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In our weekly series Anatomy of a Nude Scene, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sex scenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around it, and their legacy. This week, Kristen Stewart makes her nude debut in between Twilight sequels in the Beat Generation classic On the Road!
Jack Kerouac's generational classic On the Road spent 55 years on the cusp of being made into a film, with the first suggestion that it become one made by the author himself when he wrote actor Marlon Brando the year the book was published. In 1957, Brando was the king of the acting world, having finally won the Best Actor Oscar in 1955—on his record fourth consecutive nomination—for Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront. Kerouac wrote Brando, asking him to play the lead role of Dean Moriarty in a low budget adaptation produced by and co-starring the author himself in the role of Sal Paradise. Needless to say, that adaptation never got off the ground.
Neither did Francis Ford Coppola's two separate attempts to make the film after purchasing the rights in 1979, including a mid-90s version that would have starred Brad Pitt and Ethan Hawke as Moriarty and Paradise, respectively. Just after the turn of the century, the late, great Joel Schumacher nearly got an adaptation made with Colin Farrell and Billy Crudup in the same respective roles, but got shelved due to a ballooning budget. Coppola retained the rights to turn the book into a film and hired Brazilian director Walter Salles after seeing his 2004 film The Motorcycle Diaries.
That film was itself an adaptation, a road picture if you will, based on the diaries kept by a young Che Guevara as he traveled with friend Alberto Granado across South America in 1952. Salles seemed the perfect person to actually get an adaptation of Kerouac's seminal tome of that same era's Beat Generation to film and in 2012, he succeeded. One can tell, just by looking at the cast list, that this was the sort of film a lot of people wanted to be involved in making. The supporting cast is a who's who with Oscar nominees like Amy Adams and Viggo Mortensen, Emmy winners Elisabeth Moss and Steve Buscemi, and three time Golden Globe nominee Kirsten Dunst. *Put a pin in Kirsten Dunst, we'll get back to her in a minute, promise that wasn't a dig.
Perhaps the most notable name on the cast list at the time of the film's release was Kristen Stewart, who was playing the female lead role of Marylou. When Salles first saw the actress and thought of her for the role was in 2007 when she appeared in Sean Penn's Into the Wild, but the next year her career exploded when she landed the lead role inTwilight. Despite that mammoth box office success, Stewart herself was still down to play Marylou when cameras began rolling in August, 2010. However, the shooting schedule on what would become the fourth and fifth Twilight films necessitated that Salles shoot her scenes before she was due on set in October of that year, no small feat considering the size of her role in On the Road.
If you skipped this period of literature in high school and never felt compelled to visit it in college, On the Road tells the story of the early 20s malaise felt by Beat Generation icons Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, and the author himself. Utilizing the names Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx, and Sal Paradise, Kerouac frames the tale around a three year period in their lives as they wrestle with relationships, death, sexuality, drugs, alcohol, infidelity, legacies, and all that stuff that plagues your prototypical angry young man.
Based on Cassady's own 16-year old wife LuAnn Henderson, Stewart's Marylou more or less starts the film by splitting up with Dean, but then comes back into his life several times throughout the story's first two acts. Dean leaves her for Camille (Kirsten Dunst), but by a year later is covertly sleeping with Marylou again. For her part, Marylou isn't content to be a one-man-kinda-girl and begins toying with Sal as well, inviting him into a threesome with her and Dean that ends rather abruptly.
While continuing along on a road trip to California, Marylou famously services both men in the front seat of the car as seen in the still at the top of this article. However, six minutes later, Sal and Marylou are finally alone, away from Dean, and explode in a moment of passion...
Unfortunately, Stewart's role in the On the Road was more or less overshadowed by the conclusion of the Twilight saga just one month prior to the film's release. That's also not to mention the turmoil in Stewart's personal life at the time, with that past summer's Snow White and the Huntsman being embroiled in controversy over Stewart's off-screen relationship with that film's director. A major A-list actress with a gargantuan billion dollar franchise to her name made her nude debut and no one really noticed.
The press didn't dwell on it like they usually do. A nude debut can be a big talking point for them when interviewing actresses, but very few members of the press brought it up. In Toronto, MTV News asked if she was nervous about doing several topless scenes in the film and she responded by saying...
"It didn't bother me. You can do no wrong with [Salles]. He puts so much inside of you. In the four-week rehearsal process, it was okay to ask any question, to bring up any story, to really overanalyze everything and intellectualize everything. Once we got to set, it was so about just breathing and letting it happen. He put so much trust in us," she said of her director. "So it was like, 'OK, so I have to take my clothes off?' It's so not a big [deal]."
Much like her former on-and-off-screen lover Robert Pattinson, Stewart sought career redemption in the indie circuit, placing herself in the hands of respected directors like Kelly Reichert (Certain Women), Ang Lee (Billy Lynn), and most crucially with Olivier Assayas, who did both Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper with him to great acclaim. She's also doing nudity a lot more now, which is also great because frankly, it's something we just can't get enough of here at Mr. Skin. You might say it's what keeps the lights on!
*Okay, fun Kirsten Dunst fact, she and on-screen husband Garrett Hedlund were an off-screen item as well between 2012 and 2016, though she rebounded quickly with Fargo co-star Jesse Plemons, Hedlund is now with Emma Roberts, and everyone has babies! Hooray, it all worked out in the end.
Catch up with our most recent editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene
—Uma Thurman Steals Dangerous Liaisons Out From Under Her More Famous Co-Stars
—Did They Really Kill a Chicken During That Infamous Pink Flamingos Sex Scene?
—A Naked Julie Michaels Kicks Keanu's Ass in Point Break
—Alexis Dziena Gives Aging Lothario Bill Murray an Eyeful in Broken Flowers
—P.J. Soles Establishes a Key Horror Movie Trope in John Carpenter's Halloween
—Can We Talk About Linnea Quigley's Barbie Doll Crotch in Return of the Living Dead?
—Innocent Blood Finds John Landis Trying to Get His American Werewolf Mojo Back
—The Insane Japanese Horror Movie House Features Equally Insane Nudity
—Howard Stern's Private Parts Lives Up to Its Titular Promise
—Neve Campbell Wastes No Time Making Her Nude Debut in When Will I Be Loved
—Amy Locane Gets Carried Away from Melrose Place to Bang Dennis Hopper
—The Shape of Water Opens with Sally Hawkins Masturbating in the Tub
—Jennifer Jason Leigh Gets the Drop on Bridget Fonda in Single White Female
—Monique Gabrielle Ensures Bachelor Party is an Affair to Remember
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Click Here to Read All Past Editions of Anatomy of a Nude Scene/Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy
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