Reese Witherspoon reveals the contents of her backpack at Wild’s premiere

One gets the sense that Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Valée might be looking forward to snapping up a few more awards with Wild, his new film starring Reese Witherspoon. The actress spent an hour at Monday’s premiere drumming up pre-awards-season publicity by traipsing the Roy Thomson Hall red carpet, where she talked to major television news outlets and small-time bloggers alike. Wild takes its story from Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir about her 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Coast Trail. Witherspoon kvetched about how physically challenging the role was. Her backpack wasn’t stuffed with silk scarves; she was equipped like a camper, she said: “Shoes, water, food, books, two sets of clothes, rain gear, snow gear, a light, a shovel, toilet paper, a compass, a cup, a pan. I could go on and on.” The ageless Laura Dern said she turns to things like exercise and meditation, rather than long journeys thorough the wilderness, when she needs to recover and recharge, but we feel more on novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby’s level. He goes to the gym, yeah, and he listens to music, but the celebrated author and essayist’s real stress-melting secret? “I tend to play stupid games on the Internet...like Jelly Defense, things like that—anything that helps me stop thinking.”