also star in this tale of a man and his son who trek across treacherous terrain after a nuclear explosion.

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Subject: Re: The road Fri Jun 13, 2008 1:05 am

I wonder if it will be released at TIFF. I'm planning on going again this year. bounce

I have no intention of standing in line waiting for an autograph this time - I did it once. Cool

I am patient for the release of this movie - I have such expectations; so much to look forward to and I have all summer to savour its arrival. The book was phenomenal. As will be Viggo's and Kodi's performances. bounce

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Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
- Mark Twain

This is me for forever / One of the lost ones / The one without a name / Without an honest heart as compass

Subject: Re: The road Tue Jun 24, 2008 10:00 pm

From the movie

......and on the set

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Subject: Re: The road Fri Jun 27, 2008 1:31 am

Photos copyright to Premiere (France)

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Subject: Re: The road Thu Jul 10, 2008 11:05 pm

From Fox News:

Waiting for 2008 Oscar Nominees

Wow — all of a sudden, with a lull over the holiday, some of the entertainment press has gotten worried there won’t be any Oscar nominees come December. Pish posh, I say: Don’t worry, they’re coming. It’s just taking a little longer than usual.

Here’s how things are shaping up. For Best Picture, there are plenty of potential titles. Already in the mix are Ron Howard’s "Frost/Nixon"; David Fincher’s "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"; Stephen Daldry’s "The Reader"; John Hillcoat’s "The Road"; Sam Mendes’ "Revolutionary Road"; Baz Luhrmann’s epic "Australia"; Joe Wright’s "The Soloist"; Gavin O’Connor’s "Pride and Glory"; Clint Eastwood’s "Changeling"; The Coen Brothers’ "Burn After Reading"; Woody Allen’s "Vicky Christina Barcelona"; Isabel Coixet’s "Elegy"; Oliver Stone’s "W"; and Jon Avnet’s "Righteous Kill." Tom McCarthy’s "The Visitor," already out, is a subtle triumph. Richard Jenkins, its star, could be headed to Best Actor.

There are also loads of performances. Penelope Cruz is a cinch for the Woody Allen film as Best Supporting Actress, but look out for her in "Elegy," my sources say. She has two magnificent turns this year. Ditto Kate Winslet in "The Reader" and "Revolutionary Road."

Frank Langella and Michael Sheen should be right in the Best Actor field with "Frost/Nixon," Leonardo DiCaprio for "Revolutionary Road" and Ralph Fiennes for "The Reader." The one actor performance that could be a breakthrough: Viggo Mortensen in "The Road."

And then there are miscellaneous performances from other films, many of which we don’t know about. Melissa Leo is a knockout in "Frozen River," which was shown at Sundance. Streep and Amy Adams are said to be spectacular in the film version of "Doubt," a potential Best Film nominee. "English Patient" star Kristin Scott Thomas is said to have given her best performance yet in a French film called "I’ve Loved You So Long."

Then there is the slam-dunk so far: Heath Ledger already has his nomination as the Joker in "The Dark Knight." Very few people have seen it, but this is said to be a crowning achievement in the beloved actor’s short career.

And it’s a long shot, but don’t be surprised if Robert Downey Jr. makes a good campaign and case for his role in "Iron Man." It’s a winner.
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Subject: Re: The road Sun Jul 13, 2008 1:51 pm

A breakthrough? Suspect

Thanks for posting that piece, Jennifer. Wow Oscar talk already. Cool

The pictures above are certainly a reminder how the work of actors are not always so exciting and glamorous. More and more I look forward to seeing this movie. I think I've read the book at least three times now. It's rather addicting. bounce

_________________
Be Yourself. Everyone else is taken.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.
- Mark Twain

This is me for forever / One of the lost ones / The one without a name / Without an honest heart as compass

Subject: Re: The road Tue Jul 29, 2008 8:14 pm

From OregonLive.com

Props to the Propmaster

Posted by Shawn Levy, The Oregonian
July 29, 2008 07:44AM

Those scruffy backpacks look like something you wouldn't want to touch with the tip of a two iron, but appearances can be deceiving.
They're actually movie props, weathered to look like they've survived the apocalypse for the film version of Cormac McCarthy's prize-winning novel "The Road," and they're meant to be carried by a
father and son who look like this:

Kodi Smit-McPhee and Viggo Mortensen in "The Road."

