“”Into the Wild wasn't exactly uplifting.””

Personally, I was VERY uplifted by the movie. & if you believe Krakauer’s take on Chris McCandless, well, then he only made one tragic mistake: His desire to go as totally into the wild as was possible led him to mistakenly forgo a topographic map … which would have shown him the way at the ultimate moment. The sorrow I felt at the end did not overshadow the message of free will and the root (base of) human/earth occurrence. I suppose you can argue that it was another mistake to dis his family so deeply. But, again, if you go along with the story, that was something of his own search as well ... and he found his answer by tramping ... and starving.

When I was hitchhiking after “the service,” even though I used a pseudonym and looked around, I never stripped totally of my connection to the $ and my ID card. So maybe in this life I missed the point to some degree, or maybe I’m now seeing it, I don’t know. Now I have burning pain in my right elbow and my wife is fighting for her life. I believe the kid was well-read and as curious as Einstein, & he was onto something.

I turned more people on to Into the Wild the past couple years than any other flick, and it sure didn’t hurt to have Ed Vedder’s voice all over it ~~ my favorite voice in rock & roll; that’s not to say David Baerwald doesn’t kill (when he offers up a few bars). I turned my mom onto it; she dug it, glued to the screen…never said a word, cried over the credits, and then came over and hugged me. But then she liked Bubba Ho-Tep too, so…