Inside the Brutal, Beautiful Making of <em>The Long Walk</em>, the Gut-Wrenching New Stephen King Adaptation

For all the talk about young men in the world today–from how they act, how they think, to how they vote–few bother to ask them what they see. They are famously reluctant to talk about their feelings. So it stands to reason that cameras might be the greatest thing you can give a young man. In their hands, cameras can reveal a universe of thought. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so the cliché goes, but sometimes they say even more.

During principal photography of The Long Walk, directed by The Hunger Games' Francis Lawrence and adapted from Stephen King's dystopian novel from 1979, actors Garrett Wareing (below) and Charlie Plummer (above) each brought with them picture film cameras to document their time filming in Manitoba, Canada. There, the rural and often desolate highways of North America served as the backdrop for their transformative journey in this tender yet harrowing thriller about the beauty of brotherhood against the face of tyranny.

The premise of the movie—which debuts nationwide this Friday—invited the young actors to merge their hobby with their work. The Long Walk takes place in a dystopian near-future United States that sanctions an annual (and deadly) endless walking contest for young men. Wareing and Plummer both have major roles as contestants who surround the main characters, Raymond (Cooper Hoffman) and Peter (David Jonsson), who befriend each other and their fellow walkers on the last road they will ever travel.

With all the characters carrying backpacks, Plummer and Wareing kept cameras on their person and snapped pics–their vision shaped by the works of Luke Gilford and Dennis Hopper–between setups, on breaks, and even during filming. The result is a picture gallery textured like a war diary, their photos possessing emotional clarity even as they blur reality from make-believe. Squint, and you might think these photos were picked up from their characters' effects somewhere on the road.

In an exclusive feature, Esquire presents Plummer and Wareing's photos from their time filming The Long Walk, along with commentary by the men themselves. Their quotes have been edited and condensed for clarity.

CHARLIE PLUMMER: I started taking film photos when I was 17. I got a Pentax that I used for some of these photos. I fell in love with it. I kind of became obsessed with Dennis Hopper's photojournalist in Apocalypse Now, and that's what drew me to cameras with this specific project. Once Francis [Lawrence] was like, "We want to actually give you a camera in the film you can use," it took on a different life of its own. I needed to do it every day.

GARRETT WAREING: Similar to Charlie, I was 17 when I got my first film camera. I wanted to hold on to memories. I remember when I got my first roll of film back form this Canon point-and-shoot that I shot these images on, it felt like [living] that memory again. It felt like I was back in that space. When we got on set, I saw how engaged Charlie was with his camera and how beautiful the photos were. I was like, shit, I gotta do this too. We all had backpacks, and the fact that we got to walk with them and document these days as they happened, that was cool and rare. These images are kind of brutal, and that's how the shoot was. Brutal but beautiful.

Charlie and I would get comic books, and we would just sit and read and fiddle with cameras. This was probably when they were changing lenses, so we had free time. All the actors would sit together. We would find shade wherever we could because we were just sitting on asphalt. In background there with Charlie, we have our ADs, makeup department, and costumes teams. They would come and make sure that we were all good for continuity, and feeling all right. They were taking care of us. These small moments were few and far between, because it was a grueling shoot. We were always walking, but to sit down and have reprieve together was always a gift.

PLUMMER: There was definitely moments when we were having little "camera battles."

WAREING: This was taken by Charlie on one of my favorite days. We all got up before the sun rose, we were filming on this huge dam. It was overlooking this huge river. It doesn't have that much screen time. But being there with everybody, there was this overwhelming sound of water rushing through this dam. Charlie grabbed these pictures as the sun rose. I got a few of him as well. That was a really special day, before a lot of us started to fall off. Everybody was there for that.

PLUMMER: I was really fascinated by the gear everyone had accumulated. It gave so much perspective on the individuals without getting their faces.

PLUMMER: That day was early on, and it was one of the hottest days of the entire shoot. I remember because we had to go to lunch, and most of the boys had to take a nap because it was so intense. I remember being aware of our morale coming out of that lunch, where we understood we had a lot of work to do but our bodies were rejecting it. It was the first day it felt like a war film, in that sense of like, "We gotta buckle in." I remember this unity–that was beautiful. So those shots of us kind of together, me, Garrett, and Cooper. I think that was one of the moments where we were kind of finding shade and trying to kind of escape the pure heat on our faces.