The film wrapped shooting yesterday in Portland, and I was able to visit the set for a couple of hours and chat with director John Hillcoat ("The Proposition") and star Viggo Mortensen, who agreed with me that the Mets have turned the corner but lorded over me the fact that his San Lorenzo team has lately been dominating my Boca Juniors in the Argentine Premera Division. (Viggo was raised to age 11 in Argentina and speaks Spanish with a lilting Buenos Aires accent.)
Anyway, I got great stuff for an article to be published when the film is released here, in mid-November or so.

And here's a tidbit about movie magic: there are a number of shots in the film, which involves a trek across a post-apocalyptic America, that were shot in the parking lot of the Portland Airport Sheridan.
I kid you not.
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Subject: Re: The road Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:04 pm

Our 'Road' to fame: We're No. 1 in post-apocalyptic locales

Monday, August 11, 2008
By Gary Rotstein, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Most livable indeed: Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee push their cart in "The Road," set for release in November and filmed around Pittsburgh

We can't wait till Thanksgiving to get our fill of a bleak landscape adorned by savage people struggling in a post-apocalyptic world with no hope.

Yep, that would be Western Pennsylvania, all right.

Or at least that would be us as the backdrop for the film version of "The Road," Cormac McCarthy's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a father and son trying to survive while on a long stroll after some undescribed catastrophe. The movie was filmed last winter in the region, using desolate parts of Bedford and Crawford counties and points in between.

The movie is to open Nov. 26, evidently as Hollywood's idea of feel-good holiday fare to enjoy with the entire family. ("Don't worry, Susie, those bad cannibals won't really eat the daddy and little boy. Now stop your crying. More popcorn anyone?")

Just to show that the Pittsburgh area wasn't alone in providing useful images of ugly despair, the filmmakers also shot scenes in post-Katrina New Orleans and on Mount St. Helens in Washington state. Chernobyl must have been off-limits, but hey, Conneaut Lake Park will do in a pinch.Feel that tangible misery and hopelessness

"The Road" is no comedy, but punch lines should be rampant from now to Christmas about how useful Western Pennsylvania was to telling its story. Somehow, our Pittsburgh just seems to fit better than Orlando or Salt Lake City for this stark tale, as the cast and crew pointed out to USA Today for a story published last week.

"It's tangible, the misery and hopelessness and the bleakness," handsome actor Viggo Mortensen said, veering dangerously into Sienna Miller territory as he described our attraction -- or lack thereof. "It gives you much more to work with if you're filming in that world instead of a green screen."

We got a pretty nasty reputation as "hell with the lid off" once upon a time, but actually, that might be more appealing than as the current ground zero for tangible misery, hopelessness and bleakness. At least hell conjures up an image of a warm fire, and everyone likes to gather around those. If Viggo and his filmmaking buddies really wanted bleak, shouldn't they have been here in the 1980s instead?Of course, real Pittsburghers know the truth

Obviously, no Pittsburgher is going to take lying down -- unless it's after 2 a.m. Saturday on the South Side -- any demeaning characterizations of his hometown, even when it's purely for cinematic storytelling.

This is, after all, our 250th birthday, and outsiders should recognize the outstanding job we've done to rid ourselves of air, water and sign pollution. (Oh, wait -- scratch that last one.)

On USA Today's Web site for reaction to its story about "The Road," blogger Truth2000 wrote: "I am a dyed-in-the-wool, Steeler-true, Pittsburgher. Articles like this only further the false image most people have of Pittsburgh.

"Like any urban center, we have our share of blighted neighborhoods. We also have MORE than our share of beautiful residential areas. Our skyline is one of the most breathtaking in the country. We have beautiful parks and our rivers can only be described as AWESOME! ... If you have never seen Pittsburgh, I would urge you to visit. You will be shocked, amazed and dissuaded."Go ahead: Drown your sorrow (so we can crack this Top 10 list)

When Hollywood makes its next movie about alcohol instead of Armageddon, it may head to Austin, Texas, instead of Pittsburgh.

That's because Austin ended up first, and Pittsburgh 11th, in a new Forbes.com report on America's hardest-drinking cities. The Web site used national health data examining how many people in each city say they had a drink in the past month, have more than two drinks a day or binge drink.

In Pittsburgh, 58.7 percent of residents reported taking a drink in the past 30 days, and 18.2 percent had five or more drinks at least one time. The comparable figures in Austin -- a college town with a thriving music scene --were 61.5 percent and 20.6 percent.

Coming in second on the serious-drinking list was Milwaukee, followed by San Francisco, Providence, R.I., and Chicago.

