Screenplay Writer Jose Rivera Discusses “On The Road” – Release Date Still Pending

Busy recruiting technicians to film “Celestina”, his first feature movie as a movie-maker, the Puerto Rican writer Jose Rivera, nominated to the Best Adapted Screenplay in 2005 for “The Motorcycle Diaries”, will have to wait until December to see what the director Walter Salles has done with his version for the book known as the summary of the beat literature.

A dive in the beat work

“On The Road”, Walter Salles’ adaptation for Jack Kerouac’s novel, was scripted by Rivera, repeating a partnership that began with the young Che Guevara’s biopic movie. The first copy of the movie, starring Sam Riley, Garrett Hedlund and Kristen Stewart, will only be finished at the end of the year. Its future in the big screen, which was not yet informed, lies in the hands of the producers – amongst them is Francis Ford Coppola.

- The process of writing “On The Road” was the exercise of creating an intimacy with “$” (this was an error of the original article; I presume it’s Jack Kerouac), his prose, his time and his world. To write the script, I had to dive into the work of his beat generation colleagues and know the politics, the culture, the fashion and the art of that period of time (the 1950s) in which they wrote – says Rivera, in an e-mail interview for O Globo.
Connected to the theater since 1983, when he first produced “The house of Ramon Iglesia”, Rivera brought from his partnership with Salles the elements to pull Celestina’s script out of the paper. With a 2012 release date, the production stars Sona Tatoyan, an American better known for her stage work than her screen one, with whom Rivera shot the short movie “The tape recorder”.

- Before meeting with Walter, I had written scripts, but none got produced. Working with him in “The Motorcycle Diaries”, I learned what I know today about casting, shooting, editing and market rules. And I learned how to be polite in moments of pressure – says Rivera.
In Celestina’s plot, Sona is a young pregnant woman that goes on searching for a family. Bill Pullman, from “Titanic”, will also be in the movie.

- Celestina’s crusade is a reference to our own need to belong to a community – says Rivera, who has incorporated to the script some questions that are inherent to his cultural heritage. – The main male character in Celestina is Anibal, a Puerto Rican who, like me, lives in the US, having built a career there. I speak Spanish. He doesn’t, like many of the Latins who live on the American soil. From that, I want to make this movie a channel to discuss the alienation of identity.

Via | via KStewartNews