Trivia / The Road

• Creator-Preferred Adaptation: Cormac McCarthy was quite happy with this adaptation of his novel, happy to see some things changed, such as Woman's smaller role, as long as the spirit was maintained. He also approved of the voiceover added, even though Viggo Mortensen had been wary about it.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Viggo Mortensen didn't track his weight loss during filming, as he simply ate less gradually, but he estimates it at around 30 lbs.
• Fake American: Pretty much everyone. We have Viggo Mortensen and Charlize Theron, who are Danish-Norwegian and South African respectively but have American accents naturally (and Viggo was born in New York). Kodi Smit-McPhee and Guy Pearce are Australian, and Molly Parker is Canadian.
• Method Acting: Viggo Mortensen prepared for his role by sleeping in the same clothes and deliberately starving himself, at one point getting thrown out of a shop by someone who thought he was a homeless man. He and Kodi Smit-McPhee also bonded by eating crickets together to get into character.
• Promoted Fanboy: Charlize Theron was a fan of the book, and happily took the small role of Woman because of it.
• Referenced by...: The film gets mentioned in the festive apocalyptic Black Comedy Silent Night (2021).
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Kodi Smit-McPhee won the part of the Boy partly because of his resemblance to Charlize Theron.
• Shrug of God: The author has offered a few possible explanations for the world-ending disaster, and said that he himself has no opinion on the subject. See also The Unreveal on the main page.
• Throw It In!:
  • When filming the scene of the Boy's hair getting washed in the stream, the director had promised Kodi Smit-McPhee only two takes, but the second had been ruined by the sun coming out. As the weather was very cold, he started to cry on the third take, and it was left in the film.
  • Robert Duvall ad-libbed a line about Ely having a son after he was tired from having done multiple retakes.
• Wag the Director: John Hillcoat planned to dub audio of actual women in childbirth over the scene of Woman in labour. Charlize Theron however objected and filmed the scene herself, so that is her actual screaming in the film.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The vending machine scene was shot several different ways, with a different drinks can each time in case Coca-Cola didn't allow them to use theirs. A phone call from Viggo Mortensen to the president of the company ensured that it appeared in the movie just as it had in the book.
  • The infamous scene from the book involving a baby on a spit being roasted over a campfire was filmed, but John Hillcoat cut it because he found it too much.

---