Into The Wild Movie Vs Book

Myles Hypse Hypse 1

Film Studies

Semester 1 Final

12-11-15

Into The Wild

First written and published in 1993 by Jon Krakauer in an article for Outside Magazine, “Into The Wild” captures the true life story of Christopher McCandless and his struggle to survive in the Alaskan wilderness. The book is told through a variety of interviews, journal entries and maps from Chris McCandless. Both the book and the film open up with one of the characters, Jim Gallien, who interestingly enough plays himself in the movie, stopping for a hitchhiker who introduces himself as Alex. Gallien tries to talk him out of the adventures he describes, but

Chris is unmoved during their conversation, claiming there isn't anything that he can't deal with on his own. In the book Chris offers Gallien his watch, comb, money, and almost any other materialistic possession he seemed to have on him for the ride, but he refuses. Gallien then gives Chris a pair of rubber work boots that at first Chris refuses to take but then changes his mind, and a small piece of paper with his number on it telling him to call it to return the boots if he makes it out alive. Chris then smiles gratefully and asks Gallien to take a picture of him. He then thanks Gallien for the long ride and then he disappeared down the long, snow covered road in the Alaskan wilderness. For some reason Sean Penn, who wrote and directed this whole film decided to cut out the scene of them driving together and many more so it is never seen in the film.
From this point in the book the author, Jon Krakauer jumps forward in chapter 2 one hundred and thirteen days to the discovery of Christopher McCandless’s Body in a Fairbanks City transit bus number 142 left abandoned on the stampede trail. Because this book was written using interviews and letters the author goes through many details that are never shown in the film including how the bus ended up in the middle of the Alaskan Bush. None of this information in chapter two is shown or even discussed in the film.
From here Krakauer moves the book to Carthage, South Dakota and begins his interview with Wayne Westerberg, another friend that Chris met along the way.

Westerberg explains how he first met Chris in Montana in 1990 after picking him up on the side of the road on a rainy day and offered to let him stay in his old trailer. Chris stayed in Carthage for two weeks working for westerberg at his grain elevator until westerberg is arrested by the FBI for illegally selling black boxes. Chris leaves Carthage and continues drifting around the west for a month working odd jobs for odd people including a man named Crazy Ernie who offered him work on his run down ranch in Northern California. He worked there for almost two weeks then left after learning that Crazy Ernie was never going to pay him; this scene was also never shown in the film. McCandless meets two characters while picking Berries on the side of the road in Oregon, Jan and her boyfriend Bob. Director Sean penn changed the name of the boyfriend Bob to Rainy in the film but kept the names of everyone else Chris McCandless met along the way the same. McCandless departs from Jan and her boyfriend and travels to Topock, Arizona where he buys a second hand canoe (in the movie it's a kayak) and tries his best to travel down the Colorado River and into the Gulf of California. One scene that was added to film that was never in the book is during his travel down the Colorado River McCandless meets two Swedish nudist that give

him hotdogs and bad directions on which way to go. These Characters and this scene are never in the book, instead Chris mistakenly takes the wrong directions and ends up in mexico and is rescued by duck hunters.
From here Krakauer describes McCandless’s journey back into Bullhead City, Arizona where he assumes a job at McDonalds but quits after two months because he didn’t wear any socks.

In the movie they don’t say that McCandless is in Bullhead City and they have him working at a Burger King instead of a Mcdonald's. McCandless then meets back up with Jan and Bob/Rainy at an old Navy base taken over by drifters called “the slabs.” While he’s there he also attracts the attention of a young girl named Tracy. In the film the director expanded on the relationship between Tracy and Chris to the point where Tracy attempted to seduce Chris in the trailer but he refuses. After leaving “the slabs” McCandless arrives at the Salton Sea where he meets an old man named Ronald Franz who he befriends and lives with for a few weeks. While there McCandless is taught leatherworking by Franz and when it's time for Chris to leave Franz asks if he could adopt him but Chris avoids the question saying he’ll talk about it when he gets back from

Alaska.
Jon Krakauer uses chapters nine through fifteen to interview the family members of Chris McCandless and explain how everyone who knew him or met him found out about his death after it happened, whereas in the movie it ends with his death. These chapters include interviews with Chris’s half brother Sam who was the first to find out about his brother's death along with his father Walt, mother Billie, and sister Carine. These interviews with loved ones that take up most of these chapters are what director Sean Penn used when writing the screenplay for this film. Krakauer also diverses at the end of the book and begins to talk about himself and his adventures in the Alaskan wilderness and compares himself to McCandless in ways of being moody and reckless. For two chapters the author does nothing but describe in great detail how he climbed the “Stikine Ice Cap” and made it out alive and compared that to the journey that Chris McCandless made to Alaska. I’m guessing to minimize on time, the director cut these two chapters entirely while writing the screenplay