Emile Hirsch Interview, Into The Wild

MoviesOnline sat down this week with Emile Hirsch ("Alpha Dog,” "The Lords of Dogtown”) at the Los Angeles press day for his new film, "Into the Wild,” written and directed by Sean Penn. The film is based on a true story and the acclaimed bestselling book by Jon Krakauer and features an award winning cast that includes Marcia Gay Harden, William Hurt, Hal Holbrook, Catherine Keener, Jena Malone, Kristen Stewart, Vince Vaughn, and Brian Dierker.

Hirsch plays Christopher McCandless, a fascinating and flawed human being whose journey seems to hit upon a lot of vital questions about modern life. After graduating from Emory University in 1992, top student and athlete McCandless abandons his possessions, gives his entire $24,000 savings account to charity, and hitchhikes to Alaska to live in the wilderness. Along the way, he encounters a series of characters that shape his life and transform this young wanderer into an enduring symbol for countless people.

"Into the Wild” is as much about the insatiable yearning for family, home and connection as it is the search for truth and happiness. A mountaineer and outdoorsman drawn to high, dangerous places himself, Krakauer took a deeply personal, obsessive approach to McCandless’s story. He set out with the question of why certain young Americans are so drawn to risk – and how the themes of troubled families and the search for a meaningful, authentic life beyond the conventional lure of money and ambition are often woven through their stories. Penn, who eventually got the rights to the story after nearly a decade, says, "I thought the story was instantly indelible and deeply cinematic in its characters and its landscape in every way. It hit the same nerve with me that I think it hit with most people who read it.”

The appeal of Chris McCandless in Jon Krakauer’s book extended beyond his physical adventures to his distinctive intelligence, enthusiasm and likeability, as well as his drive to separate himself with a sense of nobility from the warring and unhappiness of his parents. To play the role, Sean Penn sought an actor with the same sort of disarming, fresh-faced idealism as McCandless, and one who also might bear some physical resemblance to the handsome and charismatic young man seen in the haunting photographs left behind. More than that, he sought someone willing to give a 100% unflinching commitment to what would clearly be a performance that could make or break the film. He found all these qualities in 22 year old Emile Hirsch, who had impressed Penn in Catherine Hardwicke’s board-culture movie "Lords of Dogtown.”

With his captivating screen presence and versatile and powerful performances, Emile Hirsch has earned a reputation as one of today’s most promising leading men. Hirsch was last seen in Nick Cassavetes’ "Alpha Dog” opposite an all-star cast including Justin Timberlake, Sharon Stone and Bruce Willis. The film documented the life of Jesse James Hollywood (Hirsch), a drug dealer who became the youngest man ever to be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List, and it premiered to rave reviews at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

Portraying Chris McCandless in "Into the Wild” appealed to Hirsch who says, "I loved his spirit of adventure and flirtations with danger as well as his intelligence and discipline and philosophical quest for freedom. I loved the whole idea of searching for a way to do something truly different with your life. Yet, Chris had also been through a lot of hard times and I think he tried to come to grips with his many emotions through these adventures. I found him an endlessly intriguing person and I knew I would want to go really far into this role. He really thought in a different way than most people do and the things we usually take for granted, he didn’t understand at all. The idea of sitting back and doing nothing didn’t make sense to him. He was always motivated by action.”

Emile Hirsch is a sensational actor and a super nice guy and we really appreciated his time. Here’s more of what he had to tell us about his new film, working with Sean Penn and Hal Holbrook, and his upcoming "Speed Racer”:

MoviesOnline: You did a phenomenal job.

EMILE HIRSCH: Thank you so much.

MoviesOnline: How did you go about creating your character?

EMILE HIRSCH: I took inspiration for my character from what I learned about the real Chris McCandless, from talking to his sister Carine who speaks about him with such love and passion. That to me was the biggest part of just the sheer feeling that I got from her about Chris and also talking to Walt and Billie, his parents. I knew talking to all of them that I was going in there [as] the Hollywood actor who had been cast to play their son who had passed away. You know I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be an interrogation. I felt that it would almost be presumptuous of me to ask questions about their son versus just letting… As far as I’m concerned, they could just talk about their son because from the standpoint of me having questions, they know everything about their son. They know. I don’t know. They could just talk to me if they wanted to.

