One and Only (28 page)

 

 

Anne Marie Santos and Sam Riley on the set of
On the Road
, San Francisco, December 2010. Anne Marie, Lu Anne's daughter, worked as a body double for Kristen Stewart. (Photo by Gerald Nicosia.)

Kristen told me that some agent didn't just present her with the part. She said she had read
On the Road
early on in her life, when she was maybe 13 or 14. She told me, “I have the original book
where I highlighted the parts of Marylou.” She was already interested in the story when she just started her teens! I thought that was amazing, because I didn't even read
On the Road
till I was 40. I also thought it was interesting that she'd gotten so attached to the book, because
On the Road
is usually considered a book that guys are into. “My curiosity about Lu Anne didn't just come up when Walter Salles asked me to read for the part,” she said. She explained that what fascinated her about Lu Anne—“Marylou”—was that she was a young, strong woman, independent and adventurous, holding her own with the boys—that was how Kristen described her. She told me, “The three of them are all equal in this trip, in this relationship. Lu Anne has as much influence and responsibility for what's happening as they do. It's not just the boys telling her what to do, dragging her along. She's not just some dumb airhead.”

I learned that Kristen had started acting professionally very young, when she was nine or ten years old. By the time she was in her early teens, she was already an independent actress—and she was looking for role models who could show her the way. She was looking for someone “who had already done it”—by which she meant a young woman who'd also struck out on her own at a very young age. When the part of Marylou came up, she was just so excited to be able to try out for it. She wanted to portray Marylou as a real person. For her, it's not a fictional character, and that's what made the difference in her acting in this part. Sure, they're making a movie of a book, but Kristen is not just playing Marylou. She's playing Lu Anne.

Walter Salles was pushing all the actors in the direction of doing
On the Road
as the story of real people, but Kristen had the same intention even before she met with Walter. Kristen told me that when she listened to the tapes of Lu Anne telling her story, that was the moment when Marylou became Lu Anne for her. She could then see
her, hear her, as the very young woman she had been when Neal and Jack first knew her.

Kristen and I spent the day alone out on the porch of that loft in Montreal, and she was in tears some of the time, when I was talking about my mother and some of the hurts she had been through—when I was telling her about my mother's illnesses and her divorces. Kristen is a very feeling young woman. She's only a girl of 20 years, but when she's researching a part, she goes all the way into it. I just remember when I told her the story about my mother and the poster of Neal, Kristen was tremendously moved. Some guy had obtained this huge poster of Neal, and he was taking it all over the country—maybe to other countries too—and getting anyone connected with the Beats to sign it. He brought the poster to my mother for her to sign. Lu Anne looked at it, it was almost completely filled up with signatures, but there was still an open space around Neal's heart. So she signed it there, and wrote, “You are my heart. I love you forever, Lu Anne.” That story made Kristen cry.

What was funny was that Kristen was actually worried about me, how I would react to the movie. She acted as if she were trying to protect me. “Some of the scenes are pretty rough now,” she said. “Don't be shocked when you see them. You know the story, but the way we're doing it is pretty graphic and pretty rough.” I just smiled. It was very cute, very sweet, but I'm not worried about the graphic scenes. What's important to me is that Kristen really seems to feel what my mother went through.

I saw her again in Baton Rouge a couple of months later. She was already done filming her parts in
On the Road
, and had moved on to start filming the next
Twilight
episode. She cooked dinner for me and my husband, Reuben, and I learned that Kristen likes to cook, and uses cooking to relax, just like my mother did. She told me she hoped to see me at the wrap party for the film in San Francisco in
December [2010], and that was one of the reasons I came out to California then. It turned out that Kristen was still tied up with her latest film and couldn't make it, but I got an even more memorable experience.

The day after I arrived in San Francisco, I got a call from Walter Salles's assistant, Alex Killian. She asked me, “Were your ears burning last night? We were talking about you, and Walter had this great idea that it would be so exciting if you could play your mother in the movie.” It was the next-to-last day of filming, and they were shooting the scene where Neal, Jack, and Lu Anne have just arrived in San Francisco after their cross-country drive from New Orleans. Neal is racing them around the hills in his Hudson, getting ready to drop them off in front of some hotel so he can go back to Carolyn. Since Kristen was no longer available, they needed a body double to play her in the car, sitting between Jack and Neal. They'd chosen me to be the body double for my mom.

