Chris McCandless and the marketing of ‘The Wild’: TV, film latching on to famous book’s tragic story
This famous book's themes are finding their way into current TV program scripts.
I’ve noticed an interesting trend over the last few years. And it has to do with one of my favorite books.
In 1996, outdoor writer, mountaineer and author John Krakauer wrote a story for Outside magazine about Chris McCandless. That magazine piece later become a full-blown book we all know as “Into the Wild.”
For those of you unfamiliar with the book, it goes something like this:
In the early ‘90s, a young man and recent college graduate decided he was not going to do what everyone else did after college. He bypassed graduate school, a professional career and all the other things most college grads do because he viewed these pursuits as empty.
That man, Chris McCandless, gave away all his money and left behind his possessions to live a vagabond life. He wandered the western U.S., picking up odd jobs along the way and living wherever he might end up that particular day, be it in a town, a transient camp or out in the woods. He even took on a new name, calling himself “Alexander Supertramp.”
His real dream was to see if he could make it by himself in the wilds of Alaska. With few supplies and limited knowledge, he made a go of it and did pretty well until some small mistakes piled up and claimed his life.
The bus-turned-hunter’s cabin was his home that summer, and it’s the place where he died. A lot of people were inspired by McCandless’s story, and many hikers still venture to the old bus where he died as a sort of pilgrimage.
The book is one of my personal favorites, and is definitely one that captured the zeitgeist of my generation. But in recent years, the McCandless story has become so much more.
Sean Penn turned the book into a moody, artistic film. And then, the title of the book started to be incorporated into other entertainment media.
Last season, the creators of “The Alaska Experiment” retitled their program for its second season, calling it “Out of the Wild: The Alaska Experiment.” The play on the book titled is only thinly veiled, and a second link between the book and the program was the program’s setting — southern Alaska’s backcountry.
The latest effort to capture the book’s mystique is “Lost in the Wild,” a National Geographic Channel show that is filming now.
I think this is going to be an interesting show. But it also does more than just make a play on the more famous book’s name.
The subject of the film is planting himself in the arctic bush (Yukon Territory, Canada, and not in Alaska. But very similar). He plans to stay there through the summer months. He’s by himself and will have to hunt, fish and forage for food. Much like what McCandless had tried to do nearly two decades ago.
Of course, there are differences. Ed Wardle, the filmmaker and star of the show, is checking in with his people on a daily basis, is providing online updates and is letting everyone who will go online now or tune in this fall to see his life in the Yukon outback. McCandless chose total isolation, didn’t want visitors, didn’t want any human interaction.
But the parallels are striking. And as long as the “man vs. the wilderness” theme remains popular on television AND as long as “Into the Wild” remains a part of the American psyche, I think we’ll see more of this in the future.
Thankfully, the programs described here are pretty benign (that is, if Mr. Wardle survives through the show’s taping through September). Chris McCandless’s story is not. While he is admired in many ways for living life on his terms, his demise was a lonely, agonizing way to go. And definitely not something to be emulated. Hopefully our televised survivalists will stop short of subjecting themselves to such an end.
Ed Wardle: The latest to make a McCandless-style journey in the artic?
Bob Doucette
bdoucette@opubco.com
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