MoviesOnline: What did you pay attention to most in terms of portraying Chris McCandless?

EMILE HIRSCH: I just really wanted to portray Chris in an authentic way that was honest and did not try to glamorize him and didn’t try to demonize him. I wanted it to be what me and Sean thought Chris was really like – someone who had a lot of flaws, had a lot of problems, but also had a lot of courage and a really wonderful soul that people responded to. The people he met on the road really did like him and he was really a likeable guy who cared about people, but at the same time you have the contradictions inside himself of he’s not talking to his sister who he probably loved more than anybody and his parents. So he was a guy who was probably very torn and had a lot of anger in him but also was looking for something different.

MoviesOnline: Did you go into the actual bus?

EMILE HIRSCH: I did. I did. I took a snowmobile ride up to the bus before we started shooting and I’d never been on a snowmobile before. I went up with a really experienced Alaskan guy named BJ and it was about a 90-minute snowmobile ride. We were hauling pretty good ass and it was beautiful going up to just the location. We were going up these creeks with these green ice rivers frozen underneath, seeing all the tracks of the moose and the fox and the quiet of the surroundings in Alaska and the beautiful sites. And then we got to the bus and you know it was… You hear and you read so much about it and then you get up there and its profoundness for me was just in its simplicity, that it’s a bus in the middle of nowhere, some overgrown plants and roots around it, and that’s what it is.

MoviesOnline: Had you read the book before you were approached to do the movie?

EMILE HIRSCH: I had not read the book before Sean called me and told me to read the book but I had seen an episode of 20/20 when I was 8 or 9 years old. And for how many hours of television kids probably watch which is like 7 or 8 hours a day or something, I don’t even know, it was only probably about 10 minutes, or 15 minutes, that I saw but I never forgot it. It really moved me as a youngster and just the idea that this guy would have the courage to go out into the wild on his own to me was something as a kid that was impossible to comprehend. When you’re 8 or 9, sometimes you’re afraid to sleep with the lights off. The idea of sleeping alone with no lights was somewhat baffling so I never forgot it and when Sean approached me about the film, and he told me to read the book, I read the book immediately and the memories of the show came back because he was describing it to me and the bus when he was telling me about the book before I read it. and then I got the cover of the book and I looked at the cover and I went, "Wait a minute. I know this.” It was strange. It was only 10 minutes how many years ago. I mean I’m 22 now. That’s like 14 years ago.

MoviesOnline: Your role requires a dramatic weight loss. How did that work? Did you take the Christian Bale route?

EMILE HIRSCH: We did the extreme part of the weight loss three quarters of the way through the film. What I’ll say about weight loss is that it’s really about diet and exercise and a lot of paying attention to your body. Unfortunately, it is as simple as diet and exercise. For me, at least, there’s no secret other than the depressing one of diet and exercise.

MoviesOnline: What kind of wanderlust do you have? If you were to go on that kind of adventure, would you take more equipment, would you read the map, or are you the kind of guy who’d just say, "Screw it. I just want to be out here in the boonies?

EMILE HIRSCH: I feel like it would be very disrespectful and irresponsible of me to say that I would do it like McCandless did it with the way that…for what happened to Chris. I think if Chris were to be able to do that again, I think he would have done it a lot differently. You know he’s a guy who made some pretty big mistakes with his overestimating of his own abilities and the movie addresses that and, like I said, it’s not a portrait of a pure guy who did all the right things. That’s not what it’s about. It’s a portrait of a young man who’s very complicated. So if I were to go out, yeah, I would take a map. I would take the things that would help ensure my survival.

MoviesOnline: Are you the kind of guy that enjoys the outdoors?

EMILE HIRSCH: Oh I love the outdoors.

MoviesOnline: Have you been on trips like that?

EMILE HIRSCH: Yeah, I have been on trips like that and I really hope to do more of them as well.

MoviesOnline: All the outdoor skills that Chris demonstrates – the kayaking, the hunting, that kind of stuff – was that all new to you? Did you pick up any new skills?

