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

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

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