On the Road: The Cinema of Walter Salles is the title of Brazilian journalist Marcos Strecker‘s book on the career of filmmaker Walter Salles, best known for his road movies Central Station (1998) and The Motorcycle Diaries (2004).

Currently working on a film adaptation of Jack Kerouac‘s On the Road, Salles, along with City of God‘s Fernando Meirelles, is Brazil’s most internationally renowned filmmaker.

In an audio interview posted in May ’10 on the daily Folha de S. Paulo‘s website, Strecker explains that Salles tested Kristen Stewart for On the Road after seeing her in Sean Penn‘s Into the Wild (2007) and long before Stewart became a star as a result of the Twilight Saga movies, adding that TRON: Legacy‘s Garrett Hedlund was a complete unknown when he was tested for the role of Dean Moriarty.

Strecker then asserts that Salles couldn’t find financing for On the Road at the time because no one wanted to back a film featuring unknowns such as Stewart and Hedlund.

He also claims that Stewart caught her own agents off-guard when she announced on Oprah that her next project was going to be On the Road.

Slated for release in 2011, On the Road also stars Sam Riley, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, and Viggo Mortensen.

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