Cheryl Strayed looks out a motel window onto a parking lot, watching a modern-day cowboy rummage in the trunk of his dusty ride.
In director Jean-Marc Vallée’s adaptation of Strayed’s memoir, “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail,” there’s an understated resonance to this moody instant. From afar, the guy looks like Ron Woodroof, the complicated hero in Vallée’s 2013 drama “Dallas Buyers Club.” Were the moment a painting, it might be titled “Flawed Hero Considering Flawed Hero.”
That image isn’t the only thing straddling the two projects. The in-demand director is in the midst of post-production on “Demolition,” a drama starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts. “It’s funny, the brain has to shift from one to the other,” Vallée says on the phone from Los Angeles, “But I had some practice last year with ‘Dallas’ and ‘Wild’ and now it’s ‘Wild’ and ‘Demolition.’ ”
He concedes it’s a nice problem to have.
“Dallas Buyers Club” — with its best-picture nomination and Oscars for Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto — drew attention to the bold but nuanced talents of its Quebec-born filmmaker.
Attendees of 2006’s Boulder International Film Festival likely weren’t as surprised. They were introduced to Vallée when the fest screened “C.R.A.Z.Y.,” a vibrant coming-of-age story set in the 1960s and ’70s in the director’s hometown of Montreal.
His sense of composition, both visual and aural, now feel like trademarks. It wasn’t just the fluid camera work that moved between the young protagonist’s real and fantasy lives. It was the sonic texture of a rousing soundtrack, featuring Rolling Stones, Patsy Cline and David Bowie.
With Leonard Cohen, Lucinda Williams, Portishead and Simon & Garfunkel, the “Wild” soundtrack is a quieter but hardly tame affair.
“I avoid hiring composers and creating original music,” Vallée says, adding that it’s “one of my tics as a filmmaker/deejay/music freak. It’s so part of my life, music. When I wake up, I press ‘Play.’ When I go to bed, I press ‘Stop,’ and even sometimes music is still playing when I’m sleeping. I like to come up with a discography, a playlist for characters and help define them by what they listen to. Not just what they read, what’s their back story, who are their parents, where are they, from but what are they listening to.”
In making “Wild,” he says he also relied on “the sound of her reality, of nature, the sound of crickets, of wind, water, cicadas. Trying to get the audience in a place where they’re really following her, caring for her, feeling what she feels, seeing what she sees, dreams. No matter whether it is coming from the present or the past.”
It’s a deft way into a character. Even so, the rich interior landscape, which literature treads with ease is a challenge when adapting a book for the screen. And Strayed’s account of her trek is that to an nth degree: a woman reckons with the death of her mother, the death of her marriage.
Earlier in the week, Witherspoon received a much-deserved Screen Actors Guild award nomination. It was likely gratifying for the actress, who’d gone after the book with verve and then produced the film with producing partner Bruna Papandrea and Bill Pohlad.
Even so, when it came to being on set, says the director, “She knew when to wear what hat. She wanted to be up to that challenge. To go beyond her comfort zone.”
Witherspoon’s responses to 35 days of shooting demands and requests for fresh emotion were consistently “Yup, yup.” “All right, cool, cool,” he says.
“Right from the beginning she knew I felt the same way about the script, about the book, about Cheryl. We were on the same page,” Vallée says.
When it comes to adaptation, that turns out to be a very fine place to embark on an adventure.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or
