Every summer, more decades past than I care to recall, my
parents would use their vacation to drive from our home in Tacoma, Washington,
to Moorhead, Minnesota – the figurative birthplace of A Prairie Home
Companion – where my grandparents lived. As they alternated behind the
wheel – I was far too young to drive - we crossed the steppes of Eastern
Washington, the mountains of Idaho and western Montana, and the prairies of eastern
Montana and North Dakota before crossing the Red River to arrive at Moorhead, the end point of a non-stop road trip.
That was a little later, and not quite so epic, as Jack Kerouac’s
fictionalized odyssey across the United States in On the Road, but it recalls
the landscapes of two-lane blacktop and occasional gravel roads in the days
before the Interstate Highway System. In the course of updating my Moon Handbooks
to Argentina
and Patagonia,
in particular, I’ve often had the experience of driving through wild, sparsely
populated landscapes that recall my childhood journeys.
In southernmost South America, those routes are usually
north-south rather than east-west, but I’m not the only person to equate them
with the North American West. In fact, Brazilian director Walter
Salles chose northern Argentine Patagonia to film scenes for On the Road
which, unfortunately, has not yet hit Bay Area cinemas, but I do plan to see
it.
Salles, who knew Argentine landscapes from directing the
acclaimed Che Guevara road trip adaptation of The
Motorcycle Diaries, may have had suggestions from Viggo Mortensen, who
plays the role of Old Bull Lee, Kerouac’s fictionalized figure based on William Burroughs.
Mortensen, who speaks fluent Spanish, attended school in the more northerly
northern Argentine provinces of Buenos Aires, Chaco
and Córdoba,
and follows Argentine soccer closely.
In fact, Argentina has long been a favorite site for foreign
film crews – a couple years ago, for instance, a friend of mine who has dual US
citizenship participated in a shoot in which Argentine kids – including his son
– dressed as Little Leaguers for a commercial staged at the national baseball
stadium. The American-run company San Telmo Productions, in
fact, exists primarily to help foreign filmmakers who wish use Argentina for
location shooting.
Nobody, unfortunately, has yet been able to tell me
precisely where Salles shot the scenes in Argentina, though the crew was
apparently based in San
Carlos de Bariloche; certainly the scenery along two-lane Ruta Nacional
237 (pictured above), which leads northeast out of Bariloche, could serve as a stand-in for
large parts of the American West. Some cast members apparently stayed in Villa
La Angostura, which appears to be recovering from the ashfall of the Puyehue-Cordón
Caulle eruption of 2011.
Interestingly, a legal battle over the Kerouac estate meant
that it took years before On the Road could reach the screen; coincidentally,
the intellectual property rights attorney for Kerouac’s executor was also my
attorney in a disagreement with a previous publisher whose name I will refrain
from mentioning here. The attorney, whom I will also refrain from naming here,
lost the Kerouac case but pulled out a win for me.
An Oscar Nomination for No
In other Southern Cone cinema news, Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s film
No, about the 1988
campaign against General
Augusto Pinochet’s plebiscite to continue as Chile’s
de facto president, is one of five
nominees for Best Foreign Film in the upcoming Oscars. It stars well-known Mexican actor Gael García Bernal.
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