Last night Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Kirsten Dunst, and Sam Riley walked the red carpet for the premiere of On the Road at the School of Visual Arts Theatre in New York City. The location was fitting—Brazilian director Walter Salles pointed out that Jack Kerouac wrote the book a mere three blocks away, on Twentieth Street and Tenth Avenue, in 1951. Twenty-three years later, when Salles read the novel before heading off to university, it touched him in a way that no other literature assignment had before. “We were living in the dog years of a [military dictatorship],” he said. “The book was the freedom that we were craving.” Stewart, wearing a sheer Erdem dress and hot pink Christian Louboutin pumps, said she first read the book “as a freshman in high school and it really kick-started something for me.” She relished the opportunity to bring Marylou’s character to life: “One really remarkable thing about her—she’s so completely un-self-conscious and so self-aware at the same time, and for a teenager, those are not common attributes,” she said. “She was a beautiful girl and she was infectiously, disarmingly present.”

Adapting an American classic for movie screens comes with added pressure, to be sure, which could be why Salles took eight years, 60,000 miles, and 200 locations including New Orleans, San Francisco, Mexico, Canada, and Argentina, to shoot the film. This, of course, meant ample opportunities for mechanical missteps. “I remember when we were in Montreal, there’s a scene, it opens with Dean [played by Hedlund] parking cars in this very small lot. And he just drives like a mad person,” said screenwriter José Rivera. “And during shooting, one of those cars kind of exploded, with him inside. The engine went pow! and the car stopped moving.” On the opposite end of the excitement spectrum, it also meant plenty of sitting around in confined spaces between takes. “We lived in each other’s pockets for six months,” said Riley (Sal Paradise). “It could have been a disaster.”

But the disaster was obviously averted, as evidenced by the costars laughing, drinking, and mingling together in a roped-off VIP area during the after-party at the Top of the Standard. Patti Smith and Michael Stipe joined the Grey Goose–sponsored revelries, and waiters offered up hamburgers, grilled cheeses, crab sandwiches, and mini-cupcakes. The view, as always, was stunning, and with a live jazz band—an homage to the musical scenes in the film—blaring in the background, it felt for a moment like guests had been transported back to Kerouac’s New York. At the end of the night, though, everyone got on the road only to go home.

More pics at the SOURCE