David Guterson picks 4 movies to pair with ‘Evelyn in Transit’
In Pairings, artists and creators pick the movies that complement their latest work.
David Guterson is the author of thirteen books, including the PEN/Faulkner Award winner Snow Falling on Cedars. His latest novel Evelyn in Transit is available January 20 wherever you get your books!
We asked David to pick a few movies that pair well with Evelyn in Transit.
Little Miss Sunshine
Evelyn in Transit is in many ways a road novel whose main character is an unstoppable oddball who refuses to settle for the status quo in life. Little Miss Sunshine is a road movie about a quirky family who in the end will not accept the meanness and smallness of convention. It merges comedy with depth of feeling. There is something insistently rebellious going on, and it’s handled with a light touch. My favorite scene unfolds on the night before the 14th annual Little Miss Sunshine pageant. Olive, in bed, tells her grandpa she’s “kind of scared about tomorrow.” To this he replies, “Olive, you’re gonna blow ‘em out of the water. I guarantee it. They won’t know what hit ‘em.” This soothes her some, but Olive, still apprehensive, next tearfully asks, “Grandpa, am I pretty?” Alan Arkin and Abigail Breslin have perfect chemistry as granddaughter and grandfather. I can’t watch what happens next without wanting to laugh and cry at the same time. “Olive,” says her grandfather, “you are the most beautiful girl in the world.” “You’re just saying that,” Olive answers. “No, I’m not,” her grandfather assures her. “I’m madly in love with you, and it’s not because of your brains or your personality. It’s because you’re beautiful, inside and out.”
Into the Wild
Another road movie, another character not satisfied with convention. Chris McCandless is certain there’s something better in life than what’s on offer to him after graduating from college, so he gets rid of his credit cards, gives away his savings, and sets out on a cross-country trip. Before long, McCandless has doubled down on reckless freedom. He abandons his car, puts out his thumb, and, now calling himself Alexander Supertramp, commits entirely to a new wild life. There’s no going back. The world behind is forever behind. At this point, his story takes on a tragic hue—which is not what happens in Evelyn in Transit.
The Motorcycle Diaries
This time it’s Che Guevara on a road trip. The film’s setup allows for an exploration of themes that run through Evelyn in Transit, too. A young Guevara sets out on a motorcycle on a journey of nearly 9,000 miles, with the intention of working in a leper colony in Peru. He wants to do the right thing. He wants to live the right way. It’s easy, though, to get off course during a road trip, and while this happens some, what we are watching is a journey, based on Guevara’s memoir, that catalyzes him into the revolutionary he would later become—someone with no choice but to live by his convictions.
Nomadland
Nomadland is based on Jessica Bruder’s book of the same name on transience and van-dwelling. The film tells the story of a widow named Fern—again someone who resists convention, and has no choice, inwardly, but to keep moving in search of something else. Fern is played by Frances McDormand, whose repertoire is a great analogue to my character Evelyn. As Olive Kittridge, as Marge Gunderson in Fargo, as Mildred Hayes in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and here in Nomadland, McDormand brings to the screen an insistence always grounded in conviction, and always without making a big deal about it, which I love. If McDormand’s name is on it, I’ll watch it. She’s great. I love stories about oddballs on the road, propelled by inner forces they can neither escape or control. That’s why I wrote Evelyn in Transit.