Interview with John Hillcoat, part 2

You might consider "The Road" as a zombie movie without zombies, which, like all zombie movies, takes to task the abuses and consequences of an out of control consumer culture while making a plea for basic family values. It also contains what might be the greatest product placement of all time; I regret now not asking Hillcoat about whether they got any deal with the Coca Cola people (yes, I know the scene is also in the book). Here, at any rate, is what we did talk about.

[There may be vague spoilers...]

PK: You've obviously shown "The Road" to a number of audiences, and have they had any problems with any aspects of the movie?

JH: No, I mean, I'm thrilled with how audiences are responding because it's what I was hoping for, this emotional, very poignant, emotional journey and they come out of it actually, strangely, really kind of thinking about it and it's not just this...you know the bleak thing is just a background scenery, it is about human goodness and transformation. The boy makes this incredible leap of faith, which the father is never able to do because he's closing off that possibility out of fear and I do think, I think we all fear our own end, when we all come to an end-

PK: Especially if you have children, I imagine -

JH: Yeah, and whether it's the background - I mean that's what he does so brilliantly, it's, I'm talking about Cormac and the book, is it's this macro-micro level that goes on simultaneously and it's the personal, intensely personal, as well as this bigger vision and you could argue all, every generation gets rigid with fear and some of their morals are questionable, and it's really the new generation that has to shake that up and challenge that, that's, on a very personal level, something you find with your own children, they become your teacher in a way, I always thought it was the other way around until having my own son.

PK: You have how many children?

JH: Just one, an eight-year-old boy.

PK: So he'd be right around the same age as the kid in the movie.

JH: Yeah.

PK: You mentioned before that casting that role was the key to the movie, if you don't have a convincing kid, that's not going to work.  I thought the kid in the movie worked a lot better than the kid in the book because I thought the kid in the book came off as a bit of a whiner, but here he does seem what Robert Duvall's character says, like an angel. How were you able to get that kind of performance?

JH: Well, he was - I think I had two great gifts given to me. One was this material - I got it before it was even published - and then, the other one was finding Kodi [Smit-McPhee]. Viggo and I shared the same concerns, how the hell were going to get this kid? And he came, it was just a twist of fate at the last, he was a very late edition, I was looking in America, Canada, Britain, and ironically, my Australian friends tipped me off on this great kid. He had done another movie and I saw the trailer, got him to audition, his father's an actor, his sister's an actor, it's like a little gypsy family of actors, and they take it really seriously, but they're not a showbiz family, you know, it's not-

PK: Not like Lindsay Lohan's

JH: They're very --- the father is actually one of the cannibals.

PK: Really? Interesting relationship.

JH: Well he plays, he's 6 foot 6, covered in tattoos, handlebar moustache

PK: Which cannibal is that? Which scene is that?

JH: The road gang, the first road gang.

PK: Oh, not the one that...?

JH: No. But Kodi did an audition tape for us. I didn't, I asked all the kids to do something very neutral, one of those beautiful conversations and he did all these extra scenes from the book, including one I would have never asked-

PK: That was the suicide scene, right?

JH: Yes, and his real father was playing the father so I thought, well this is obviously a message to me that my kid can handle it, or he's completely insane and it's time for child services. So, I was hoping that it was going to be the former, and sure enough when we put him together with Viggo that was when I realized wow I'm really lucky here. He showed up, he's a beautiful kid, like really unaffected, really the opposite of being self-conscious or aware of the business or any of that, just totally unaffected is what I'm trying to say, and yet really understanding, he was just really mature beyond his years because he understood the story, the emotions in a way no kid of his age really would or could in a way. So it was pretty incredible and his father had already read him the whole book and then of course, he's just a complete natural. Very professional, his instincts were incredible, and the big difference I noticed with him was that, like the kid in the book, there's this whole transformation where he takes over, he becomes the moral compass and he ends up standing on his own two feet.

PK: Yeah, it seems to me the turning point in the movie is like the bad Samaritan scene when -

JH: The thief, when they grab the thief.

PK: Yeah, and at that point the father kind of...

JH: Crosses that line...

PK: Actually, if he took the kid's advice all along...

JH: That's right

PK: He would've been in better shape.

JH: Absolutely, and you now we sense that also in meeting the old man. The kid can see something the man can't see in the old man.

PK: It's almost like a religious allegory. in a way.

JH: Kind of, yeah, well, it is actually, it's a religious ... but it can also work as a kind of, I mean that's where Cormac is so brilliant because he's kind of got this scientific precision in the details and yet he's a great poet, and his inspirations and sources come from the Greeks as opposed...

PK: The Titans, I think it was Saturn...

JH: Yeah that's right, yeah exactly, it's like some Greek or biblical parable, a chapter in some Greek Myth, you can, just the image of curing the fire, you can that's a metaphor that you can interpret in so many different ways.

PK: I'm sort of running out of time, I just have two quick questions. There seem to be a lot of people who are missing thumbs, is that just...

JH: Yeah, that's like in the book, I asked Cormac, again open to interpretation, I think some kind of primitive punishment, whether it's stealing or some kind of hint going back to a more primitive

PK: And also you're going to be up against "2012," one of the films that's opening in a couple of weeks. Do you think there's an end of the world trend going on here? In movies?

JH: I think there's definitely a lot of things that have come home to roos. You can't ignore the environment, that has come on to our doorstep, 9/11, terrorism is back on our doorstep and the most recent one is the economic [downturn] so it's just, it's been you know the last decade there's been a lot of things coming back onto our doorstep, we've been living in a bubble for too long.

PK: It's a good Thanksgiving Day movie

JH: Absolutely, the timing could not be better. We kept joking, we got to finish this film before it becomes a reality.

PK: You should do well because the competition is "Bad Lieutenant" and "Ninja Assassins," so yours is probably the more upbeat of the 3. Good Luck!

JH: Thanks very much.