EMILE HIRSCH: A lot of it was new terrain. I really tried to learn as much as I could about that world in the four or five months of preparation that I had. Another really big thing for me was getting my body in really good physical shape so that I could handle what was going to be a really hard 8-month shoot. I didn’t know it was hard at the time as it was going to be but I knew it was going to be a beast of some kind. So I did a lot of running, a lot of weight lifting, a lot of hiking and just endurance. The running wasn’t geared at just running really fast, it was geared at running for a really long time – an hour, 90 minutes – so I could just have that kind of stamina.

MoviesOnline: Did you get banged up in the kayaking scenes?

EMILE HIRSCH: The kayaking scenes? You know one of the funny things about this film is that I made it out physically smelling like a rose. I couldn’t believe it but I never had any injuries which to me we all couldn’t quite believe it.

MoviesOnline: What was most difficult for you physically? Was it the kayaking or having to walk in deep snow or falling into a fast moving river?

EMILE HIRSCH: The most physically strenuous parts about it…there’s parts that took a lot of psyching myself up to do such as the rapids. That was something I was very trepidatious about. But then in terms of just sheer physical hardships, a lot of that was the running uphill and the hiking. The hill that I run up with Ron Franz, Sean had me run that a couple of times as hard as I could and I puked at the top.

MoviesOnline: Wasn’t it hot?

EMILE HIRSCH: It was very hot but I’d been drinking a lot of water but it was just the exertion because it was a pretty big hill and I was going for it as hard as I could. Sean got on the walkie I think the take before I puked and was like, "I want you to just give it everything you’ve got and go animal crazy on it. Anything you’ve got I want you to give on this take.

MoviesOnline: What did Hal Holbrook do, just stand there and say, "I’m glad it’s not me”?

EMILE HIRSCH: Well Sean said the same thing to Hal. [laughter] I don’t think he said that but I was amazed when Hal did that hill. To me, in my mind, that was the most incredible physical feat of the film was watching Hal climb this hill. He’s 82 and that’s a hard hill. There’s some really, really bad falls. I mean I fell several times when I was running up it and I was lucky that I was in as agile shape as I was at the time. But any kind of slip for Hal could have been potentially very bad.

MoviesOnline: How was it working with Hal?

EMILE HIRSCH: Hal Holbrook, to me, is one of the greats that I’ve ever been able to work with. He just brought this simple beauty, this honest kind of portrayal of a character that was born… I mean you can’t act the scenes like he has done without the experience that he has. He’s in his 80’s and what he brought to those scenes, no young actor, middle-aged actor could ever bring. He just has that. It’s just in his eyes. The scene that me and him had where he drops me off for the final time, I think that’s probably the greatest acting I’ve ever seen in a one-on-one scene I’ve had with an actor. He blew me away.

MoviesOnline: What was it like working with the bear and other animals?

EMILE HIRSCH: It was the beautiful animals of nature and then the bear [laughter] and being around the moose. I got out of the car one day and chased down a porcupine. That was pretty wild.

MoviesOnline: You didn’t kill it, did you?

EMILE HIRSCH: Oh, no. no. He climbed up a tree. I was excited to see a porcupine. I’d never seen one in the wild before. But the bear was different because that’s a very dangerous animal so, when Sean told me about the scene, I went, "Cool.” But I knew the way Sean was probably going to shoot it was going to be very bear… I was barely gonna make it out of there! But, on the day, I got to see the trainer and work with the bear and this 60-year-old guy named Doug who has had the bear for years, Bart, and he was wrestling on the ground with this bear which weighs a thousand pounds or something, wrestling on the ground, putting his head in its mouth, playing with it, slapping it on the face playfully. They were just playing around. So, I said, "Well, I don’t think I’m probably going to do that with the bear but maybe I can just trust the bear to kind of walk by me and give me a look and not attack me.” But I’d seen some sort of thing on You-Tube or I don’t know, one of those clips of "when animals attack” where this bear is just sitting with a circus hat on with his trainer and there were reporters next to him and, for no reason at all, the bear just immediately attacks the woman and is mauling her. So I said "I’ll trust the bear but I’m kind of rolling the dice on ya, buddy.”

MoviesOnline: The bear was right there, very close to you, right?

