Making 'Into the Wild' even wilder

In the spring of 1992, a 24-year-old dreamer named Christopher McCandless hitchhiked to Alaska, north of Mt. McKinley, and walked alone into the wilderness to live off the land. His decomposed body was discovered in an abandoned bus four months later. The young man's death marked the end of an odyssey that began two years earlier when McCandless, after graduating with honours from Atlanta's Emory University, slammed the door on a life of privilege. He donated his entire $25,000 in savings to Oxfam, drove west, then abandoned his car in the Mojave Desert, burned his money and rechristened himself Alexander Supertramp. Now he may have finally achieved the transcendence he was looking for. Portrayed with irresistible charisma by Emile Hirsch, McCandless has found a mythic afterlife onscreen -- in Sean Penn's Into the Wild, a movie based on Jon Krakauer's 1996 bestseller.