The next day, they took me to the makeup trailer, and got me all fixed up to look like Marylou (Lu Anne). I got to wear the same coat that Kristen had worn—a swing coat with one button, that had been designed to look like one that my mom had actually worn in some photographs from the '40s—and the same “dirty blonde” wig that Kristen had worn too. “Are you sure that sixty can play sixteen?” I asked them, but Alex assured me that no one would really get a good look at me. She said she had played Kristen's body double on several occasions, and there was even some guy on the set who claimed
he
had played her body double once or twice when no one else was available.

So there I was, dressed up like my mom 60 years ago, meeting Garrett Hedlund and Sam Riley, who were dressed up like Neal and Jack 60 years ago. The thing was, everyone was so excited to have me there. I talked to Rebecca Yeldham, one of the producers who
had followed the filming from state to state and country to country. They'd been on the road themselves for almost five months. Rebecca told me, “It's been such a long shoot, everybody's so tired. This is just what we need to put some fun and excitement back into the movie. It brings us full circle to where we started.” Everybody on the set was so up to have me there; they were all laughing and having so much fun with the idea that I was playing Kristen playing my mother.

 

We were supposed to zoom up Filbert Street in the Hudson and round the corner almost on two wheels onto Leavenworth, then shoot on up the hill and out of view. The gag was that as we were coming up the hill on Filbert, this extra, a young woman in a 1940s outfit, had to hurry across the street to get out of our way. But during the first few takes, the Hudson didn't get close enough to her to satisfy Walter, so we had to keep redoing it.

After the third take, Sam Riley, who was playing Jack, looked at me and said, “I want you to remember this moment. Every time you see this scene in the movie, you must remember the three of us
sharing this moment together. You must remember that we shared our own on-the-road moment, and when I see this scene I'll think of our moment together too. I'll never forget this scene.” Sam was unbelievably sweet.

Jack was supposed to be carrying a book with him across the country. Just before we'd start up the hill, Sam would put the book up on the dash; and then when Garrett would go squealing around the corner, the book would slide off. It became a little game with Sam that he'd always try to catch the book as it came hurtling toward him. Everything needed to be exactly the same in each take. But when we paused at the bottom of the hill between takes, the guys would throw open the car doors and roll down the windows, and crew members would come up and give us something to drink or just talk to us. During all the previous takes, all four windows had been rolled up; but on one of the last takes, as we started up the hill, I realized they'd forgotten to crank up one of the windows. I yelled, “Window! Window! Window!” and they cranked it up just as we came into range of the camera. Sam looked at me with a smile and said, “Nice catch!”

Garrett seemed like he was still acting out Neal's character even inside the car. As the extra was hurrying across the street in front of us, he'd laugh and taunt, “You better hurry up there, girl! Get your butt off the street before I hit you!” On the last take, he almost did hit her, and she had to jump out of the way. Walter yelled, “That's a wrap!”

Sam and Garrett were like two kids together. They kept saying, “Can you believe we're in
On the Road?”
They were laughing like two boys who were playing hooky from school, or like two kids who'd just won the grand prize on some game show. They told me, “We have to keep telling ourselves we're actually here, acting in this movie. We can't believe how lucky we are.”

Before I left, I showed Sam and Garrett the photograph of my mom I had brought along, tucked inside my bra, right next to my heart. I wanted to make sure that my mom got to take part in the movie. I was in the picture too; it was taken when my mom was about 60 and I was about 40. Sam commented, “Oh, she was lovely!” Then he seemed a little embarrassed, and said, “Of course, so are you!”

There was a funny moment later at the cast party at Francis Ford Coppola's restaurant, Café Zoetrope, in North Beach. The restaurant was closed to the public, and my friend Erin and I got there late, after the dinner had already been served. Carolyn Cassady was sitting in the back room, talking with Walter, Garrett, and some of the other celebrities. Roman Coppola was there too. I had never met Carolyn, so I went into the back room to introduce myself to her. She just kind of looked at me for a few minutes, as if she were trying to see my mother in me. “Oh, sit down, honey, oh please, we need to talk,” she said finally. At that moment a couple of people came up to her and said, “You wanted a chance to smoke. The smokers are all going outside now.” Then Garrett stood up and several of the others who were smokers too started for the door, and Carolyn got up and filed out with them. I never saw her again.

 

My mom told me that Carolyn had once said to her, as if she were apologizing for writing her book, “I had to sell this story—I have children to take care of.” Carolyn chose to become famous, and she did. But she didn't have the ideal life. Being married to Neal wasn't easy. I think my mother probably had a better life than Carolyn did. But my mother was after something very different.