‘I read ‘On the Road’ when I was younger, but I did it because I liked a boy, and he gave it to me,” Kirsten Dunst tells The Post, summing up the experience of millions of teen and 20-something girls since Jack Kerouac’s beatnik bible came out. Published in 1957, it’s about the author’s cross-country travels and his close friendship with poet and wild man Neal Cassady. And the women they loved, sort of.
The book frequently treats its female characters as impediments to the soul-seeking journey of Sal Paradise (Kerouac’s alter ego) and Dean Moriarty (Cassady), so you wouldn’t think such roles would appeal to top actresses. Still, Oscar winner Dunst took on Camille (a thinly veiled version of Cassady’s second wife, Carolyn) in Friday’s new film adaptation. She’s joined by Kristen Stewart as Marylou (a stand-in for Cassady’s first wife, LuAnne Henderson), Amy Adams as Jane (i.e., William S. Burroughs’ doomed wife, Joan), and Elizabeth Moss as another pal’s wife.
So there must be something more to this version, which director Walter Salles (“The Motorcycle Diaries”) adapted from the original “scroll” version of Kerouac’s text, the published novel and interviews with surviving Beats and their circle.
“Our extensive research allowed [screenwriter] Jose Rivera to expand on the role of women in the film,” says Salles, who is also releasing a documentary, “Searching for ‘On the Road,’ ” chronicling his studies. Both the men and the women in the movie, he says, “are colliding against a very conservative society. They were seeking all forms of freedom and exploring forbidden territories.”
But the director acknowledges the book has a certain reputation. “I participated in many discussions about the book, and met people who felt it was somewhat misogynistic,” he says. “But I also spoke to young women who see the Marylou character as a feminist ahead of her time, a teenage girl who explodes the sexual taboos of her time.”
Sam Riley, who plays Sal Paradise, agrees: Marylou “was very liberal, freewheeling, adventurous. Not the sort of preconception of what women’s roles were at that time. She was calling the shots [on the road trip] as much as anybody as far as what they were going to do from day to day.”
That included group sex with her husband and others, including poet Allen Ginsberg and Kerouac. In one notable scene, Sal, Marylou and Dean drive down the highway sitting side by side on the front seat, without a stitch on, Stewart’s character pleasuring both simultaneously.
Riley and Garrett Hedlund, who plays Dean, underwent an immersive course in the Beats before shooting. They listened to nearly 50 hours of audiotapes made by Henderson talking about that era.
“We ended up learning almost more about our characters by researching the female characters,” Hedlund says. Marylou “was kind of a mirror image of the Neal character. People who think the book is misogynistic don’t understand that. She left him in New York at the beginning, to go back to somebody she was messing with in Denver. And then he left her to go to Camille. And then she says screw that, and screws Sal!”
Jane, Adams’ character, is based on an intellectual Barnard grad who was known for being the highest-profile female member of the beat circle. Joan Vollmer, Burroughs’ common-law wife, met the author through mutual friend Allen Ginsberg, and shared their love of drugs (hers was Benzedrine, an amphetamine). She was later killed by Burroughs, at the age of 28, in a William Tell-themed handgun accident.
Based on Carolyn Cassady, Camille isn’t that boundary-pushing; in the film, she mostly tries to domesticate Dean. But Dunst says the inspiration for her character also had an unorthodox life. “She was living in an apartment by herself,” Dunst tell The Post. “She was a single mom at a very young age. She was a renaissance woman for her time, for sure.”
True to the unconventional spirit of the group, Carolyn went on to get involved with Kerouac, says Dunst: “She had a relationship with him later, and Neal approved it. Jack helped raise the kids with her for a while.”
Carolyn was also a grounding influence on the beatnik triangle. “She was this glue holding everyone together,” Hedlund says, “not just Neal and the kids, but between Neal and Jack, and her and Jack.”
Carolyn Cassady, who’s 89 now, appears in Salles’ documentary to bestow a few words of wisdom. “He asks her what advice she can give to younger girls,” says Hedlund, “and she’s like, ‘Well, jealousy’s stupid.’ ”
Hedlund and Riley met Carolyn on the last shooting day, in San Francisco. “Sam and I had to wake up the next morning bright and early,” Hedlund says. “We finished dinner and she still wanted one more drink!”
“We went to Vesuvio’s [bar], which was one of the old haunts,” Riley adds. “She’s so vibrant. And she loved those guys so much. There was obviously a lot of heartache, too, but she adored them.”
And who can blame her, says Dunst: “She fell in love with someone she knew was trouble. She fell in love with the rock star. Listen, if I was young and there were these poets around me that were thinking differently than I was used to, I’d be totally enamored of them, too!”