Gus Van Sant:
Making films about outsiders
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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.
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