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.
Garrett Hedlund (Neal Cassady), Gerald Nicosia, Sam Riley (Jack Kerouac), Kristen Stewart (Lu Anne Henderson), on the porch at “Beat Boot Camp.” (Photo courtesy of Gerald Nicosia.)
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!”