Ronnie: Garrett Hedlund Recalls Last Night Of 'On The Road'

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Garrett Hedlund Recalls Last Night Of 'On The Road'

'It's all kind of a blur,' actor recalls of making the film.
By Jocelyn Vena, with reporting by Josh Horowitz

Garrett Hedlund
Photo: MTV News

Garrett Hedlund might have been treated to Kristen Stewart's cooking during the filming of "On the Road," but it was another memorable meal that the "Country Strong" star recalled from the last night of working on the film that sounds like it could have been pulled right from the Jack Kerouac novel.

"It's all kind of a blur," he told MTV News. "The last night that I was in San Francisco, Carolyn Cassady, who's the actual Camille in the book, she's 89 years old [and she] came down to San Francisco to meet with us. A lot of the family members came down and we got to all have dinner together."

What Hedlund most wondered was if he would pass the test to play the role. "You're wondering if you're going to be so harshly, critically judged," he recalled. " ... She was just so wonderful and so genuine to all of us and so happy to be there. At the end of the dinner, me and Sam Riley ... walked her hand in hand up to Vesuvio's, the bar where all these guys used to drink at. I remember the sole of her shoe had sort of come undone and started flapping, but I took off my boot and took off one of the socks and put it over the shoe so it intacted the sole. So we kept on walking. It's such an incredible, mind-blowing night."

That night was a culmination of all the hard work Hedlund and the crew had put into taking such a beloved text and adapting it for the big screen. " 'On the Road' has been the last sort of four years of my life. It's been doing the research," he said. "I just feel it's just an honor to be able to play Dean Moriarty and Neal Cassady and such a rich, rare character. Just to be involved in a project that deals with the Beat Generation, and there's so much to learn and so much to be inspired by."

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