Still, The Morning File believes Pittsburgh should subscribe to the PR maxim that we don't care what anyone says about us, so long as they spell our name right. For that reason, so long as the makers of "The Road" put an "h" on the end of Pittsburgh in the credits, we'll be glad they were here. And if they want to portray us as looking kind of grim and bleak in the winter, well, we all know what Hollywood can do with special effects.

Gary Rotstein can be reached at grotstein@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1255.

First published on August 11, 2008 at 12:00 am
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Subject: Re: The road Tue Aug 12, 2008 10:05 pm

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Subject: Re: The road Tue Aug 26, 2008 3:26 pm

Road script review
August 25, 2008
Source: Quiet Earth
By Omar Aviles

The folks over at "Quiet Earth" recently got their hands on the script for THE ROAD, the John Hillcoat directed feature adaptation of the award winning Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, and, no surprise, they loved the hell out of it. Adapted by Joe Penhall, the film stars Viggo Mortensen as a man traversing the ash strewn wasteland of a post-apocalyptic Earth with his son, attempting to survive the bitter cold and the rampaging cannibals. Here's a little excerpt:

I don't know how it's possible but everything, and I mean everything, from the book is in this script. No attempt whatsoever has been made to gloss over some of the book's more difficult subject matter and nowhere has Penhall tried to explain away the unexplainable. He truly gets this book and he gets why it was so effective.

It's a little spoilery so proceed with caution.
The film opens November 26th.

Quiet Earth World Exclusive: THE ROAD script review

Posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 16:47:22 GMT by: agentorange

Spoiler:
No you're not seeing things. I hold in my hands the entire 123 page screenplay for Cormac McCarthy's The Road, written for the screen by Joe Penhall. Oddly, there is no cover page to help indicate which draft I might be looking at but each page is watermarked 9/11/07 (eerie eh?) and there is no question that this is a complete and fully realized work. To be blunt, the script is a complete stunner. It is a devastating masterwork which, I'm glad to report, has been written with absolute devotion to the original novel. If this is the script that gets filmed, then The Road will not only be the most important post-apocalyptic film ever made but it will profoundly affect the cinema going world. But I can't help but wonder; is the world ready for a film this dark? You can read the rest of our review after the break but I must warn you; there are some minor spoilers.

Those of you who've read The Road know how successfully it strips humanity bare and exposes the best and worst of our nature. There's no jaunty use of narrative framing devices like in No Country for Old Men, or playful genre blending a la All The Pretty Horses to blur the message either. The Road is McCarthy's masterpiece because the style is so friggin' precise that it becomes impossible to miss the point and equally impossible to put down. It is a very scary book and I'm here to tell you that this is going to be one hell of a scary movie. And I don't mean BOO scary here people. I'm talking about being confronted by how unbelievably evil we are scary.

I don't know how it's possible but everything, and I mean everything, from the book is in this script. No attempt whatsoever has been made to gloss over some of the book's more difficult subject matter and nowhere has Penhall tried to explain away the unexplainable. He truly gets this book and he gets why it was so effective. For example, we're still not told why the world is a charred smoldering pile of ashen snow, though there is a small hint at the beginning. The ambiguity is terrifying and Penhall is willing to let us draw our own conclusions about character motivations.

That's not to say there aren't some changes and surprises along the way. However, I'd say most if not all the changes are for the better. In some cases, scenes have been extended to create even more tension. If you've read the book you'll know what I'm talking about when I mention "the house" scene. It is one of the tensest scenes in the screenplay and it has been extended to the point that it is almost unbearably suspenseful.

Surprisingly, most of the additions do the exact opposite of what I would have expected them to do. They actually make the world scarier, the situation seem more dire, and life more hopeless than the book even did. The first 15 pages are just scene after scene of powerful head-shaking stuff. I predict people are going to be blown away by how far this film is willing to go. And again, I don't mean to insinuate designer gore or cheap thrills but just dark dark dark subject matter and quiet, personal scenes of real life terror- like this one from page 8 and 9 of "The Man" reminding his son about the best way to kill himself:

INT. BARN- DAY

Three pairs of feet wearing different shoes- a man's shoes, a woman's shoes, and a child's sneakers hang above three carefully placed chairs. The Man and The Boy barely react.

Boy: There could be something there. There could be corn or something.
Man: No, they ran out of food.
Boy: Maybe we could find some hayseed in the hayloft.

The Boy eyes the empty hayloft, goes over to the swinging CORPSES, studying them.

Man: It's not what you think, they committed suicide.
Boy: What does that mean?
Man: You know what that means.

