It’s been more than a decade since I read On the Road. Actually… longer than that. I read it several times in my teenage years, but I haven’t touched it since then. I still remember the feelings I had about the book, the rush, the excitement over Jack Kerouac’s writing style… but I don’t remember much of the actual story. Like, when I was 16 years old, I thought, “This is how I’m going to live when I get older. It going to be like this.” And that’s the idea I had of these characters too – Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty were ADULTS. They were MEN. And now that Kerouac’s immortal book has been adapted for the screen, I’m not sure how I feel about these actors playing these roles. The character of Dean Moriarty – based on Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady – is being played by Garrett Hedlund. While I like Hedlund as an actor, I still feel like the Dean character should have been played by an older actor. Maybe that’s just in my head, though.

Anyway, the trailer. It’s okay. Sam Riley plays Sal Paradise – I’ve never seen Riley in anything, so I can’t speak to his acting talent. He seems fine in the trailer – once again, I wasn’t imagining the character to seem so young, but youth works better on the Sal character/narrator. Sal is a lot like the Nick Carroway character in The Great Gatsby – a naïf-narrator who experiences the central characters through wide-eyed romanticism. Kristen Stewart plays Dean’s wife. K-Stew dances in the trailer. It’s kind of cute. Also appearing in the film: Kirsten Dunst, Viggo Mortensen, Terrence Howard, Tom Sturridge and Amy Adams.

Well, I’m sure K-Stew will get a lot of press from the film, but it feels like this is sort of a balls-out career make-or-break moment for Hedlund. If he screwed up his performance, the film falls apart. Thankfully, it seems like Hedlund is doing some very interesting work here.

Production stills, courtesy of ‘On the Road’.