![\"Pete](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www-deadline-com.vimg.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/pete_logo.jpg?resize=100%2C100\"){kind=logo}
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![\"post](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www-deadline-com.vimg.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/thumbnails\/277278-2012-05-24-02-22-54.jpg?w=525\")
<\/p>\n
Critics may have been mixed after this morning\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s press screening, \u00c2\u00a0but the World Premiere\u00c2\u00a0audience at Sam Riley plays the Kerouac character Sal Paradise and told me\u00c2\u00a0he actually first got the role right down the street here in Cannes when his wife Alexandra Maria Lara was a\u00c2\u00a0juror for the festival in 2008, the same year Salles had\u00c2\u00a0a film in competition,\u00c2\u00a0Linha De Passe<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0Salles told Lara he really liked Riley in\u00c2\u00a0Control, <\/em>the movie in\u00c2\u00a0which they co-starred\u00c2\u00a0the previous year and so a meeting was arranged.\u00c2\u00a0Riley said the role was quite challenging because he has to listen a lot. Quite frankly it is never easy getting the essence and passion of a writer on film but this one, particularly in the kinetic\u00c2\u00a0final scene in which he starts to write his book\u00c2\u00a0, gets it right. Writers should eat it up.\u00c2\u00a0Riley obviously had been to Cannes before but he too was totally perplexed by the power of the ovation they all got. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I stood there wondering, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcDo they pay these people to clap like that?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he\u00c2\u00a0asked.<\/p>\n Garrett Hedlund, previously best known as Jeff Bridges\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s son in Tron\u00c2\u00a0Legacy<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0and for the musical , \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www-deadline-com.vimg.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/movies_on_the_road_1__120524020333.jpg\" "\\"movies_on_the_road_1\\"")
<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0Wednesday night\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0Cannes gala of director Walter Salles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 long-gestating film\u00c2\u00a0 On The Road <\/em>was highly enthusiastic giving the film about the Beat Generation\u00c2\u00a0a 10 minute standing ovation. Co-producer Rebecca Yeldham said it\u00c2\u00a0was sweet justification for the 8 years she has been shepherding the picture with Salles. I caught up with her and the cast at the ultra-crowded after-party next door to the Palais at the oddly-named club, Magic Garden Meets LeBaron.\u00c2\u00a0 The film based on the famous 1957\u00c2\u00a0classic book by Jack Kerouac (actually written in 1951)\u00c2\u00a0has had several people attempt a film version with no luck and it has taken 55 years to get to the screen. Kerouac himself even sent it to Marlon Brando\u00c2\u00a0right after publication\u00c2\u00a0 but never got a response. Francis Ford Coppola eventually secured the rights over 30 years ago\u00c2\u00a0but couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come up with a way to make the complex\u00c2\u00a0film work. Finally Salles and his The Motorcycle Diaries <\/em>screenwriter Jose Rivera cracked the code and after some false starts finally got the job done (Roman Coppola is also a producer on the film for American Zoetrope). IFC and Sundance Selects\u00c2\u00a0will distribute the film\u00c2\u00a0but it won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be part of their VOD platform, but rather a major theatrical release. IFC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and Sundance Selects President\u00c2\u00a0Jonathan Sehring, also at the party , said he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be higher on the film and they plan to open\u00c2\u00a0it in December and mount a major awards campaign. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We are going for it in a big way,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153And initially I was skeptical about the whole thing. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if it <\/a>could work. I had never really seen a good Beat film done right before but Walter has done a magnificent job and all the actors are great. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s <\/em>great,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said pointing to Kristen Stewart\u00c2\u00a0 who was standing in a nearby\u00c2\u00a0corner of the party talking with Twilight <\/em>co-star Robert Pattinson (RPat is in Cannes for his own premiere on Friday,\u00c2\u00a0David Cronenberg\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cosmopolis<\/em>). Sehring\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been busy here. He\u00c2\u00a0is also high on the acquistion title, Sightseers, <\/em>a wickedly dark and clever British comedy I saw today in Directors Fortnight. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the more entertaining films I have seen here this year and should find an audience. Director\u00c2\u00a0 Ben Wheatley has a following.\u00c2\u00a0Sehring just\u00c2\u00a0viewed the film this week and quickly snapped it up for release in 2013. \u00e2\u20ac\u009d We had handled Kill List, <\/em>a film he wrote, but a \u00c2\u00a0lot of people were after this one,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said. Sehring sees so many films so quickly at film fests he always chews gum thoughout each one so he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t doze off. He said he got the tip from a journalist. I think I will try it. Some of these films are real endurance tests.<\/p>\n<\/a>When I got my chance to chat with Stewart who is here (with her mother too) \u00c2\u00a0for her first Cannes ever, she told me she\u00c2\u00a0didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what to make of the visible glowing\u00c2\u00a0reaction\u00c2\u00a0from the Grand Lumiere crowd after the film ended. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was a very surreal experience for me. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what to think. But if they had all roundly booed us I believe\u00c2\u00a0everyone in our row would have stood up and said \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcyeah, you go!\u00e2\u20ac\u2122,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said in the counter-cultural spirit of the film\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s characters who behave in anything but conventional ways. Stewart has\u00c2\u00a0some topless nude scenes in the film which epouses sexual freedom even in the uptight era of the 50\u00e2\u20ac\u00b2s in which\u00c2\u00a0the beatnik story is set. For her playing Marylou (based on\u00c2\u00a0Luanne\u00c2\u00a0Henderson who at age 15\u00c2\u00a0married Neal Cassady \u00e2\u20ac\u201c known in the film as Dean Moriarty) was a challenge and one she was eager to take. Salles had seen her in Into The <\/em>Wild\u00c2\u00a0and\u00c2\u00a0cast her in 2007 before Twilight <\/em>turned her into a pop culture icon. Like most of the cast members she had to hang in there for a while before it finally came to fruition. Her agents urged her to drop out. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They kept saying \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not on the page\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 but\u00c2\u00a0I\u00c2\u00a0disagreed and I am so glad we all did it. I do relate to her\u00c2\u00a0in some ways but I am nothing like Marylou at all. I internalize everything. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the\u00c2\u00a0opposite,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said. It certainly worked out. Stewart delivers here and audiences will see a side of the star they haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen before.<\/p>\n<\/a> Country Strong<\/em>,\u00c2\u00a0plays the most flamboyant of the characters\u00c2\u00a0 Dean Moriarty (based on Cassidy), a free loving and living Beat poet who often travelled with Kerouac.\u00c2\u00a0This is potentially a real breakout role for him. He dominates every scene he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one killer breakup sequence with\u00c2\u00a0wife\u00c2\u00a0Camille played\u00c2\u00a0with bite\u00c2\u00a0by Kirsten\u00c2\u00a0Dunst who also is\u00c2\u00a0back in Cannes for this film after winning Best Actress here one year ago for Melancholia <\/em>and of course that famous press conference where her director Lars Von Trier said he sympathized with Hitler \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a little\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and caused an uproar. No such controversy this year.<\/p>\n