WAREING: There was a day with a cat with no eyes. That's Dory. That was part of the world-building that Francis was so masterful at. He would throw little elements in that we would walk past, whether it be a burning car, or a dog barking, or a cat with no eyes. She was sweet, I've never seen anything like that. She was one of the most talented on our cast.

PLUMMER: This is definitely at a lunch, I don't know the specific day. Maybe the day with the woman in the church? This was pretty early, in the first couple of weeks, but quickly we found this bond with each other. I started in theater when I was a kid, so this really brought me back to that. What it felt like to be part of an ensemble. I just love Ben's face in that.

WAREING: Another one of those moments of finding rest, not a tree in sight. We were forced to find comfort on the ground. I never thought that I would find grace on the Minnetoban asphalt, but that was our salvation. Anytime we could sit down, our feet and knees hurting, just finding a moment to lay down.

PLUMMER: We were going through life shit while this was happening. If you were going through personal stuff, that didn't stop. Because we're all on a road together, no trailers to hide in, people had to just be real with whatever's going on. I don't think that's what's literally happening in this photo Garrett took, but there are a lot of photos that, as the shoot wore on, people would reveal what was going on without having to say it. That's where a lot of the love and camaraderie was built.

PLUMMER: This was early on, because we have most of our guys there. It was towards the beginning, when my character stops and ties his shoe. It gives a sense of what, from an existential standpoint, how this endless walk feels. The whole thing carried this real shadow of, This is never ending. We shot [the movie] in sequence, so we really got to feel as much of that as we could. This photo represents just this endless tunnel of men walking.

PLUMMER: This is right before a take. They would drench us with water to match the sweat we naturally accumulated, which would be even more painful because the water would be so pinching cold it was actually not what you wanted. That's our wonderful Steadicam op [there]. It was an unbelievable shoot, they had to keep up with us. These massive camera units weaving through individuals with such ease. It was amazing to watch them.

WAREING: Francis and [screenwriter] JT Mollner would speak about the film like it exists out of time. Maybe an alternate universe, if one of our wars weren't won and our country fell into financial recession. What our country would look like if it was frozen in the 1970s. In a way, when you make it timeless, you make it relatable to more audiences. Not seeing smartphones or modern technology, the movie will be impactful for generations before us and to come. It exists in a space that is not necessarily explained, which I like.

WAREING: My God, this hill kicked our butt. In the film when half the boys get their ticket punched, we were climbing this hill at night until sunrise. Take after take, it was probably three quarters of a mile, and we just charged up this hill together. Our calves were killing us. You can see some of the exhaustion that these boys are wearing. They set up these lights too, you can see it going back in the distance.

PLUMMER: This was the same day of the one I took of Garrett on the dam. This was the most Apocalypse Now photo I ever took or felt throughout the experience. I think it was feeling his spirit in his eyes, you see his soul in a way that I'm completely pulled in by. Tut is a soulful person. He needs to do this more for photographers around the world. [Laughs.]

WAREING: This was Ben's final day. That's Francis, our director [Ben's right] who led us with such strength and conviction. It was a good farewell moment for Ben, and I wanted to document that for him so he could have it forever.

PLUMMER: This must have been very early days, our first week or something. Already the energy between the guys is felt. It felt like being little kids again. There was freedom in the feeling.

WAREING: The van! We would all take turns sitting in the back so that other boys would get in leg room. The van started to get less people in them because people started to die off [in the movie]. It started with all of us, and then it would be fewer. One of the days in this van, we had a crazy long day. A twelve or fifteen-hour shoot day. I woke up at three in the morning, and we're going shopping at Walmart to get groceries. I was so tired that I passed out in the Gatorade section. Charlie caught me before I hit my head.

PLUMMER: I have a little brother, so brotherhood has always been something I felt clear about. But this was the first and only experience I ever had with young guys my own age, where we work in this way. This sense of appreciating what you have, I'm more in touch with as I get older. It was this universal thing we all picked up on. We were aware this is gonna be an experience that sits with us forever. It reminds us to be appreciative of what we have, and who we are in this lifetime, and what we get to do.

WAREING: This taught me that brothers can come in every form, every shape, every color. I found brotherhood with boys from London, Nairobi, New York City. I'm from a small town in Texas, and to know that brotherhood doesn't have to be blood and that it can look like anything–I think experiencing a difficult shoot and a hard thing together brought me a sense of peace within these boys. Trust and gratitude for what we shared. I will carry it with me forever, just like I carry these images forever.