THE PORTLAND that Gus Van Sant documented in the ’80s and ’90s is gone. Watching Mala Noche, Drugstore Cowboy, and My Own Private Idaho is like playing bingo with the past: that’s where Satyricon used to be; there’s a sports bar on that corner now; that street’s name has changed.
Portland’s changed entirely since Van Sant shot those iconic films. (It’s probably annoying for recent transplants to constantly hear about the rough old years in Portland; it’s also annoying for longtime residents to no longer be able to afford to live here, so it cuts both ways.) We’ll never be closer to the Portland that Van Sant captured in those films than we are at this moment, though, so maybe now is as good a time as any for a retrospective of Van Sant’s work.
The NW Film Center has assembled a lineup of notable films directed by Van Sant—the three mentioned earlier, as well as Milk, Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days—alongside work by his major influences, including Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, and Andy Warhol. (The retrospective coincides with “Essential Gus Van Sant,” a NW Film Center course taught by Conversations with Gus Van Sant author Mario Falsetto.)
Watching multiple Van Sant films back to back, it’s striking just how unusual his choices are. No one set movies in Portland in the 1980s; no one made movies about gay street kids. Gay icon Harvey Milk might seem an obvious choice for a biopic subject, but Van Sant’s 2008 film spends long scenes endearingly in the weeds of San Francisco city politics, from voter registration and redistricting to backroom haggling over pet projects. Elephant, Van Sant’s 2003 take on the Columbine shootings, is ostensibly about a massacre, yet it’s really preoccupied with the day-to-day lives of high schoolers, and the ways different people occupying the same space can have radically different experiences. The perspective Van Sant offers is just a little off-kilter, a little unexpected; his films are marked by an enduring curiosity, an ability to find and tell stories that others might not even notice.
They can also be obstinately impenetrable—since its release in 2005, I’ve failed more than once to make it through the mumbly, Kurt Cobain-inspired Last Days. Van Sant’s debut feature Mala Noche (1986) remains a touchstone of queer and indie cinema, but it’s not all that much fun to actually watch; based on the autobiography of Portland poet Walt Curtis, it’s a dense, exasperating, claustrophobic look at romantic obsession.
But Van Sant is more than capable of levity, and his movies pop with moments of wry visual humor: the porn magazines that come to life in My Own Private Idaho, the animated pill sequences in Drugstore Cowboy, or the phone tree that represents Harvey Milk’s activation of the gay activist community in Milk.
There are a few notable omissions from Northwest Film Center’s lineup—it would’ve been great to revisit Van Sant’s relative blockbusters To Die For and Good Will Hunting on the big screen. (Flashback to that strange moment in 1998 when Elliott Smith wore a white suit to sing “Miss Misery” at the Academy Awards.) But most of his best films are here. Whether you’re interested in excavating Portland’s past or catching up on Portland’s most notable director, this is the place to start.
yeah i used to admire this guy
back in my struggling screenwriting days i called Morris Agency to ask if Gus Van Sant, their client would want to read my script about Kurt Cobain.
They got back to me and said sure send it in.
I never heard anything.
A couple of years later Last Days came out about a tormented grunge rocker. Opening scene in my story had the guy hanging out by himself down by the river. Pretty cool to get ripped off by a real legend like Gus Van Sant.
Do I understand correctly, that you might actually have know Cobain? I honestly believe that you might well have.
Were you invited to submit the script directly without your own agent?
Did you actually write Last Days as shot? It’s a very visual film with not much dialogue, one of the most unique films I’ve personally, ever viewed.
With such a famous subject, there must have been a great many studios and spec writers working on projects about him. Van Sant is credited as the writer. Is he represented by William Morris?
Did you follow up with a notice and demand pending litigation?
If you wrote a good screenplay, and it’s different from Last Days, Kurt Cobain would still be a most interesting subject, and a successful film could still be viable.
In Last Days, Van Sant briefly alludes to a conspiracy which may have led to Cobain’s murder, but not explicitly so. I think it might be time to make a film specifically about precisely that; perhaps with characters coincidentally similar to those living and dead.
http://www.cobaincase.com
That Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rShdRx2zhRs&index=44&list=PLw7k9G6FR38G35IK4Y_FWplXyzAlwWx1e
Last Days Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFWnZW3esb8
Gus Van Sant´s “Last Days” Making Of
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7ccqu3drYc
Oh please, stop with the conspiracy theories. It demeans us all, and most importantly, Cobain himself. What is this, The National Enquirer?
Watching ‘Drugstore Cowboy’ while living over in Germany is what really made me want to live here.
I still love Gus.
What is deeming is how any death where drug use seems to be in evidence, murder is never investigated.
Okay, I have a great idea for a movie, the birth of Barry O’bama. Now, eventually, more than one movie will be made about the defacto president. Does this prove that I got ripped off if my script isn’t selected?
Its ok Dread. No one else believes it either
It’s not that I don’t believe it, but agencies and studios invariably require all unsolicited script admissions to be pre approved and sent via the writer’s own agent or lawyer. It the William Morris Agency had you send them your script, that’s what they would have done, so as to avoid a plagiarism suit.
Why didn’t you sue?
I’m sure you wrote a good story, but if the film is different than your script, then you didn’t write it. The idea to make a movie about someone as famous as Kurt Colabine is not copyrightable, and is bound to be a popular idea originating with a great many in the film industry.
Did you or did you not write Last Days?
What kills me is all the movie goers who say that they have a great idea for a film, that all they need is for someone to write it for them, and for that they’d be willing to split the proceeds.
“Great ideas are easy. Good dialogue is hard.”
–Richard Walters, Professor, UCLA
Screenwriting: The Art, Craft, and Business of Film and Television Writing
Here, this looks pretty lame, but maybe he would settle a claim?
http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2015/04/23/10-takeaways-from-kurt-cobain-montage-of-heck/#78105=0&31988103=0&32373101=5