Click on a picture to enlarge it

Lizards in Movies   On The Road (2012)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This is a based on the classic Jack Kerouac novel about a young writer who travels across the US with his wild friend and his girlfriend. Amy Adams plays Jane (who in real life was Joan Vollmer, a seminal Beat figure and common law wife of William S. Burroughs). For some reason that is never explained, Jane is obsessed with the green anoles in a tree in her yard in New Orleans. She goes outside at night with a broom and starts poking at the branches, knocking several anoles to the ground. One lands on her bare foot. Then she tries to catch a lizard with her hand. I think this is supposed to indicate her strained mental state from too much drug use or maybe from spending too much time with Burroughs (who later "accidentally" shot her in the head and killed her.) The anoles are real. They are found in New Orleans, but not in a large group in a bare tree. That part's crazy. I don't remember if there were anoles in the novel, but I don't think so. They might have been added to the movie to help develop Jane's character.