CraveOnline: How did you develop the character for McCandless?
Emile Hirsch: It was a mixture of talking to his family, his sister Carine and his parents Walt and Billie, who are really strong people, and reading a lot of the philosophy that he was reading at the time. Thoreau, his book Walden, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, Jack London’s Call of the Wild and White Fang. Those philosophies that kind of pervades those works. Understanding that was a big key in trying to understand who McCandless was and why he believed the things he did. Those books really kind of articulate that whole line of thinking, that rugged individual.
CraveOnline: In a lot of ways, McCandless built on Thoreau’s idea of simplicity and self-reliance.
Emile Hirsch: Walden is really like Chris going into Alaska in a really big way. You read Walden, and you’re like “God, this is so much like into The Wild, except he didn’t go to
CraveOnline: Thoreau wrote Walden over 150 years ago, but his words seem to take on greater meaning as time goes on, the world gets smaller and our society’s fixations, such as pop culture, get more and more absurd. The need to kill off that false self seems more prevalent today than ever before, where our identities are defined by what we surround ourselves with.
Emile Hirsch: When he wrote Walden he lived in a small village in the 1700’s or something. Can you imagine if Thoreau went to f***** Manhattan? He’d have a nervous breakdown as soon as he got off the subway. There’s really that false being within that you’re always fighting. People feel that eternal struggle and they can’t really describe what it is but they know it’s there and that’s what the movie kind of awakens in them. It’s the shedding of the phoniness that we all feel that we have. I think Fight Club touched upon a lot of interesting subjects similar to that as well.
CraveOnline: How did you and Sean Penn become involved?
Emile Hirsch: What happened was I was at a friend’s house, and I got a call on my cellphone out of the blue, and it was Sean Penn. He had just seen Lords of Dogtown and he enjoyed it. I had lunch with him, and he told me about this project that he had, and to read the book. But you know, he hadn’t written the script or anything at that point. The way he talked about it seemed as if it was going to be very, very long until we made it. And he didn’t give me the part until he made it. Over the next four months, every couple weeks we’d get together and go drinking, or hang out with his family or go eat and eventually he called me and said the part is yours if you want it. I think he was kind of testing me over those four months to make sure he didn’t get bored with me or make sure I had the right stuff to kind of make sure I didn’t get impatient or show some side of my personality that he hadn’t seen right away.
CraveOnline: What a rapscallion.
Emile Hirsch: Haha yeah, you know, keep me in the dark and test my mettle.
CraveOnline: Did Sean have a very specific image in mind for the character?
Emile Hirsch: He wanted it to be pretty authentic to who Chris McCandless really was, so that was really the biggest standard for the character.
CraveOnline: I’ve seen a negative portrayal of McCandless in the media, calling what he did selfish and senseless.
Emile Hirsch: I think most of the criticism is from people who really, first of all, don’t know that much about it, and secondly, there’s a lot of jealousy of courage. I think that there’s a lot of people who are afraid to do the things he did, and those are usually the quickest to be the first whiners.
CraveOnline: Would you see the film as a rites-of-passage piece, or a tale of a kid sabotaged by his own mistakes on his quest for enlightenment?
Emile Hirsch: Both, I mean he gets sabotaged by the great unknown but at the same time it was a huge rite of passage for him. It’s the story of a really good person. A good guy.
CraveOnline: Getting into the space of the flim, being on location in so many beautiful areas, how did that resonate with you?
Emile Hirsch: It just gives you so much energy. That kind of traveling, exploring, you just get this high on life, like your spirit is like a paper airplane flying around.
CraveOnline: What did you take away from the part?
Emile Hirsch: I hope, some of McCandless’ courage and strength. I can only pray that some of it stays with me.
CraveOnline: Eddie Vedder wrote some great songs for the movie. [Click here for our interview with Vedder]
Emile Hirsch: Eddie’s got a kindred spirit with the idea of McCandless. He loves him. He really connected in a very deep way with the story. I think that the music just poured out of him. Talking to him about it, he’s almost dumbfounded by it, you know, I think it was almost so easy for him because he was so inspired by it. People can be happy with it, but he’s almost perplexed by it because it was just such a natural response for him. He’s such a reflexive, instinctive artist that I just think it was like second nature to him, you know?
CraveOnline: How was the Speed Racer experience?
Emile Hirsch: Speed Racer was an interesting experience because it was the exact opposite of Into The Wild in the sense that I shot all of Into The Wild outdoors and I didn’t shoot one scene in Speed Racer outdoors. It was all indoors on a green screen in
CraveOnline: I hear it’s going to be something entirely different for the Wachowskis.
Emile Hirsch: Very different. They definitely kind of wanted to switch it up for the audiences and not just give em more of the Matrix.
CraveOnline: Anyone you’d like to work with?
Emile Hirsch: I’d love to work with Sean. Working with him as a director was great, but I want to try my hand at acting with him. He’s just a strong person. He’s very passionate, creative, he’s just a fireball. I think I’m a better person for knowing Sean Penn, that’s for sure.