EMILE HIRSCH: The bear was very close. Probably about as far away from me as you are (indicating across the table) and then he looks at me and was like [opens his mouth and sort of hisses].

MoviesOnline: Did you really skin the moose. Was it road kill?

EMILE HIRSCH: Yeah, that was a real moose. And the moose was a real animal, not a prop and you don’t treat it like a prop. You treat it with respect. It was hard. It smelled really, really bad. It was really grisly and a lot of people on the crew were oh God [indicates holding hand over nose] but we got through it.

MoviesOnline: Did you have any eye-opening moments working with Sean Penn?

EMILE HIRSCH: Yeah. Sean, he’s an actor’s director but, at the same time, he’s not going to hold your hand through the whole experience. He demands the best out of you. He can be hard on his actors, probably me in particular, but it’s out of a place where he just believes in you so much that he wants you to do what he believes you can do, which is your best. So, it’s always from a place of love and it would never upset me. But we went through a lot of really difficult terrain and really challenging scenes and it’s the type of thing where if you have room to complain in some of those really complainable, whiney circumstances, you will take advantage of that and complain and he didn’t give me any room to complain so I didn’t have to worry about that.

MoviesOnline: Are you one of those actors that gets in the mood by listening to music before you shoot a scene?

EMILE HIRSCH: I like to listen to music. I don’t think it’s a complete kind of something I always have but I sure do like it when I have it. Sean put together a soundtrack of a bunch of different songs he thought could work for the film so I was listening to those a lot as we approached shooting and during shooting. I don’t think any of them made it into the film but they had the spirit of it.

MoviesOnline: What would you like audiences to take away from this film?

EMILE HIRSCH: I can’t speak for what I want people to take away from the film. What I took away from the book though was this sense of wanderlust and excitement for life and adventure. It was a cautionary tale on maybe how to do it and be smart about how you do it but I was really inspired by the fact that he decided to step out of his comfort zone and really try to have an adventure and live his life to the fullest and that’s something that I think is important.

MoviesOnline: How rebellious are you? Were your folks happy about your decision to go into the business?

EMILE HIRSCH: They were cool with it. I’ve got really cool parents. Certainly, I would think some of the movies I’ve chosen to do, people would consider as rebellious for a young actor to do. I don’t know.

MoviesOnline: You live in Los Angeles. How do you feel about how L.A. was portrayed in the film?

EMILE HIRSCH: Well, you know, Chris was in downtown L.A. and, to me, we shot in downtown L.A. and we shot pretty guerilla style and we were in all those real places so coming across in a certain way, that’s just where we were. I don’t know if you’ve ever been down to skid row but it’s pretty intense. I was walking around talking to junkies and homeless people and it’s an eye-opener. It’s hard.

MoviesOnline: Can you tell us a little bit about "Speed Racer” and your challenges on that?

EMILE HIRSCH: One of the crazy things about "Speed Racer” was I went from only doing outdoors, beautiful nature shots to not one scene do I shoot outdoors in Speed Racer. Everything is on a green screen stage. So, it’s like being in a sauna and then jumping into an ice bath for three and a half months. They both have their advantages. I think the green screen stage is probably a lot safer. I think people should expect something pretty special out of the Wachowski brothers on "Speed Racer”. I think that they really re-invented themselves. It’s nothing like "The Matrix” at all. It doesn’t look like "The Matrix,” doesn’t feel like "The Matrix.” It is its own new movie and that was something really important to them that they bring something new to the table.

MoviesOnline: Were you familiar with the character at all?

EMILE HIRSCH: Yeah. I used to watch "Speed Racer” as a kid when I was around six on the Cartoon Network. So, go, Speed Racer!

MoviesOnline: How faithful is Speed Racer to the cartoon as far as the backstory of the character and will it deviate in major ways? Will fans be pleased?

EMILE HIRSCH: They’ll be very, very happy. They’ll be more than happy. They’ll be very ecstatic.

MoviesOnline: Will there be any camp element to it?

EMILE HIRSCH: Well, you’ll have to see about that.

MoviesOnline: Thank you.

EMILE HIRSCH: Thanks, guys.

"Into the Wild” opens in theaters on September 21^st.