The Man goes outside while the boy thinks about it a moment.

EXT. FARM- DAY

The Boy Comes out and finds The Man sitting on the wheel of a dusty, faded, soot-coated red tractor.

Man: Come here, sit down a minute.

He Takes the boy onto his lap and takes out his revolver, opens the magazine and shows him there are two bullets left.

Man: You see that? Two left. One for you and one for me.

He helps cock the pistol and curls the boy's thin index finger around the trigger.

Man:You put it in your mouth and point it up. Like this. Just like I showed you.

When, within the first ten minutes of a film, you get a scene like this you know that everyone involved was willing to pull no punches.

There are also a couple of scenes that have been added to give Viggo Mortensen's character a bit more background. They are very minor and do nothing to disturb the flow or integrity of the original piece- though I wondered how necessary they really were next to the five or so flashback scenes that are also in the script. One added scene has "The Man" taking "The Boy" to the house he grew up in. My guess is that it has been added to hit home the idea of "what we've lost" but again, something about it seemed a tad extraneous.

Another thing that shocked me were the flashbacks featuring "The Wife" (which will be played by Charlize Theron). I had been assuming they would be altered or extended to cash in on Theron's star power but they are actually given quite short shrift and they are very much to the point. No slow-mo scenes of frolicking in nature or funny hat wearing dream montages here folks. At most I would say the flashbacks will probably occupy less than 5 minutes of total screen time and they mostly take place after "the event" which gives them narrative weight. I slightly question how Penhall has written one aspect of her character but, in the interest remaining somewhat spoiler free, I'll not get into specifics. Suffice it to say her character does something very strange and she seems a little too worldly in one scene. That's all I'll say on the subject.

Of course I haven't even mentioned the most crucial aspect of the screenplay and the one ingredient that will determine how well the film plays. That's of course the relationship between the father and son. Ultimately, this is a story about a father who is desperate to protect his son and get to the coast before winter comes. The dialog here is pitch perfect and very sparse like in the book but I gotta say that, in the end, it's all going to come down to young actor Kodi Smit-McPhee. This is a very demanding role for a young actor. Besides having never known the world of the past, the character of the son has at least four highly emotive scenes that involve all sorts of crying and carrying on. If handled with care this relationship could be powerful enough to become the stuff of cinema legend. The scene reprinted below is a minor one and doesn't betray any crucial plot points, but it is pretty indicative of the strong bond between the two characters and how scary life would be if they ever lost each other.

EXT. WOODS-DAWN

The Boy opens his eyes, he hasn't been asleep, listening to the Man cough, worried. The Man returns and eyes the worried boy.

Man: What's wrong?
Boy: I had a weird dream.
Man: What about?
Boy: I don't want to tell you.
Man: Why not?

The Boy considers it.

Boy: I heard you coughing in the night.
Man: Were you awake?
Boy: It was in my dream. Then it woke me up.
Man: What else was in the dream?
Boy: Just you.
Man: What happened to me?

The Boy's face crinkles up, he starts to sob.

Man: Listen, when you dream about bad things happening it shows you're still fighting. You're still alive. It's when you start to dream about good things you should start to worry.
Boy: Do you dream about bad things too?
Man: All the time.

Even at the film's most epic and intense, it retains this close personal connection between the two characters and it's the one ingredient that will make this film deeply moving. The character of the father is no hero. But when pushed he will go to any lengths to protect his son. But, perhaps it's his willingness to do even the unthinkable and actually give a crap about someone other than himself that makes him as close to a hero as is possible in a world where everyone is is only out for their own survival.

So yeah, in case you couldn't tell, this script pretty much blew my mind. I loved it as much as the book and truly feel confident in predicting that the cinematic experience of The Road will be bold and unique. It manages to retain both the horror and the heart of the original piece. So, big thanks to our new best friend for sending us the screenplay. You rock!

Until Novemeber, keep on carrying the flame!

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Subject: Re: The road Tue Aug 26, 2008 7:21 pm

Thank you very much, friends!

I like them very much!

There is one detail!! They only use the cart/trolley for some time then it's changed to a small bicycle trailer.

It's strange that I could get in here and write this message without being logged in. But I couldn't post it without being logged in. So now I'm logged in here.

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You got it into yourself to be good at anything, you aim at. The fact is, that you must never give up. Accept what you are and be proud of it, be grateful for it. But never let it go to the head, always keep the feet on the ground. (From Bear Hearts wisdom). Add: Could have been Viggos, too!!!