On the Road (2012) on Netflix
Sal Paradise, an aspiring writer in New York, meets Dean Moriarty and Marylou, Dean's wife. Dean steals cars in Denver, and Sal follows his friends onto the road.
- Netflix2.9/5
- IMDb6.0/1044,962 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes45%
Trailer
Plot summary
Sal Paradise is a writer in New York. His father has just been buried, and his own work has stalled. He spends the day with Carlo Marx, a friend who also wants to write. A friend takes them to meet Dean Moriarty, who steals cars in Denver, and Dean's wife Marylou, who is sixteen. Sal and Carlo take to Dean, smoke marijuana with him, and visit a jazz nightclub. Sal shows Dean how to write. Dean then leaves for Denver with Carlo. Sal visits his father's grave and sets out to follow them.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about On the Road (2012)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- In 1957 Jack Kerouac wrote a one-page letter to Marlon Brando suggesting Brando play Dean Moriarty while Kerouac himself would portray Sal Paradise, picturing the camera on the front seat of the car showing the road unwinding into the windshield. Brando never responded.
- Francis Ford Coppola bought the rights in 1979 and hired screenwriters including Michael Herr and Barry Gifford before writing his own draft with his son Roman; in 1995 he planned to shoot on black-and-white 16 mm and held auditions with poet Allen Ginsberg in attendance, but that version fell through.
- Garrett Hedlund filmed a scene driving a 1949 Hudson Commodore in the Andes during a blizzard, wearing goggles and screaming out of the window while Walter Salles sat in the passenger seat holding a camera; Hedlund called it “quite a guerilla shoot”.
- Before filming, the entire cast went through a three-week “beatnik boot camp” led by Kerouac biographer Gerald Nicosia, who played them an audio interview recorded in 1978 with LuAnne Henderson, the woman on whom the book's character Marylou is based.
- Jose Rivera produced approximately 20 drafts of the screenplay, and the later ones relied less on the published book and more on the original manuscript, typed on a 120-foot roll of paper and keeping all the real names.
- Walter Salles originally wanted to shoot in Mexico for several weeks, but with the escalating drug wars there very little was filmed and the production moved to Arizona instead.
- On the Road had a limited release and grossed just $744,296 at the United States box office and $8,040,022 internationally, for a worldwide total of $8,784,318.
