Outside Magazine Returns ‘Into the Wild’

Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 08.15.07 | 10:25 AM ET

Based on Outside’s coverage of Sean Penn’s upcoming film adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s book “Into the Wild,” I’m upgrading my hopes about its quality. Christopher Keyes visited the set and compiled an oral history of the making of the movie for the September issue. He reveals that Penn has the support of the family of the movie’s subject, Christopher McCandless, and was apparently meticulous with the details of the story.

Star Emile Hirsch, Penn and the crew shot the movie in 36 locations where McCandless traveled, not including the Alaskan locale where he passed away in an abandoned bus. “I knew I wasn’t going to shoot there,” Penn tells Keyes. “It would have been obnoxious, a kind of rape of the area to have a whole crew there.” Instead they searched for a month and shot at a nearby location on another bus.

Keyes’s entire story isn’t yet available online, but there is a 17-minute interview with him that covers many of the details, as well as his own fascination with the story of Christopher McCandless. For now, Oustide has also put Krakauer’s original January 1993 story Death of an Innocent: How Christopher McCandless Lost His Way in the Wilds on the front page of its Web site.