FAIRBANKS -- The debut of “Into the Wild,” a movie directed by Sean Penn about a 24-year-old man who starved to death in the Alaska wilderness, drew a packed house Monday night.
More than 100 people attended the premiere at the Blue Loon, a bar, theater and dance hall on the Parks Highway outside Fairbanks. Many wanted to see if their contributions made the credits for the movie, which includes a handful of Alaska locations.
Actor Emile Hirsch portrays Christopher McCandless, a man from a well-off family in the Washington, D.C., area. McCandless left home after college in the early 1990s and eventually made his way to Alaska, where in 1992 he spent 16 weeks living in an abandoned bus in the wilderness near Denali National Park.
McCandless’ story was recounted in a 9,000-word magazine article and subsequent best-selling book by writer Jon Krakauer. The movie will be released nationally at the end of the month.
Penn, the Academy Award-winning actor, wrote and directed the film adaptation but did not attend the Fairbanks showing. Executive producer John Kelly said Penn could not make it because of other obligations.
However, Penn wanted the movie to be shown first in Alaska because it was the natural extension of a philosophy of authenticity that guided the movie-making, Kelly said.
“Usually when people make movies about Alaska, they’re all shot in Canada,” Kelly said.
The movie features scenes filmed in Fairbanks, Anchorage, Healy and Cantwell. Filmmakers in the credits thank the Alaska Native regional corporation Ahtna Inc. for allowing the crew to shoot on its land.
The movie begins with images from the Fairbanks area, including blue and yellow Alaska Railroad cars, a familiar neon sign above the Big I Bar and Lounge proclaiming “Cocktails,” the Masonic Temple on First Avenue, Down Under Guns, the Alaskan Prospectors & Geologists Supply on College Road and Gold Hill Liquor in Ester.
“You couldn’t cheat it,” Kelly said about filming Alaska in Alaska. “I think the story demanded you shoot it in those places.”
The crew also paid attention to anniversaries and real-life characters.
In April 2006, the crew filmed the actor playing McCandless entering the Stampede Trail at the same spot and on the same day the real McCandless entered the wilderness 14 years earlier. James Gallien, who drove the hitchhiking McCandless to that spot, reprised his role in the movie and handed the actor Hirsch a pair of rubber boots, just as he did for McCandless.
In September 2006, the crew filmed McCandless’ death scene as close as they could guess to the actual day.
Kelly said he expects the movie to increase the annual pilgrimages to the bus.
“I’m envious of him in a way, but I feel like I got to take that journey with him 12 years later,” Kelly said.
Roman Dial, a professor at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, took Krakauer on a mountain bike trip to the bus site in 1993 to help the writer research the book. The movie crew used Dial’s pictures to re-create the bus for the movie. Dial said he enjoyed the movie although not as much as the book, and was surprised that many local people responded negatively to the story.
“That story is about 95 percent of the people who come to Alaska,” Dial said. The only difference was that most people lived and McCandless died, he said.
