"He was in Hawaii when I tracked him down," Penn tells Billboard of Vedder, with whom he first collaborated on the 1995 film "Dead Man Walking." "He got a copy of the ['Into the Wild'] book and read it. He called up very invested already -- he really connected with it.
I said, 'Call me when you get back and I'll come up to Seattle,' and that's what happened. I brought up like a three hour-and-15-minute cut of the movie, and we sat and watched that. His words were, 'It's on,' and that was it.
