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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1990)
Gus Van Sant: Making films about outsiders Travel Sunny PALM SPRINGS from $318 P P d R/T AIR TRANSFERS 2-NIGHTS EL MIRASOL w-TAXES 7-NIGHT PKG. PRICE ON REQUEST Snow Ski BIG MOUNTAIN FROM $290 p.p.d. R/T TRANSPORT/LIFT TICKETS/TAXES 3-NIGHTS GROUSE MTN. LODGE Go West HOLLYWOOD FROM $425 p.p.d. R/T/ AIR/CAR/CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST/TAXES 2-NIGHTS LE REVE SUITES GREAT WEEKENDER! C ru isin ' KEYWEST • HALLOWEEN FROM $ 465 + LOW AIR FARE 3-NIGHTS ALL GAY RSVP CRUISE 3-NIGHTS ORLANDO/ALL TAXES AND GRATUITIES INCLUDED Deluxe Weekend BEVERLY HILLS FROM $599 p.p.d. R/T AIR/DELUXE TRANSFERS/TAXES 2-NIGHTS FIVE STAR-L'ERMITAGE PLUS LIMO SERVICE Rem em ber February Is Just Around The Corner TRAVEL-THE GIFT FOR LO VERS AND VALENTINES C ALL SC O H FOR YOUR TRA V EL PLANS 5 0 2 SE M O R R I S O N • PO RTLAND 230-8007 OUTSIDE PORTLAND AREA 1 800-772-4440 Unlike many gay filmmakers, Van Sant is not interested in making gay movies that appeal to a heterosexual audience play The Normal Heart into a movie, the idea was dropped once Kramer and the producer had actually seen Van Sant’s work. ilmmaker Gus Van Sant, 36, burst on the “My films show a real severe world,” said national scene with a flurry of accolades. Newsweek called Van Sant’s latest movie. Van Sant. Nonetheless, Van Sant believes that his Drugstore Cowboy “extraordinary”; the Los films will eventually make a difference — for Angeles Times dubbed it “electrifying.” Even the staid and somber The New York Times gays as well as other outsiders. “If I tell things the way I see them, even hailed Van Sant as one of the up-and-coming generation of new directors. tually it’ll help,” said Van Sant. Unlike many gay filmmakers. Van Sant is But articles full of applause left out two essential details. not interested in making gay movies that appeal to a heterosexual audience. Van Sant isn’t a novice; he’s been making movies since he was 12 years old. “I don’t want to propagandize being gay to And he isn’t part of the straight, the straight world,” said Van Sant. Hollywood mainstream. He is gay and his “Some films actually do — say The Life first film was gay. and Times of Harvey Milk — but mine don’t ” Without these two facts, it is almost Van Sant wants to make films for a gay impossible to understand why Van Sant’s audience but he also wants to deal with films are so good or why he makes the movies problems the gay community is facing. he does. The 1985 Mala Noche provided him with Being gay, Van Sant understands people such a subject — one that wasn’t being dealt who do not fit into the mainstream. As an with by the major studios — one Van Sant outsider himself, he is willing to tackle found very compelling. subjects other directors wouldn’t dream of “Hollywood wasn’t making any films taking on. about gay characters but there was a gay “Most of my films fall into an area that’s audience that wanted these kinds of films,” never been touched or mentioned except in said Van Sant news articles or documentaries,” said Van Van Sant had attended early gay film Sant. festivals and was appalled at the movies Drugstore Cowboy, starring Matt Dillon shown because organizers had so little to and Kelly Lynch shows the underbelly of choose from. society, the people Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say “At the earlier festivals, they had to show No” campaign could never reach — four old Tennessee Williams movies.” unemployed addicts who rob pharmacies to His next project, My Own Private Idaho, is support their drug habits. about two street kids who use homosexual Drugstore Cowboy is Van Sant’s first prostitution to survive. feature to get nationwide distribution and the “It’s about kids who are homeless, kids second to gamer well-deserved praise. who need attention,” said Van Sant Although most people don’t know it. Van “It investigates the world of male street Sant’s first full-length drama, Mala Noche hustlers — the 14- to 21-year-olds. It’s about won the 1987 Los Angeles Film Critics trading sex for money, about monetary needs Award for the Best Independent and emotional needs — the absent father But the nitty-gritty movie also angered syndrome.” many in the gay community for its choice of The upcoming film raises questions