END OF THE ROAD (AND EVERYTHING ELSE)

Director John Hillcoat talks about his emotional end-of-the-world movie, the Road

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The Road, hits theaters November 25th. In this adaptation of Cormack McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel, a man (Viggo Mortensen) and his son (newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee) make their weary way across a dead-gray, ash-covered country. We had a little chat with director John Hillcoat about ravaged American landscapes, the film industry apocalypse, and cannibalism. Miriam Coleman

You’ve said that you’re not a fan of apocalyptic films as a genre. What is it that you don’t like about them? And what was it about this story that made you want to film it?
JH There are, first of all, some very notable exceptions, like Dr. Strangelove, Mad Max, Quiet Earth, etc. But it’s just that in recent years, the cliches of what that genre brings up are probably more pronounced than most genres. And one of the things is just the huge urban spectacles. I think that it becomes so much about that big event that the human element is completely lost, and so there’s no way of relating to the material other than purely in the one-dimension of spectacle. Which is enjoyable for just that. But just the fact that the book doesn’t even explain the big event, and it’s such a powerful moral tale, and a parable and a love story, and sort of the way it shows the very best and the very worst in people in a very truthful way was absolutely compelling. And very moving—the humanity in it is incredible. And that was so refreshing for the genre. And the book also feels very immediate and strangely familiar. The shopping cart and the plastic bags and all that stuff—it’s really close to home. We see it all the time in the city. It had an authenticity and an immediacy that I thought was more relevant to today than a futuristic fantasy.

In terms of the landscape, it sounds like you found some places in the US that had already experienced the kind of devastation that appears in the story.
Yeah, alarmingly, we found too many of them, so many we couldn’t even use them all. I mean, it was also the use of the season—shooting in winter time, in areas around Pennsylvania where the deciduous trees drop all their leaves and it’s overcast. But yeah, there was a combination of the aftermath of man-made and natural disasters. Like mining areas around Pennsylvania, the abandoned turnpikes. And then we went down to New Orleans, where they’re still cleaning up Katrina, and then we went up to Mount St. Helen’s, where there’s still this unbelievable force of nature there is pretty overwhelming.

Were there any aspects of the book that weren’t filmable, in terms of translating the story to the screen?
Well, yeah. People can get bamboozled, I think, by literature, where—obviously the beautiful poetic prose of literature is something that you can’t film. But you can certainly use the beautiful dialogue and the sparseness of that dialogue and the power of that dialogue. The book is very internalized—you’re inside the head of the man. So you have to use the cinematic tools of flashback and memory and voiceover. These are all ways of getting inside a character’s head that are different from language. Was there anything that was just too gross to put on film? We didn’t shy away from anything. The dead baby—we filmed that. That was something I wanted to have in, I wanted to not shy away from the thing. And then I found myself fighting to have it out of the film, because it became redundant. When you actually physicalize the scenes, they work on a different level. After the road gang and the cannibal house, you really get that world. And if we hit that too many times, it starts to become redundant. The power of that image also works better in your head as opposed to actually seeing it. There was a relentless repetition that was very effective in the book, but you can only do so much with that in a film.

What qualities do you think made Kodi Smit-McPhee unique as a child actor, to be able to carry off that role?
A major one was the emotional maturity. In some ways, he understands drama and human emotion on a level of an adult. I was always thinking of protecting the kid and him not always being aware of half the stuff we were doing. And yet, his father had read him the entire book before he even auditioned. And he understood the story in quite a profound way. Also, he’s just a beautiful kid. Very unaffected in a wonderful way. He’s got a very sweet nature which is innate and part of his personality. And then on top of that was just his incredible acting ability. So in that way, he really supported the entire film. I mean, Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Garret Dillahunt—all these guys, we know they’re incredible actors, and we’ve seen their prior work for some time now. But to have a kid hold all of that up is really something.

If you were to draw a line from Ghosts of the Civil Dead through The Proposition to this, what would you say ties your projects together?
I am interested in people under pressure, how it brings out the best and worst in people, and I find that endlessly fascinating. I also love other worlds, where whatever genre you enter, you leave it and find a different way of thinking fresh. Because I just remembered growing up watching movies, I loved that feeling of being transported into a whole other reality. And not questioning it, and buying it, and being swept up in it. I also want to try something very different—I certainly feel like doing something very energetic and colorful now, after The Road and The Proposition.

So in making this film, were there any lessons that you learned on how to survive the apocalypse when it comes? Do you have a plan?
No, I don’t actually have a plan. And I actually think of it as a metaphor for fear, really. But I think my plan is, I’d take a leaf out of the boy’s book. Which is to get through with human kindness and goodness, as much as that is a very difficult thing to do. Even in these times.

So does that mean no cannibalism for you?
Uh, no. With my research, I believe that people are meant to taste very good, if you cook them properly and you eat the right bits. But no, I’d like to think that I wouldn’t go there. But you know, until we have that choice in that time, you always surprise yourself.

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