(Apparently Van Sant wanted even
more Hanson; he recently told Genre:
I just did an essay on Hanson for Inter-
view . ... 1 spent, like, four days taking
pictures of them just doing what they
normally do in a day.”)
Scott Green recalls working with
Van Sant on a video for Elton John.
“We shot it real quick, in one long
nigh t.... Elton wasn’t there that
much, but when he arrived he had a
whole entourage— very dressed up,
very
Los Angeles.”
Van San t directs R obert Brow n in Finding Forrester
Green says Van Sant enjoyed
requires his audience to enter his world slowly,
working on most of the videos. When asked
hut fully, and once he has you in his thrall,
about the influence of M TV on filmmaking,
you’re his for the full two hours.
the director told Film Scouts: “W hat you have
T his is the sure-handed work o f a mature
now is a whole generation of viewers that will
filmmaker that deserves to find a wide audi
accept any format as valid. And that, to a very
ence; it’s also the role o f a lifetime for Connery.
large extent, promoted independent cinema,
T h e O scar buzz you hear is probably more than
which is still growing.”
wishful thinking.
Music is another passion for Van Sant, and
according to pal Green, “He’s a very good gui
s a graduate o f the prestigious Rhode Island
tar player...he mostly plays his
^School o f Design, Van San t is, not surpris
own music.” Green
ingly, a multitalented guy. “1 started as a painter;
should know— along
that provided a groundwork for visual com posi
about 1996 he and
tion," he explains. “ 1 cam e to directing as an
Van Sant and
artist, not a theater director; a theater director
Mike Parker
can control the chaos, but I need it to be nice.”
formed a short
In addition to his features, Van San t has
lived band called
directed numerous short films and continues to
the Dots.
__
be attracted to that form. His latest, Smoking
Their one and only
Man, plays Jan. 12 at the Schnitz as part o f
gig happened at Portland’s La
Reel M usic/Nerve Endings with live music by
Luna. Although Green says it “was just for fun,”
the Oregon Symphony.
Van Sant takes his music seriously enough to
record some CDs for Tim Kerr Records.
H e’s also dabbled in music videos, working
According to Portland chum Heidi Snellman,
with the likes o f k.d. lang (for Cowgirls), the Red
“Lots of his friends played instruments, so they’d
Hot Chili Peppers and the pretty boys Hanson.
all jam in the basement of his
house.... Thomas Lauderdale is a
gtxxl friend.” She remembers
how “Thomas once got Gus
to sing Moon River a cap-
pella at some big party
we were all at. He has a
wonderful voice— very Liu
Reed-ish.”
Snellman laughs softly as she
ponders the complexity of the
man. “In some ways he’s quite
straight— he likes to play golf and he
likes race cars.” Incredibly, one of his C D s
consists of 18 songs about golf!
His painterly side still gets exercised— he did
the artwork for his album covers and for the
Idaho poster, which featured floating sombreros.
An analyst could have a field day with some of
the surreal images in his work, especially things
falling from the sky: a bam, cows, sombreros.
One thing he’s not, according to Snellman,
is very political. Although she adds, “During the
first era of N o on 9, G us was very
supportive and active in
the campaign and also
later with a spinoff
group called Artists
for Hate-Free
America.”
When we ask
him if he felt like a
part of the gay community
in Portland, he displays his dry
wit. “Yeah, but I didn’t run for office or anything.”
S o is there a chance he might film in Port
land again? “The film commission is concerned
with making it easy...but the city doesn’t make
it easy.... It wants conventions, not movies,”
"In some ways he's
quite straight— he
likes to play golf and
he likes race cars."
—pal Heidi Snellman
Van San t says, although he
admits he hasn’t filmed in
the city for about six
years.
He explains
Portland has no
one office to handle
the myriad permits and
requests and has no stages
to shoot on, which is a
Catch-22. “You need the stages to
work; you need work to get the
stages.”
learly an artist in the prime o f his
career, G u s Van S an t seem s to have
figured out what H ollyw ood and, more
im portantly, what audiences want and how
to deliver it. Finding Forrester should cem ent
his reputation as a gifted director and once
again give him the license to nam e his next
m ove. (L e t’s just hope h e’s gotten the
rem ake bug out o f his sy stem !)
O n e o f the interesting revelations in
Forrester is that the source o f the title ch arac
ter’s aversion to the spotlight was the never-
ending analysis o f his work. Van San t, whose
first two film s also went under the m icro
scope, takes a different approach. Back in
1991 when R iver Phoenix asked him if it
bothered him when people try to figure him
out, he replied, “N o, not at all, because I’d
like to figure me out actually. ” j n
C
Additional reporting by M A R C A C IT O
ORIANA GREEN is the Entertainment Editor of
Ju st O u t and can be reached at
oriana@ justout. com .
It’s Enough To Turn Santa
Into A Cross Dresser.
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