the subjects — a gay man whose unrequited love gay community has yet to answer. for a heterosexual makes his life miserable. Van Sant’s next project bears more “Why doesn’t he make films about healthy resemblance to the late gay filmmaker Rainer gays?” was the familiar refrain. Werner Fassbinder than contemporary gay Sensitive to the criticism that’s been directors. leveled against the movie, Van Sant explains This film won’t rely on melodrama given that politics and art cannot be mixed. When Van Sant’s desire to play on rather than they are, he said, art loses. reinforce stereotypes. But it will deal with a “Unfortunately, politicians don’t have any strata of homosexual society rarely seen by grasp of art. My films are very realistic, most gays — the homosexual underworld extremely realistic,” said Van Sant. peopled by sailors and ex-cons. “The guy doesn’t have any awareness of “It’s a world which is simultaneously anybody except himself. Being like he is, he macho and straight — at the same time it’s is completely alone — while the whole thing not,” said Van Sant with another laugh which about gay America is that you’re NOT alone.” says that he knows he is being complicated Gay critics questioned why, at this point in but that he doesn’t have any other way to time. Van Sant chose to make a film about a explain this strange phenomenon. “homosexual” — someone who hasn’t come And Van Sant believes in telling it like it to terms with his sexuality — rather than a is, no matter what the subject — or the “gay” — someone who is proud of his sexual occasion. orientation. Though Van Sant downplays his own But this isn’t the first time the extremity of roots, his adolescence was as far removed his vision has gotten him into trouble. from the streets as anyone can get. He was Even though gay writer Larry Kramer had bom in Connecticut and moved to Portland — been talking to Van Sant about turning his where he still lives in an apartment today — BY D E L L R I C H A R D S F STEPHEN D. YEW, D.M.D. A GENTLE APPROACH TO DENTISTRY_______ 1220 N. Jantzen Ave. pm Suite 480, Second Floor Phone: H just out V 14 ▼ January 1990 o u r s : ‘ 289-1215 in high school. As an adolescent, he says he was a cross between an artist and a nerd. His family was well off, his father a manufacturer whose lines of men’s and women’s clothing sell in department stores nationwide. It was his family’s wealth that gave Van Sant the opportunity to start making movies at an age when most adolescents have to be content watching them on television. He financed his first movies by working as a sound man in Hollywood. He made the $25,000 needed for his first feature by working in a New York advertising agency. “I worked as an agency producer, doing TV commercials,” said Van Sant. Van Sant claims that making movies isn’t expensive — at least in the beginning. His film shorts — which cost about $50 each — bear this out “You can take a role of Super-8 in to be processed for $5,” said Van Sant. That’s how he got his start and that’s what kept him going until he got out of college in 1975. But it was during college that he began cutting his artistic teeth — and developing his aesthetic — on the hot filmmakers of the day, Jonas Mekas, Jack Smith and Ron Rice. “I was about 16 years old when I got real interested in the New York underground movement,” said Van Sant. That experimental influence is central to the look and feel of his films. In Drugstore Cowboy, Van Sant makes a joke out of the use of hand-held cameras that these filmmakers pioneered. But he actually shakes the camera so that the picture flies around wildly. While it is a spoof, it’s also homage to the 1960s film underground that Van Sant’s films resemble. Thus, the most telling trait in Van Sant’s work is not only his aesthetic but his humor. The last line of the credits of Drugstore Cowboy — a movie that was filmed in the seediest parts of his home town, in places most people would never see — states in typical wry. Van Sant manner, “Filmed on location in beautiful Portland, Oregon.” And it is this ability to use irony as well as compassion that makes his films so palatable — even when the subject is as distasteful as drug addicts, street hustlers or neurotic homosexuals. ▼ WHEEL ALIGNMENT TIRES & paint FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1952 2454 E. Burnside 232-3600
