'The Road,' filmed in Pittsburgh, due to roll into theaters Oct. 16
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Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee star in John Hillcoat's "The Road," based on Cormac McCarthy's novel.
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"The Road," the Viggo Mortensen movie shot in Western Pennsylvania a year ago, has a new opening date of Oct. 16. If it's as brilliant as the early word, that positions it for awards season.
The publicity drumbeat is beginning, with an Esquire story headlined: "The Road Is the Most Important Movie of the Year." As a subhead clarifies, that's the burden carried by the film, once targeted (unrealistically, given the special effects and editing needed) for a November 2008 release.
Tom Chiarella writes, in part, in Esquire: "The Road is no tease. It is a brilliantly directed adaptation of a beloved novel, a delicate and anachronistically loving look at the immodest and brutish end of us all. You want them to get there, you want them to get there, you want them to get there -- and yet you do not want it, any of it, to end."
Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, it features Mortensen and young Kodi Smit-McPhee as father and son wandering a post-apocalyptic landscape. Filling smaller supporting roles are Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Robert Duvall.
Director John Hillcoat filmed in the old Benkovitz warehouse in the Strip District, on miles of closed roads near Breezewood, in Saxonburg, New Galilee, Raccoon Creek State Park, Braddock, McKeesport and in coal country. After pulling up stakes in Pittsburgh in late April 2008, the production moved to additional locations, including Lake Erie, New Orleans, Mount St. Helens and Oregon.
The Esquire writer, who was granted a rare preview, says "there was not a single stupid choice made in turning this book into this movie."
Mortensen is "brilliant in insinuating the father's pain and communicating the hints of loss and his resistance to the inevitable." Smit-McPhee, who drew praise from Mortensen and anyone who encountered him in Pittsburgh, is "beautiful and wretched, luminous and somehow smaller than his age as the boy."
Like the novel, the screenplay by Joe Penhall doesn't specify the trigger to the trauma, which stripped the world of color, life and hope as we know it.
"The story starts in the mountains and ends up at the sea and we realized we could tell the story kind of geographically through the Pennsylvania landscape here in Western Pennsylvania using the mountains, using the farmland, using river bottoms," unit production manager Buddy Enright told the Post-Gazette a year ago.
With a few exceptions, the setting is rural, with gray skies, wintry bare trees and a topography that factors into the story. "We don't really get to see bright shiny beautiful Pittsburgh," he said.
An indie black comedy called "The Room," about a steamy San Francisco love triangle, will kick off the seventh Moonlit Matinee Film Festival at the Oaks Theater in Oakmont next week.
The lineup will include 18 films of varying genres, from teen comedies to 1980s horror films plus a favorite film among Trekkers, "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan."
Movies typically will screen at 10 p.m. Friday and repeat at midnight Saturday. Tickets are $7 in advance at the theater box office or through www.theoakstheater.com or $8 at the door, cash only.
Tommy Wiseau, the writer-director-star of "The Room" reports that showings in other cities have become interactive, with audience members dressed as their favorite characters, tossing footballs at short distances and adding their own commentaries.
"The Room" will have its local premiere May 22-23 at the Oaks. Also scheduled:
May 29-30: "The Life of Brian."
June 5-6: "Vertigo."
June 12-13: "Sixteen Candles."
June 19-20: "Road House."
June 26-27: "Bubba Ho-Tep."
July 3-4: "Jaws."
July 10-11: "Friday the 13th, Part III" (in 3-D).
July 17-18: "Showgirls."
July 24-25: "Black Devil Doll" (filmmakers Jon Lewis and Shawn Lewis to appear both nights) and "Dolemite." Double feature, begins at 10 p.m. both days. Special admission of $9 in advance, $10 at door.
July 31-Aug. 1: "Return of the Living Dead."
Aug. 7-8: "Pulp Fiction."
Aug. 14-15: "Karate Kid."
Aug. 21-22: "Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan."
Aug. 28-29: "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory."
The ScareHouse in Etna is presenting the series at the Oaks, a 430-seat, single-screen theater at 310 Allegheny River Blvd.
First Published May 13, 2009 12:00 am
