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His own
private,
Portland
stayed on to work in the edit
ing room. He describes Van
Sant as a hard-working direc
tor: “Very much involved in
editing, he was there every day,
very hands on."
And all that obsessing paid
off handsomely. The picture earned critical
acclaim; good box office; an Oscar for the It
Boys who wrote it, Ben Affleck and Matt
Damon; a long-awaited statue for Williams; and
Van San t’s first nomination for the golden guy.
hich begs the question: Why squander
your newly minted bankable big-shot cur
rency on a shot-for-shot remake of Psycho! It
might have started as a whim or simply as an
intellectual challenge.
From time to time, Van Sant was courted
by various studio execs always on the remake
trail, eager to get double or triple duty out of
their properties. O n one of those occasions he
suggested the Psycho redo, and eventually his
credibility rose high enough to get the prover
bial green light.
Perhaps he never thought he would. But as
Portland pal Snellm an notes, “G us won’t shy
away from a difficult challenge.”
The award Van Sant won for his reslash of
Psycho says it all: the dreaded Razzie for worst
director of 1998.
PHOTO BY SCOTT CREEN
W
On the set of Qood Will H unting, which earned Van Sant his first O scar nod
Continued from Page 2 5
Green characterizes Van San t as a collabora
tive director. “G us really gives actors a lot of
freedom; actors love to work with him ,” he says.
N ot a slave to the script, he allows some
improvised takes. “If the actors want to do it
again, he’ll let them ,” G reen discloses.
Van San t described his attitude toward
actors to M onk.com in 1998. “ I want them to
be able to make mistakes because then they’re
making a go for the good things.”
According to Green, Van S an t’s preparation
includes “going off with the actors privately to
run lines and do character development
together.” In fact, G reen says Van San t’s great
est skill is “hiring the right people and then
allowing them to do their jobs.”
Which means when the shooting day is done,
the director can unwind. “When Gus makes a
movie he doesn’t hang out much. He works, then
he goes to his room and plays his guitar, which is
his way o f meditating,” Green reveals.
After Good Will Hunting wrapped, Green
ow, with his eighth feature film, Finding For -
rester, Van Sant is of necessity back on the
Oscar Trail. According to E! Online, in order to
N
gain studio approval to cast new-kid-
on-any-set Robert Brown as his lead,
the director “had to promise Colum
bia prez Am y Pascal he’d get an Oscar
nomination for the 17-year-old.”
Judging from the response at the admittedly
partisan Portland premiere, it doesn’t sound so
farfetched. W hat’s really impressive, though, is
that Van San t made that promise before he
shot the movie.
His confidence was no doubt based on the
superb script he had in his hand, coincidentally
written by the aptly nam ed Portlander Mike
Rich. T his local-guy-makes-very-good will only
get much richer, for he has a finely tuned ear
for dialogue, tremendous perception into
human nature and a feel for telling a universal
ly appealing story.
With Forrester, Van Sant returns to an ongo
ing theme in his films, begun with his very first,
M ala Noche: the relationship between an older
man and a much younger
one just coming of age.
Although it has no gay
angle, the intense friend
ship that develops
between the two men
could certainly he charac
terized as a loving rela
tionship. And here’s the
real surprise: The movie is
laugh-out-loud funny, pep
pered all the way through
with humor that emanates
from characterization.
In this age of flashy
Van San t and his
MTV-style editing, this
film is a brave move on
Psycho-tic star
Van S an t’s part. He
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