Kristen Stewart On the Road in Montreal

I couldn't have said it better myself (and this is not to start any drama) But lets focus on the work they are doing and let everything else go.

Importance of film overshadowing by Pattinson-Stewart gossip

MONTREAL - You'd think the big excitement in film circles in Montreal would be the fact that the acclaimed Brazilian director Walter Salles is here shooting an adaptation of one of the most iconic American novels of the 20th century, Jack Kerouac's On the Road.

But no. All that anyone is talking about is the local sightings of vampy Twilight lovebirds Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart.

The are-they-or-aren't they couple was spotted wining and dining at chi chi Old Montreal resto Le Club Chasse et Peche the other night, which prompted much online chatter around the globe and a sudden interest in the Montreal film scene from folks at gossipy mags like People and US Weekly.

Stewart, whom you might have heard of thanks to her star-making turn as sultry teen vampire fan Bella in the Twilight pictures, has a supporting role in On the Road, playing Marylou, the young wife of messed-up rebel without a cause Dean Moriarty.

Moriarty is portrayed by Garrett Hedlund, who stars in the much anticipated upcoming film Tron: Legacy.

Kerouac alter-ego Sal Paradise is played by British actor Sam Riley, best-known for his riveting turn as the late, great Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis in the 2007 flick Control.

Pattinson is not in the movie, but was -and perhaps still is- up here to spend quality time with Stewart, who may or may not be his real-life gal-pal.

What bothers me is that the two Twilight stars are hogging all the attention -at the expense of what just might be the most exciting film shoot of the year happening anywhere on the globe. The 1957 novel about Paradise and Moriarty hitchhiking across the U.S., drinking cheap wine, smoking good weed, getting all intense at smoky jazz bars, and generally burning the candle at both ends was the defining book of the Beat Generation. On the Road is a literary rite of passage for wannabe teen rebels everywhere, and it's not that far-fetched to suggest Kerouac set the stage for the much bigger social revolution that exploded just about exactly a decade after his book was first published.

Filmmakers have been trying to bring this saga to the big screen for decades, which is why it was such a momentous event when cameras began filming here a couple of weeks back.

Francis Ford Coppola, who remains one of the producers, first bought the rights to the novel for a measly $95,000 way back in 1980, and Brazilian auteur Salles signed on to direct a couple of years back, and he actually re-created Kerouac's '50s odyssey, criss-crossing the U.S. himself, while filming a documentary on the making of On the Road.

And the cast is just as intriguing as the behind-the-scenes talent, with Hedlund, Stewart, Riley, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, Tom Sturridge, and Viggo Mortensen as Old Bull Lee, a character based on Naked Lunch author -and Kerouac pal -William S. Burroughs. This week, it was announced that Steve Buscemi, Elisabeth Moss from Mad Men, Alice Braga, Danny Morgan and Terrence Howard have also been added to this mighty impressive cast list.

The Ottawa Citizen reported that the crew was filming in Gatineau yesterday, and On the Road will move to Hull today, to film scenes in La Taverne Montcalm. They continue in and around Montreal until Aug. 27, then they go to New Orleans for a month, followed by three weeks in Mexico. Then the $25-million France-Canada co-production wraps with another month of work here, starting in mid-October.

But that's not what's generating the buzz in both the old and new media. On the web, all the talk is about the first photos of Stewart and Pattinson taken in Montreal and how it looks like he's nuzzling her neck. This apparently is a big deal for millions of folks because, for reasons known only to their publicists, the two actors have never confirmed or come right out and denied that they're a couple.

Montreal entertainment reporter Herby Moreau was the guy who spotted them at Le Club Chasse et Peche and his tweet kick-started a veritable online avalanche of chatter. He says that within 20 minutes of his news flash on Twitter, People magazine was calling the restaurant and the blog he later penned was translated into several languages by rabid Twilight fans around the planet.

He told me yesterday he was kind of dismayed by the magnitude of the response and the endless inquiries about his star sighting.

"Sure, they're two stars, but what we're forgetting is that they're shooting one of the great classics of American literature right here in Montreal," Moreau said.

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xoxo
Carrie